5 Major Winners, 3 New Teams, and $40,000 — Snow Sweet Snow #1 Preview
Snow Sweet Snow #1 starts tomorrow. Well, technically qualification has been happening for two weeks, but the top 16 teams will begin competing tomorrow for a $100,000 prize pool. And these 16 teams are no small fry with a handful of HLTV appearances — they count 5 Major winners (with 6 titles between them) among the players, plus five organisations inside the HLTV top 30. Familiar faces such as Oskar and NaToSaphiX are set to return on new line-ups, while viewers can also watch competitive debuts for new rosters from ENCE, EXTREMUM and GODSENT. With 33 matches promised across next week, plus play-offs the week after, there should be no shortage of entertainment.
Wait, it started two weeks ago?
Much like a Major, the opening of the competition has been spent whittling down the teams. We began with 32 teams competing in regional groups, with 16 teams advancing to a Swiss stage from which only the top 8 teams advanced to the main competition. There were a few surprises, like AGO’s star-studded new lineup failing to win a match in the Polish group, and 4Glory edging out SKADE in the Balkans group. The Swiss stage brought its own drama, such as Izako Boars winning out the final map against Winstrike thanks to an unfortunate D/C, as well as two 16–0 wins.
Lyngby Vikings and Izako Boars secured their places first, going undefeated in the Swiss stage. Winstrike, Sangal, and GamerLegion joined them the next day with a 3–1 record. In the final do-or-die qualification series, HONORIS secured qualification at the third time of asking, while Sinners completed their fight back from a 1–2 start with victory over Lilmix and Esports Club Kyiv dispatched with Trident Clan to secure the final qualification spot to the main event.
Who’s invited?
8 teams are invited to join our qualifying sides, and there is plenty of strength on show. 5 of the invited teams are ranked in HLTV’s top 30 (Sprout, forZe, Dignitas and Endpoint, plus EXTREMUM who inherit points from 100 Thieves), while there is also room for ESL partner team ENCE and the pronax-run Swedish org GODSENT, both of whom are debuting new line-ups at this event. Polish side PACT then round out the invites.
How does it work?
For those who’ve never seen a Swiss stage before, the 16 teams are seeded #1 to #16, with the opening games drawn so #1 takes on #16 and so on. The 8 winning teams are then re-drawn against each other, as are the losing teams, such that each team plays another team with the same record (1–0 teams versus each other and 0–1 teams versus each other). This process continues (2–0 teams take on another 2–0 team, 1–1 another 1–1 and so on) until each team has either 3 wins or 3 defeats.
Teams with 3 defeats are eliminated, while the 8 teams with 3 wins qualify for the play-offs, where they will play against each other before taking on 4 more invited teams (expect teams ranked in the HLTV top 20) in a single-elimination bracket. Winner takes home a nice $40,000.
I’ll now talk about each team — and then give my predictions for how I think the Swiss stage could turn out.
Invited Teams
forZe
HLTV ranking: #22
forZe spent 2020 being very inconsistent, taking down top teams one week then bombing out early the next. Victories over sides like Cloud9 and North would be followed up by early exits from minor tournaments. They’ve added FPL stars woro2k and Aunkere to their lineup recently and early results saw them qualify for Dreamhack Open January without dropping a map… but then they went out after losses to Spirit and Sprout. Not the finished article just yet but should make it out of the main Swiss stage I reckon.
EXTREMUM
HLTV ranking: #27 (with points from 100 Thieves)
Who are EXTREMUM? They are a Russian organisation best known for DOTA 2, but instead of picking up yet another CIS roster, they opted to sign the former 100 Thieves core of Aussies AZR, Gratisfaction and Liazz — even going to the expense of buying out jkaem from his contract at Apeks to join them, then adding Kassad as coach following his exit from Cloud9 and Indonesian star BnTeT as their fifth. Their talent is undeniable, but there are question marks over how quickly they can adapt to European competition, which some teams (looking at you, EG) have found difficult.
Sprout
HLTV ranking: #28
Sprout weren’t really expected to make a roster change after a 2020 which saw them make a surprise run at ESL One Cologne and win two seasons of MDL. But Poles Dycha (remember that name) and snatchie wanted to leave and the German roster took the opportunity to revert to an all-German lineup, adding slaxz and kressy from Alternate ATTAX.
