Adrenaline Cyber League 2019 is this year’s edition of a Dota 2 event that took place for the first time in 2017. At that tournament, Virtus.pro, Natus Vincere, mousesports and Team Empire clashed in a series of epic battles. The winner was Na’Vi and the competition turned out to be a big success.

Adrenaline Cyber League 2019 General Information

This season, Adrenaline Rush has decided to organize another edition of their Adrenaline Cyber League, inviting 3 teams and reserving a 4th place for the winner of a qualifier. This winner, Old But Gold, along with two of the directly invited teams, Virtus.pro and Na’Vi, are already known. The final team will be revealed soon.

The Adrenaline Cyber League 2019 offers a prize pool of $100.000 and is scheduled to take place in Moscow, Russia between May 25th – 26th.

Team Analysis For Adrenaline Cyber League 2019

Adrenaline Cyber League 2019 features three known teams and another one that is yet to be revealed. However, it can only be one of the following two: Team Empire or Gambit Esports. Which is why we’re going to analyze both of them here.

Virtus.pro

On paper, Virtus.pro is by far the strongest team at this event, as they are the number one team in the world. At the first three Majors of the season, VP played in three Grand Finals and won one of them. And at the time of this writing, they are waiting to play in the first round of Upper Bracket matches at the MDL Paris Major.

Keep in mind however that Virtus.pro won’t play in their standard formation at Adrenaline Cyber League 2019. Their offlaner, 9pasha will be replaced by fn, another excellent player from the CIS region. But given the small size of the event and the fact that it’s practically insignificant for Virtus.pro, the team will absolutely not prepare or share anything about their playstyle with fn, and will treat the competition as just a series of pub games.

That being said, VP is still, in a lot of ways, one class above everyone else at Adrenaline Cyber League 2019. And that’s because their main four players are such a strong quad-core that nobody can realistically challenge them. In addition to this, they will let fn play the carry role while RAMZES666 will play the offlane position. All of this setup is designed to let fn farm and allow the main VP squad to carry the game at all times in terms of tactics and overall strategy.

Virtus.Pro Are The Favorites To Win Adrenaline Cyber League 2019

Going into Adrenaline Cyber League 2019, we expect Virtus.pro to win. Anything less than a victory would simply mean that they did not prepare at all for the event and just participated as a gesture to honor the sponsor and the development of esports in the CIS region. Given the skill difference between VP and everyone else, they would have to almost throw the games in order for their opponents to have any chance of winning.

Natus Vincere

If you’re only familiar with the old Na’Vi, keep in mind that this is a different roster. It still has some of the old Na’Vi players in it, but the style is new and some of the players are also new. From the old guard, we would like to mention SoNNeikO and Crystallize. The other three players have joined the team rather recently, in September 2018 and April 2019. They are MagicaL, Blizzy and Zayac. Unless you follow Dota 2 quite closely, you may have never even heard of them before.

In terms of their global ranking, Na’Vi is sitting at number 17 right now with 175 points. That’s not bad all things considered, and we can say that Na’Vi is a potential TI participant this year. They have a real chance of avoiding the disaster from the last two years and come back to the tournament that made them famous. It’s been quite a disgrace for such a legendary organization, one that won the very first TI and currently has one of the strongest CS:GO teams in the world, to miss The International in 2017 and 2018.

Na’Vi Fighting To Maintain Their Legacy

In the 2018 – 2019 season, Natus Vincere had the following noteworthy results: 3rd place at WePlay! Dota 2 Valentine Madness, 13th – 16th place at DreamLeague Season 11 (so practically, a participation at the 3rd Major of the season), and 3rd place at ESL One Mumbai 2019. Overall, it wasn’t an amazing year for Na’Vi but they still showed signs of improvement. And over the last few months, they proved that they may come back one of these days and start playing top-level Dota 2 again.

Going into Adrenaline Cyber League 2019, we expect Natus Vincere to play in the Grand Final. Based on what we’ve seen from them in their new formation, this team has a lot of potential and should be capable of getting good results in their region.

Old But Gold

Old But Gold is a team made up for former CIS superstars. These guys are all veterans and well-known players in the CIS region. Some of them are known worldwide, for their victories back when they were playing for bigger organizations. For instance, Illidan and G used to play for Virtus.pro, while VANSKOR is a former Gambit Esports and Team Empire player. So overall, Old But Gold does stand a decent chance at Adrenaline Cyber League 2019, even though they’re still one of the underdogs.

In 2019, Old But Gold had in a Dota 2 Pro Circuit Minor event, where they finished 3rd – 4th. Not a bad result for a team of outcasts. In April, the squad finished 2nd at GG.Bet Birmingham Invitational, where they lost against Alliance in the Grand Final and missed the chance of taking part in ESL One Birmingham. It’s important to note the fact that during that tournament, Old But Gold defeated three CIS teams: Natus Vincere, The Pango and Gambit Esports. And in doing so, they proved themselves capable of repeating that performance at Adrenaline Cyber League 2019.

Gambit Esports

This is one of the two teams that we expect may get an invitation at Adrenaline Cyber League 2019. Gambit Esports had the best start of the season that they had probably ever had, winning a number of smaller events and playing in two Grand Finals of Dota Pro Circuit Minors. But in recent months, the team’s performance has steadily declined, to the point where we no longer regard them as the fearsome competitor they were just a short while ago.

In the Dota Pro Circuti rankings, Gambit Esports is sitting at number 15 with 228 points. They are so close and yet so far away from that sweet top 12!

We expect Gambit Esports to be invited at Adrenaline Cyber League 2019, simply because they’re a CIS team that has had some impressive results in 2018-2019.

Team Empire

The second potential direct invite to Adrenaline Cyber League 2019 is Team Empire. They are currently taking part in the MDL Paris Major, a very important event to which they qualified in spite of all the odds. And because of this participation to a Major, we see them as the other big candidate for a direct invite to this event. If they do get invited, we don’t expect them to do anything important though.