A new year means a new Global Championship and a new chance for European teams to prove their worth. The European scene has been through a rough patch the last few weeks with teams disbanding, new teams forming, and roster changes happening left and right. In fact, one could argue it’s similar to how the North American scene looked just shy of a month ago. Will the old titans still stand strong or do they have to make room for new blood? The answer seems be a bit of both.

The two teams that went through the first qualifier were Team Liquid and GoogleIshetZont. Team Liquid recently saw the Durán brothers depart, with Lucifron going back to school and Vortix returning his roots in StarCraft 2. To make up for this loss, Team Liquid picked up former G2 player Jowe as their tank player and Spanish player Shad to round out their roster. Despite being rather recent acquisitions, Team Liquid looked extremely dominating during the first qualifier, going all the way to the finals to become one of the two qualified teams for Katowice.

GoogleIshetZont, a team consisting of former Virtus.Pro and Kiev 6-1 players, came out of nowhere and climbed all the way to the finals looking strong. The secret to their success seemed to be a solid understanding of the game after the recent balance patch. In particular, they showed a strong use of Stitches, a Hero that has garnered much success lately. By combining him with Tassadar for Force Walls to isolate targets, they were able to get picks and snowball their advantages.

As one of the first tournaments to take place after the recent balance changes, the qualifier serves as a good pointer for which direction the meta is taking and what Heroes we will be seeing in the future. One of the biggest changes we saw in the qualifier was the massive amount of games that Stitches was picked, and with great success to boot. Among the teams that used him extensively, Team Liquid and GoogleIshetZont showed mastery of the Hero and both ended up qualifying for the main event. Another Hero we also saw a lot of was Tassadar, often paired up with Stitches to isolate a team member using his Force Wall in conjunction with the hook. Tassadar is by no means a new Hero to be used at the highest level, but the amount of games where he was played as a solo Support is also a rather new trend.





With the next qualifier coming up this weekend, there are some other teams you’ll want to pay attention to. As expected, Na`Vi and Fnatic showed up strong last week and are expected to get quite far in this qualifier. Despite losing Atheroangel and scHwimpi, there is no denying that Dignitas is still one of the major teams in Europe; bringing back Zarmony and adding Wubby and Diqozoy to play for them in the first qualifier was a success, but the conspicuous absence of Snitch in the first qualifier introduces a big question mark for the team’s final lineup.

Several Virtus.Pro players split up and formed multiple teams that are all strong contenders, including the newly reformed VP and Monkeys of the Storm as well as the recently qualified GoogleIshetZont. Team Sandwich Monkey is one of the odder teams currently competing in the European Spring Circuit both in name and lineup. The team features adrd, who has previously been on a multitude of top tier teams, as well as other European mainstays such as Sportsbilly, Shtyr, Snow and bkbgrnrjefek. And last but not least, we have Polish Power and Leo, the remnants of G2 Esports. This time they didn't make it into the quarterfinals, but chances are they will in the coming weeks.


The next qualifier kicks off tomorrow at 14:00 GMT (+00:00). The action can be watched live at Khaldor's Twitch channel. You can also find the full bracket here. It's time to see who can make it all the way to Katowice and who ends up biting the dust.



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