2014 Season European Promotion Tournament Preview

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

This weekend it will be either make it or break it for six of the European teams competing for a spot in the 2014 League Championship series. Their jobs and the opportunity to either remain professional players or become ones are on the line. There will be crushed dreams and broken hearts, but also cheers of joy as 15 young men will have secured their place among the very best in Europe for the next couple of months. Let’s take a closer look at these very important matchups.

Ninjas in Pyjamas vs Kiedyś Miałem Team

Ninjas in Pyjamas’ new roster showed a lot of potential at IEM Cologne for a team that had just started playing together. They have highly skilled and experienced players in every role and considering the amount of training and scouting they did in the weeks prior to the Promotion tournament, their chances of securing their LCS spot are very high. They had the luxury to choose which team they will play against and their decision was KMT. That was a little unexpected since the Polish squad has had great results during the last half an year, but they did look a bit shaky during the group stage of the promotion tournament. Probably that was the reason behind NiP’s choice or they just figured out a way to counter KMT’s strategies perfectly. it remains to be seen if their decision was the right one.

KMT were one of the favourites to go pass the group stage of the promotion tournament but they didn’t do so as easily as people had expected. After their first game against SHC which they lost, it looked like they never got over their loss to SK in the DreamHack Winter final. However, they quickly woke up from the slumber and won their next two games. After an unsurprising loss to Wolves, their score was 2-2 - the same as TCM’s. The two teams met in the last match of the group stage to decide who will go through and KMT easily went on top. Now they will face the strongest team in the qualifiers according to their manager and it will be a battle of the strong individual players who recently got together against the solid Polish teamwork built in the last year. No matter which will prevail, the matchup will be fierce.

SK Gaming vs Supa Hot Crew

The new SK Gaming lineup just won their first offline tournament, DreamHack Winter, and are hungry for more victories. The team didn’t look as solid as they could have, they had troubles in the laning phase but ultimately their experience and Candy Panda’s top notch mechanics triumphed over the challenger teams that stood in their way in Sweden. If the team spent enough time preparing on the new patch, which they claimed a couple of times was pretty hard due to the lag issues on EUW, and if Jesiz has overcome his nerves when it comes to playing on the big stage, the team has a good shot at keeping their LCS spot. They will face Supa Hot Crew, a team Svenskeren and Fredy122 should know very well, and that may give them an additional advantage.

Supa Hot Crew is a team formed with the sole purpose of getting into the promotion qualifiers, much like Sinners Never Sleep, which later became Lemondogs, was during the Summer Promotion. In the process the crew lost two of their members - Fredy122 and Svenskeren joined the new SK Gaming roster, but they were swiftly replaced with k0u and Syrela. SHC managed to get into the final group stage of the promotion tournament but undergone roster changes yet again right before its start. The current king of solo queue in Europe, Mimer, joined the team, while Dignitas UK’s jungler Impaler came as a sub for the qualifiers. Despite the newcomers, SHC got a 3-2 score and won the chance to challenge one of the LCS veterans for their spot in the League. Fredy and Svenskeren may know what to expect from their ex-team, but the same can be said about SHC being familiar with their playstyle. It’s a double-edged sword, the question is who will be able to utilize it better.

Meet Your Makers vs Copenhagen Wolves

There was a lot of hype for MYM both before the spring and the summer split of the 2013 LCS. People expected them to make it in the first LCS qualifiers but they lost 2-3 to the surprise of the tournament DragonBorns. However, they stuck together and exacted their revenge, defeating the very same DragonBorns 3-2 and claiming their LCS spot in the summer split for themselves. MYM had a very successful 4-1 start among the best teams in Europe which proves that they are a formidable opponent when they had the time to research and prepare for the teams they will play against. The rest of the summer split though was almost a complete disaster for the Polish team as they finished in 8th place with a record of 8 wins and 20 losses. Since then they went under the radar besides their participation in WCG where they went 2-2 in the group stage and couldn’t advance to the playoffs. Of course now they will play on the new patch which makes them extremely unpredictable, and against an opponent who has played plenty of games MYM can research. You can’t completely count MYM out yet.

The hype and the status of a favourite coming into the matchup are all for Copenhagen Wolves this time. The team has been on top of the challenger scene since the beginning of the summer with multiple online and offline first place finishes. Even after they lost both of their star players, Rekkles and Shook, the team didn’t falter. The new additions, Forgiven and Amazing, are playing just as good and the team synergy is on a very high level which was proved by winning the amateur tournament at IEM Cologne just a few weeks ago. Wolves also went 5-0 in the group stage of the promotion tournament, showing that they have already adapted well to the preseason patch. It’s no surprise that NiP and SK didn’t want to play against such a formidable opponent. Everyone’s bet is on Wolves making it into the LCS and the odds are definitely in their favour. It would be a major shock if their matchup against MYM doesn’t end with a win for the Wolves.