A loss to Movistar Riders in EPEC Winter 2020 is probably the only blemish so far — Sprout have hit the ground running, winning two domestic competitions and beating forZe at Dreamhack Open January before going down to a strong Spirit team. Should go deep into Snow Sweet Snow.
Dignitas
HLTV ranking: #29
Dignitas, by contrast, had a rough year in 2020. Their signing of the legendary Major-winning former Ninjas in Pyjamas roster went sour, with disappointing results leading to the benching of Xizt and the retirement of GeT_RiGhT. But adding Swedish youngster HEAP and Norwegian H4RR3 to the team brought good results at cs_summit 7 last week, where they took down Complexity and ran OG and NiP extremely close. If they can replicate that form here, f0rest and friberg have every chance to roll back the years.
Endpoint
HLTV ranking: #30
Endpoint’s 2020 ended with a huge buzz as they beat out Sprout to qualify for ESL Pro League season 13. But things have been less good since then; they’ve lost to K23, Movistar Riders (twice) and went out of the Dreamhack Open qualifier to the unfancied 1WIN. They will want a good result here to prove they are fully prepared for Pro League — and with Israeli entry fragger flameZ being voted the best upcoming player in FPL, they have all the resources to do just that.
PACT
HLTV ranking: #42
PACT got an invite probably because they were one of the few Polish teams not to make big roster changes in the winter break; their only change being to drop long-serving rifler Goofy in favour of ex-Illuminar and Virtus.Pro youngster Vegi. Vegi will definitely be an improvement (and I think picking him up was a great piece of business by PACT), but it remains to be seen whether he will constitute enough of one to take what was a fairly mediocre side last season up against the best of Europe’s tier 2 scene.
ENCE
HLTV ranking: #194 (new roster)
If you’re not aware of how badly ENCE’s 2020 turned out, then I’d like to congratulate you on waking from your recent coma. To cut a long story short, ENCE had a downslide in results, made roster changes to avert it, and then — after most of their legendary 2019 Krakow Major-finallist roster had left or been benched — had to deal with a very public fight between their players.
The result of which is, having seemingly annoyed every Counter-Strike player in Finland, ENCE now have an international roster, with only allu and doto retained from last year. Danish caller Snappi and Israeli FPL star Spinx join from c0ntact, along with Sprout’s Polish rifler Dycha. Dycha and Spinx are quality players, and allu remains a talent in the server, but question marks remain about Snappi at the top level after he endured an abysmal 2020 — ENCE will need him, and the team, to hit the ground running here.
GODSENT
HLTV ranking: #195 (new roster)
Not the roster which GODSENT seemingly took months to sell to FunPlus Phoenix, but a new Brazilian team, headed up by ex-MIBR duo TACO and felps, joined by youngsters dumau, B4rtin and latto. They actually took on Endpoint in the Dreamhack Open January qualifier, going down 12–16 in a spirited fight on Inferno despite felps’ best efforts (35 kills).
There is no doubt about the Brazilians’ ability to pull in viewers, but given TACO’s lack of experience as an in-game leader and his disastrous last trip to Europe with MIBR — plus the fact the roster lacks a dedicated AWPer — it’s unclear whether that will translate into results.
Qualified Teams
Lyngby Vikings
HLTV ranking: #46
Qualifying Record: 3–0 (beat GamerLegion, Tricked, HONORIS)
Danish side Lyngby Vikings, set up by a football club (like all good Danish teams), had an up-and-down 2020. Some shock wins (like taking down Team Heretics in a qualifier) but few solid results. With Cabbi leaving for AGF, they took the opportunity to revamp their roster, keeping only raalz and Birdfromsky. In their place comes ex-Nordavind and Heroic nearly-man (and Reddit darling) NaToSaphiX along with Dutch duo rilax and FASHR.
Going international worked a treat in their first two competitions as they went 3–0 in both the regional Swiss here and in the Swiss stage of Shadow League season 1. Expect them to put up a hell of a fight.
Izako Boars
HLTV ranking: #62
Qualifying Record: 3–0 (beat Trident Clan, Sinners, Winstrike)
Izako Boars made what was for me a very shrewd move in the Great Polish Winter Reshuffle: picking up mono and STOMP, both players who had previously sat on the Illuminar bench but who had shown plenty of talent in the server.
