The Nanyang Dota 2 Championships kick off the Online American Qualifiers today with new teams getting their first chance at competing since The International shuffle officially ending on September 5th. While many of the players involved in the American qualifiers have played in the scene before, the stacks are still relatively untested to date. The mix of teams will have both North and South American talent on display for the better course of the week with the finals taking place on September 13th.
Nanyang American Qualifiers Team List:
Digital Chaos
ROOT Gaming
Sector V
Void Boys
Cloud 9
Union Gaming
FIRE
Pain Gaming
The first match of the tournament will feature Kurtis ‘Aui’ Ling in action with his new squad Digital Chaos up against newly formed Root Gaming. Although Root Gaming went through a large shuffle post International, which included the pick-up of Niklas‘Wagamama’ Högstrom, Dota2 Lounge currently has Digital Chaos favored in the match-up 72 to 27. The heavily favored Digital Chaos stems from Aui’s recent win at The International 5 with Evil Geniuses as well as the addition of longtime friend and recent coach, Kanishka ‘BuLba’ Sosale. Root will have a fair amount to prove under the strategic mind of Wagamama heading into the first of what appears to be many qualifiers this season.
The eight teams will compete in a double-elimination bracket best of three play with a best of five grand finals, Round 1 and 2 of the Losers Bracket being best of one, yielding multiple chances for all teams. All major regions including Europe, China, and Southeast Asia will receive a qualifier that places the winning team in contention against the six already invited teams. The Americas qualifier will run September 9th through September 13th.
Main event play is slotted to start October 26th in Singapore, just before the perceived date of Valve’s first Dota 2 Major on November 15th. Due to the dates being so close in timing, potentially being too grueling of a traveling schedule, to other LAN events, Evil Geniuses officially declined their invite with Key.TV releasing the following statement on the Nanyang Championships Twitter:
We have received many inquiries about the absence of Evil Genuises from the direct invitees of Nanyang Championships.
We have an official statement from Evil Geniuses regarding this:
“Unfortunately we wont be attending Nanyang because the travel schedule conflicts with other events that we have accepted. Adding an additional LAN to our calendar doesn’t leave us with enough time to adequately prepare for all of them. We want to provide the best games for our fans. We’re very sorry we won’t get to meet our fans in Singapore. It’s a place none of us have been to and a place we would very much like to visit. We hope there’s more opportunities in the future.”
Due to this, we have decided to replace the NA direct invite slot with a Chinese team based on recent TI5 results. We hope that these invited teams will be able to perform to their best and bring everyone exciting games to watch!
We hope to receive your support and make Nanyang Championships the best DOTA2 tournament to be held in Southeast Asia!
Sources:
Liquipedia
Dota 2 Reddit
NYChampionships Twitter
