TLGO at the EPL Finals in Dallas

It’s been a month since DreamHack: Austin and TLGO is ready for another LAN appearance. When we last saw the boys offline, the roster with Twistzz had just been finalized and we had back to back events in Summit and DreamHack. Now, with another month of practice under their belts, the team is headed to Dallas for the EPL Season finale.

Coming off our previous two tournaments, the team does have something to prove. Granted, one month ago the roster was very fresh, but the result remains the same that we exited both events fairly early. At Summit we defeated NiP but were sent out by Gambit and Optic. Come DreamHack, we played Immortals close and then fell to a G2 team on the upswing.

Headed into Dallas, however, things look more promising. First and foremost is the fact that time has been on our side. The month between LANs has featured a plethora of league matches and time to better understand each others’ play. The second factor here is that our performance in the regular season of EPL’s North American division has landed us in the easier of the two groups.

While seeding was fairly done based on league results, it is hard to deny that we lucked out at least a little. Every team in our group is very beatable so let’s take a look at them.

Mous

Last Match: 1-0 (16-4) (LAN)
Best Performer: Jacob 'Pimp' Winneche / 19-7 / +12 / 92.3 ADR / 1.64 Rating

We last played Mousesports in the group stages of the ELEAGUE Major. Both teams — having failed to exit groups — made moves post-Major but some common threads remain. Most notably on the Mous side was the departure of NiKo. While this subtraction can’t be understated, Mous seems to be doing well with Oskar and Ropz now in the lineup. They lack the top end they once had but are now more consistent across the board.

On our end you can see that our best performer in that match has gone back to Denmark. Pimp’s stats in this game were absurd but somebody else should be able to step up.

North

North is a team we have never actually played against! And yes, this includes going back to when they were with Dignitas. North finished first place in the EU region and are top seed in our group. Despite this, however, North have been stumbling on LAN recently. They severely under-performed at both StarLadder and IEM Sydney—but they cannot be counted out.

This match is sure to be an explosive one as both teams are just pointing young guns at each other! Who will take it, EliGE-Twistzz or Magisk-Konfig?

NRG

Last Match: 1-1 (16-11 / 12-16) (Online)
Best Performer: Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken / 22-17 / +5 / 79.2 ADR / 1.20 Rating

NRG is a team we have played very recently but in an online setting. Our league matches against NRG generally tend to go 1-1 as was the case in our recent ECS match as well as when we faced off in EPL Week 2.

But as any CS fan will tell you, LAN is a different beast. In the offline setting the edge certainly has to go to Liquid on account of experience. That said, the group stage matches will be played without a crowd and are a best-of-one so anything can happen.

We split maps with NRG tonight but @Liquid_jdm got a nice close up after this A-hold 🤩 pic.twitter.com/VvZZxj1xKJ

— Team Liquid (@TeamLiquid) May 27, 2017

Na`Vi

Last Match: 1-2 (7-16 / 16-13 / 16-10) (LAN)
Best Performer: Jonathan 'EliGE' Jablonowski / 25-9 / +16 / 119.0 ADR / 1.76 Rating

Going even further back than our match against Mousesports is the Na`Vi match dating back to October of last year. This was our first tournament post-s1mple breakup and naturally we met him in the semifinals. You’ll see below that all the same antics were present in this match but it is hard to take too much from it today given how much has changed since.

In terms of recent form, Na`Vi are similar to North in the sense that their form has tapered. They have been generally inconsistent since the Major but they also recently failed to get out of groups at DreamHack: Tours.

OpTic

Last Match: 1-2 (10-16 / 16-10 / 10-16) (LAN)
Best Performer: Peter 'stanislaw' Jarguz / 26-16 / +10 / 116.5 ADR / 1.37 Rating

Ah Optic, one of our NA rivals. When the question of “best team in NA” comes up it always comes down to “Optic, TL, or C9” so this is one we really want to win. Optic have shown decent form recently at IEM Sydney, and they finally confirmed that JasonR and Hazed will be staying on until at least after the upcoming Major.

This is another scary matchup in a Bo1; in both ECS and EPL we split maps against Optic. Based on how the group is laid out, this could easily be the swing match.

Schedule (Anticipated)

May 30th
6:00PM EDT vs Na`Vi
8:30PM EDT vs OpTic
9:45PM EDT vs NRG

May 31st
6:00PM EDT vs Mouz
7:15PM EDT vs North



The finals of ESL ProLeague Season 5 will be the sternest test of our new roster so far. We have made great strides since Twistzz’s debut, yet there is still much to prove. This week, the best teams in Europe land in Dallas to contend for the EPL crown, and our league standing suggests that we’re prepared for the challenge.