A comprehensive look at DreamHack Winter's LoL tournament

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

DreamHack, the most iconic LAN festival in world, returned yet again for its 2013 winter edition and League of Legends was, of course, a major part of it.

Despite the fact that it was an EU-only tournament with no “pro” teams allowed to compete, names such as SK Gaming and Kiedyś Miałem Team (former H2K Gaming) still attracted a fair amount of attention.

The interest would have been even higher if Ninjas in Pyjamas and Copenhagen Wolves hadn't cancelled their participation in the last moment, choosing to practice on the new patch for the Promotion tournament instead.

In Group A, KMT swept the competition without any trouble. The Polish lineup, who has been together since DreamHack Bucharest, was linked with a move to Astana Dragons in the days prior to the tournament. The Kazakh organization announced the addition of the team and later pulled the information from social media, so it seems the deal fell apart at the last moment. It is yet unclear if another organization will pick up the team but the uncertainty didn’t distract the players as they showed why they are considered one of the strongest contenders for an LCS entry next month.

The second team to leave Group A was Intellectual Playground, a Danish lineup, built around the former Copenhagen Wolves top laner NeeGodBro who has now switched to the mid lane. The team won a spot in the main tournament by going through the 36-teams BYOC qualifier and after two victories against Team Property and Tricked Esport, they advanced to the semi-finals.

The new SK Gaming lineup topped Group B, but they didn’t enjoy smooth sailing in any of their matches. The team faced troubles during the laning phase and were usually behind in kills even if ahead in turrets. However, they had the patience to engage in the right team fights in the later stages of the games and relying on most of the team members’ experience in such situations, they managed to take all three victories. They were followed into the semi-finals by LowLandLions, the team that gave them the most trouble in a 55-minute back and forth game that opened up the group.

To a certain extent the semi-finals mirrored the results from the group stage - KMT cruised through LLL with a clean 2-0, while SK had to go to game 3 in order to take down Intellectual Playground. Nyph and company lost the first game even though they were ahead of their opponents for the majority of it. SK tunnel visioned on an open inhibitor and Intellectual Playground used the opportunity to engage on them. That got their Vayne fed and she snowballed out of control. However, the loss in game 1 woke up SK and they won the next two games, securing their spot in the final against KMT - the matchup most people have predicted.

Despite SK being the more well known team, KMT were the favorites coming into the final as their teamwork throughout the tournament was simply much more solid and consistent.

Game One proved that as they decimated SK after getting ahead on all lanes early in the game. That continued in the second game as well, which was looking really dire for SK until CandyPanda (Vayne) decided to take matters into his own hands and start being a Carry with a capital C. He started pushing one of the lanes and taking head on anyone who was sent to take care of him, while Fredy122 (Shyvana) was doing the same in another. Aided by a magical baron steal from Svenskeren’s Lee Sin, SK slowly came back into the game even if they were still 10 kills behind. Shocked by the way they lost an almost won game, KMT couldn’t really recover in time for game 3. SK finally won the laning phase and the whole game convincingly and against all odds, they became the DreamHack Winter 2013 League of Legends champions.

This is the first LAN title for SK Gaming’s LoL squad, and while it was achieved in less-than-stacked tournament, it should be a great confidence boost for the new lineup and especially Jesiz, who clearly showed a lot of nerves being on the big stage both at DreamHack and at IEM Cologne the week before that. However, there is no time to celebrate as the team has two weeks to build upon that success in order to achieve the much more important quest of requalifying for the LCS.

On the other hand, KMT have one week to prepare for the first round of the Promotion tournament in which the 6 challenger teams will face each other until only 3 are left to play against the ex-LCS participants. The team looked solid and they can always count on Overpow to have a good game and carry them to victory. If they are successful in the online portion of the LCS qualifier, KMT may very well meet SK once again and look for revenge for DreamHack, and something much more important - their LCS spot.

Photo Credit: Adela 'Mawrr' Sznajder