IEM Season VIII World Championship Preview: Group A

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

IEM World Championship Katowice kicks off today, bringing eight world-caliber teams to the fore in a fight over $150,000. Group A is up, featuring the likes of Invictus Gaming, Fnatic, Millennium, and the famously powerful KT Bullets. But this group has especially been fraught with difficulties over the last few months: they all seemed cursed with performance issues and hometown difficulties, despite their known power. This will be their chance to shake off the ghosts of the past and reclaim their prestige and reputations.

The Teams

Invictus Gaming

Top – Liu 'PDD' Mou

Jungle – Chen 'illuSioN' Xin-Lin

Mid – Liu 'Zzitai' Zhi-Hao

AD – Ge 'Kid' Yan

Support – Liu 'Kitties' Hong-Jun

Invictus Gaming is the last team standing from China's Season 2. While players retire and Edward Gaming kicks off a massive chain of player exchanges, iG stands alone with a single substitution, replacing retired support player XiaoXiao with Kitties. The roster has otherwise remained untouched since their appearance at the Season 2 World Championship.

However, despite this consistent roster, their performance has been decidedly inconsistent. Even before OMG staked their claim and reputation in stampeding "freight train" strategies, Invictus Gaming was known primarily for their reckless aggression. Their headlong fights helped secure multiple tournaments... and when they don't win, they explode dramatically and early. Worse yet, their hometown rivals have adapted: it's hard to claim the title of China's most aggressive team when everybody is looking for fights, and when everybody's used to explosive plays, iG's usual strategies are instead costing them games. Their astounding lack of success in LPL Spring 2014 has even caused them to consider disbanding.

Will IEM Katowice be their swan song? Or will it revitalize the team's badly damaged morale? China's famously fast-paced style of play was sufficient to dominate most of the Season 3 World Championship, with OMG and Royal unstoppable by anybody. However, eventual winners SKT K. A strong showing at IEM might give iG a second wind, feeding their legendary fire.

Fnatic

Top – Paul 'sOAZ' Boyer

Jungle – Lauri 'Cyanide' Happonen

Mid – Enrique 'xPeke' Cedeno

AD – Martin 'Rekkles' Larsson

Support – Bora 'YellOwStaR' Kim

As veteran teams go, there are few as old as Fnatic, the very first winners of the League of Legends World Championship and a major eSports brand in general. Though they basically sat Season 2 out after extensive roster changes, their team has since Season 3 been going from strength to strength, regularly dueling with Gambit Gaming for the top of the standings. Ace bot laner Rekkles was a long-delayed pickup – his youth prevented Fnatic from leveraging his vast talent until relatively recently, though his tremendous success in the Challenger circuit was noteworthy in the interim, and continued on through the LCS. Fnatic, it seemed, was destined to write another chapter of dominance in Europe.

Then, anticlimactically, they went on a recent 0-8 streak, leaving fans aghast and analysts wondering what the heck went wrong with the team.

The crab bucket of the European scene does not long suffer a frontrunner, but Fnatic's multi-week slump was unexpected for a team comprised of such all-star talent. Their individual players are considered the cream of Europe's crop, but it seems as if their team strategies have been out-studied by local rivals. Against Katowice's international pool, however, Fnatic might yet again put on a show of strength.

KT Bullets

Top – Lee 'Leopard' Ho-Seong

Jungle – Choi 'inSec' In-seok

Mid – Ryu Sang-wook

AD – Go 'Score' Dong-bin

Support – Won 'Mafa' Sang-yeon

The world-famous KT Bullets has long been known as the second-strongest team of the ruthlessly competitive Korean scene, holding a steady second place through multiple seasons of OGN Champions. Their 2-3 OGN Champions Summer grand finals against Season 3 World Champions SKT K is often considered the best set in all of 2013 – a showcase of the highest caliber League of Legends play at that moment.

But their transition to 2014 has not been smooth. The KT Rolster organization decided to shift jungler KaKAO over to sibling team Arrows, but doing so was unexpected disastrous for the Bullets. They seem lost without KaKAO's guidance, with Zero a passive and ill-fitting replacement for the strategies centered around KaKAO's aggressive dynamism. They tried putting InSec back in his original role – sensible, given that he was originally famous for his unbeatable days in the jungle, but multiple seasons in top lane's island seem to have dulled his senses.

KT Bullets' hopes lie in InSec's hands – the question facing them and everybody else is whether or not he will reclaim his once peerless strength as a jungler in time to face the international competition. If he can, the Bullets will be returning home as a revitalized threat.

Millennium

Top – Kevin 'Kev1n' Rubiszewski

Jungle – Alvar 'Araneae' Martin Alenar

Mid – Adrian 'Kerp' Wetekam

AD – Jakub 'Creaton' Grzegorzewski

Support – Alexander 'Jree' Bergstrom

The team once known as ALTERNATE can almost be mistaken for Fnatic, based off their records and general pattern. High-caliber players, check. Their players tend to be at the very top of Europe's individual rankings, and previously included record-holder Forellenlord, the "Elo King". Tremendous early success in the EU LCS, check. They held top rank soon after their promotion in Season 3 and seemed unbeatable for a while, especially with Araneae leading the charge with a deadly Lee Sin.

Tremendous failure soon afterward, an unfortunate check. Creaton broke his hand last year, and they've been in a slump ever since. Though he's since recovered, his team hasn't: they're currently last in the standings and risk relegation if they cannot recover in the next couple of weeks. Millennium has a long, hard road ahead of them.

The Stats

By stats alone, Fnatic is clearly the team to be feared in Group A: the highest kills per minute, minions per minute and even assists per minute suggest an aggressive team with great overall synergy. They do take a long time to shut out games – only Millennium takes longer by a minute on average, but much of this is due to regional quirks. Europe in general takes a famously long time per game, and Fnatic and Millennium's averages clearly reflect this.

In contrast, the Bullets are suffering badly: fewest kills per game and highest deaths. True, the Korean scene is considered more demanding than any other in the world, but their statistical performance serves to clearly demonstrate how badly they've been doing without KaKAO to tie their lanes together.

Regional flavor is once again demonstrated by iG, tying Fnatic for kill averages... and only slightly behind the Bullets for average deaths suffered. The Chinese scene's constant fights are to be blamed – though, worryingly, iG also holds Group A's lowest assists averages. They might excel at duels, but their comparative lack of teamwork might be holding them back at home, and possibly abroad.

Stats by the OnGamers statistics team.

Image credit: Leaguepedia, ESL, cloth5.com, ggchronicle