With the group stage of IEM Season X World Championship Katowice coming to a close, let's take a look at some of the storylines coming into the tournament and a few that have developed now that the group stage has ended.

Only dreams

The story for Ninjas in Pyjamas was a team fallen from grace. They are now only ranked 11 on hltv.org, the first time the team has been ranked below the Top 10 since in recent memory. While their standings don’t tell a different story, a closer read between the lines shows some promise: 13-16 against Natus Vincere,13-16 against Luminosity Gaming and let’s not forget the 14-16 game versus Fnatic as JW stole away an overtime with a ninja defuse. Who knows what would have happened in best-of-three matches.

Also worthy of mention were the underdogs of the entire tournament, The MongolZ. While people didn’t have high expectations of the Mongolians, they certainly had high hopes, at least the caster desk did. Sadly, the team's best showing was in a 7-16 loss to mousesports.

Machinegun was the MongolZ player that everyone was talking about and expected to put up good numbers, but he fell short of expectations by a large margin. He averaged an abysmal 0.63 rating across all of his games, with his highest being 1.04 in his game against NiP. It was actually Tsogoo who carried the team with a 1.01 rating, which is just average on paper, but he was a monster in his games against Fnatic and Na`Vi with a 1.56 and 1.49 rating respectively.

Speaking of ratings, NiKo put up some monstrous numbers, which is a shame because mouz didn’t make it out of the group; it definitely wasn’t for a lack of trying on NiKo’s part.

Leg day

NiKo had one of the most impressive individual performance across all of Group A, averaging a 1.44 rating in all his games, just shy of fer-god himself who had average a 1.47 rating. NiKo’s lowest rating was from mouz’s game against Na`Vi, but he still had a decent 0.92 rating. And in the game mouz lost to Fnatic, NiKo matched the rating of the top rated player, olofmeister, at 1.59. But with clutch plays like this, it’s no wonder:

Going beyond his overall rating after the group stage, NiKo also had the single most kills per round, the highest Kill-Death differential, the most total headshots and the most opening kills per round. What an absolute beast, it’s a shame that it wasn’t enough to secure a playoff spot.

In Group B the one player to put out crazy numbers was dupreeh. Astralis had a clean 5-0 run through the group stage so every member put up strong numbers, but dupreeh was head and shoulders above the rest with a 1.45 average rating, above NiKo’s but still below fer’s. Additionally, he was one of the only players whose rating never dropped below 1.0 in any map of the group stage — the only other player to do so was dupreeh’s teammate, cajunb.

The FalleN and the RiseN

The Cinderella story of tournament is undoubtedly Tempo Storm. They looked rocky when E-frag took them to 16-13, but they shut down Virtus.pro 16-9 and made EnVy look like a bunch of scrubs after beating them 16-7. nV were knocked out and TS made it to the playoffs under the watchful eye of their fairy godmother, Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo.

All good guys, Tempo have their spirit animal with them! Amazing play from them so far on Mirage #IEM #CSGO A photo posted by Auguste Massonnat (@rofsemmler) on Mar 3, 2016 at 10:36am PST

No one individual on Tempo Storm shone brighter than the other, every player had their shining moments. felps and lucas dominated in their game against E-frag, while hen1 and boltz carried the team against Virtus.pro. Last, but certainly not least, SHOOWTiME was a crucial player in the back-to-back ninja defuses against Team EnVyUs.

All eyes will be on the Brazilian up-and-comers who will face off against Natus Vincere in the playoffs. If they happen to cause another upset, they go on to face their big brothers in Luminosity Gaming.

Another team that’s seemingly on the rise is Virtus.pro, who were able to clutch a playoff spot despite low expectations — perhaps home soil counted for something. None of the players had particularly outstanding stats, but snax deserves a mention. There must have been something in the water in Katowice because he too got a sick ninja defuse against five FaZe CTs.

Or maybe they were just taking notes from Tarik.

Never knew I would inspire this many people. FeelsGoodMan — tarik.... (@noshirt_tv) March 3, 2016

Unfortunately for the Poles, they find themselves in a tough spot in the bracket, facing off against Fnatic as their first opponent, with Astralis waiting for the winner of that set. But VP surprised in the group stage, the same could happen inside the Spodek.

Stats courtesy hltv.org.