The Europe/CIS leg of this tournament kick things off today where twelve teams will battle it out for the $200,000 prize pool and the title. Of these twelve teams, two came from the closed qualifiers. Let’s take a look at how Team Empire, the closed qualifier representative for group B, will hold their ground against one of the region’s heavy hitter Ninjas in Pyjamas.
Betting Lines
Ninjas in Pyjamas to Win (1.4)
Team Empire to Win (2.51)
Ninjas in Pyjamas +1.5 Map Handicap (1.09)
Team Empire +1.5 Map Handicap (1.49)
Over 2.5 (1.98)
Under 2.5 (1.64)
Previous Match Results and Statistics
Team Empire has already secured their ticket for the grand finals of Vulkan Fight Series. After dropping only one game in the group stage, Team Empire remained consistent with their strong performance sweeping Khan in the first round and securing a 2-1 victory over OG Seed in the upper bracket finals. Thanks to Lightless and Smiling Knight’s consistent performance as the team’s one-two punch combo, the core duo of this midlaner and carry has been the team’s key to victory. Despite these two cores taking the spotlight because of their impressive KDA scores in every match, this team seems to have no weak link as jAM3S, EcNart, and Mastery has played as the supporting cast perfectly. They made it easy for their cores to find kills and farm consistently with their rotations and excellent controls especially on the enemy team’s core heroes.
Ninjas in Pyjamas had a very underwhelming run in their most recent tournament, Blast Bounty Hunt, as they got swept twice. First, it was under the hands of Alliance during the first round of the upper bracket. Alliance dismantled the whole squad as they had no answer for Nikobaby in both games as he just filled the stat sheet. NiP advanced to the lower bracket and faced Team Nigma. NiP was able to put up more of a fight in game 1 of this series as Charlie and SabeRLighT- were both one kill short of scoring double digits in terms of kills ending the game with 9/8/10 and 9/7/15 KDA respectively. However, these much effort were unable to stop them from suffering another sweep from Miracle- and the gang as the star of Team Nigma amassed an impressive 31/6/24 KDA with both games combined.
Predictions
With Team Empire (2.51) carrying this much momentum from their other on-going tournaments combined with Ninjas in Pyjamas’ (1.4) recent struggles, I will not be surprised if the underdogs pull-off an upset here. Team Empire has been playing exceptionally well as a team lately and their confidence must be through the roof right now.
However, I will still not count Ninjas in Pyjamas out of this one they have faced stronger competition in Beyond the Summit which makes things interesting to see if they finally put their previous run in the past and take advantage of this clean slate and regain their winning ways.
Team Empire +1.5 Map Handicap seems to be the move here as I don’t see them going down without a fight against a team who struggled recently.