Thus far it is certainly working out for them: they have yet to be beaten in the competition, beating AGO and STOMP’s former employers HONORIS in groups and taking down strong opposition in the regional Swiss stage. They could well take that momentum into their matches against tougher opponents here.
Winstrike
HLTV ranking: #38
Qualifying Record: 3–1 (beat OFFSET, Young Ninjas, Tricked; lost to Izako Boars)
Winstrike are the CIS region’s nearly men. Constantly teetering on the edge of the top 30 or impressing in an RMR tournament, they lost two players to health concerns near the end of 2020 but picked up the highly-rated Krad and Forester in their place. Aside from a very close scrap with Izako Boars that could easily have gone their way, they looked good in making it here — including a 16–0 victory on Mirage against Tricked — and should not be underestimated.
Sangal
HLTV ranking: #47
Qualifying Record: 3–1 (beat OFFSET, Sinners, HONORIS; lost to Young Ninjas)
If the names on Sangal’s roster (MAJ3R, ngiN, paz) look familiar to you, that’s probably because you saw them when they played under Space Soldiers and had a pre-BIG Clan XANTARES on their line-up. Having struggled since, the addition of FPL talent imoRR in the summer revitalised them, as they went from an unfancied 14th in ESEA Advanced league play to winning the whole thing and gaining promotion to Premier.
It’s been a slower start to 2021 — most notably that surprise loss to Young Ninjas — but Sangal’s history and talent means you shouldn’t write them off.
GamerLegion
HLTV ranking: #54
Qualifying Record: 3–1 (beat Trident Clan, Lilmix, EC Kyiv; lost to Lyngby Vikings)
The German org most famous for the players they have given other teams (NiP and Cloud9 most recently), GamerLegion are a scrappy little lot but did not achieve many big wins in 2020. However a key 2021 victory has been integrating mezii’s replacement dobbo into the team; results last season were underwhelming but this year he has looked like a new player, posting up big stats as GamerLegion have started 2021 with strong performances here and in Shadow League. A young line-up who love to upset the odds.
Sinners
HLTV ranking: #32
Qualifying Record: 3–2 (beat EC Kyiv, SG. Pro, Lilmix; lost to Sangal and Izako Boars)
Sinners are a Czech line-up, most famous for adding ex-mousesports and Sprout AWPer oskar to the team near the end of last year. With the goal of breaking into the top 30, the addition of the veteran has boosted their prospects and form — but they still only just made it into the main event here. Still very much a work in progress but a team to watch nonetheless.
HONORIS
HLTV ranking: #82
Qualifying Record: 3–2 (beat SG.Pro, Lilmix, Tricked; lost to Sinners, Sangal)
HONORIS feature our fourth and fifth former Major winners: Polish legends NEO and TaZ, of Virtus.Plow fame, built the team (and org) around themselves. Last year was a frustrating one, as they endured defeat after defeat, but following some roster changes (azizz and Grucha joining for Prism and STOMP), their 2021 has started on a more upbeat note, taking down AGO and Pompa Team in the Polish group as well as strong opposition in the Swiss stage. Qualifying for play-offs would cement that progress but it will still be a long shot.
Esports Club Kyiv
Current HLTV ranking: #84
Qualifying Record: 3–2 (beat 4Glory, SG.Pro, Trident Clan; lost to Sinners, GamerLegion)
Little-known on the scene (all 5 players’ only matches on HLTV are with EC Kyiv and none are from before last October), these Ukrainians have been trending upwards since the end of 2020; they took a win in the second ESEA Autumn Cash Cup — beating out invited sides PACT and LowLandLions — and subsequently secured an invite to the regionals, where they topped their group. They suffered defeats to strong opposition but were able to grind their way to a qualification series against Trident Clan (featuring former NaVi legend seized) which they won 2–0. Will they reach play-offs? It seems unlikely, but maybe they can surprise us.
Snow Sweet Snow #1 begins tomorrow, Monday 1st February at 9am CET with GODSENT vs Lyngby Vikings and PACT vs Winstrike. You can follow along at teb.gg or on HLTV.
What do you think? Anything you agree with? Anything I’ve got completely wrong? @ me on Twitter at @Tom_Tom94.
