IEM Sydney has come to a conclusion, with FaZe hoisting the trophy plate in front of the Aussie crowd. The team triumphed against top team Astralis 3-0, in a clean sweep best of 5. While fans were ushered out for drinking alcohol out of a shoe, and barred from bringing bags, the teams fought hard in all stages of the competition. Upsets were aplenty, and viewers at home and in arena surely were not disappointed.

Winners

FaZe Clan

Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen had reason to be worried coming into this tournament. Being without the support player of Olof ‘olofmeister’ Kajbjer, FaZe were forced to play with a stand-in in Richard ‘Xizt’ Landström. While this lowered expectations for the team, they still wanted to win despite the handicap.

FaZe crushed ORDER in the first round but lost to their Australian stablemates Renegades, in a close best of 3. Going through the lower bracket, they dropped a map to Grayhound, a questionable win for FaZe. Yet, their series against Cloud9 was flawless. fnatic were somewhat complacent and didn’t pose a problem to FaZe. TyLoo challenged hard but only took a map as karrigan and his team began to find their stride, just in time for the grand finals.

Astralis met them in the Qudos Bank Arena for the final time, and Cache was hotly contested. FaZe took the win in overtime, and it was a similar story on Overpass with another overtime win. Train became the third battle ground, and Astralis were off to a hot start being nine rounds up. FaZe organized a titanic comeback to take Train in regulation 16-14, and the series 3-0.

Xizt’s lurking on Train proved to be the foundation of the comeback, and despite not having put up numbers in the event, his pivotal kills were too high-impact for Astralis to deal with. Ladislav ‘GuardiaN’ Kovács was crowned the MVP with a 1.22 impact rating and his consistent tournament performance.

With this, they take their first tournament title of 2018 and stake their claim as the top team once more. Even more importantly, the team now have 2 wins in the Intel Grand Slam equaling SK, with 4 more chances. If they win two more ESL or DreamHack qualifying events, they will claim the US$1 million prize. Their next chance is ESL Pro League S7 finals, where FaZe look to win another grand prize.

TyLoo

Despite having tempered expectations coming into Australia, the Indo-Chinese collective came out of IEM Sydney smelling like roses. The team made changes, putting Hansel ‘BnTeT’ Ferdinand back into the in-game leader role, moving Kevin ‘xccurate’ Susanto into positions where he can frag.

BnTeT stated to HLTV that “his AWP is really important for us“, but even though xccurate was the focus, BnTeT himself was the star of the team, ending the tournament with 1.28 impact rating in 8 maps. His rating was good enough for 2nd overall, just behind Emil ‘Magisk’ Reif of Astralis. TyLoo beat SK 19-16, then took down Cloud9 2-0. Their undefeated run continued against Renegades, and TyLoo qualified for the semi-finals.

FaZe ended the tournament for TyLoo, winning 2-1. Hui ‘DD’ Wu and Haowen ‘somebody’ Xu led the charge but the Euro-mix won out. This unexpected tournament placing came after their loss to GODSENT at the Qi Invitational, and a winless DreamHack Marseille. Sydney became TyLoo’s best 16 team tournament placing, beating their quarter-final achievement at DreamHack Masters Malmo 2016. BnTeT’s ability to help the team bounce back from poor form, is a sign that TyLoo are becoming true contenders on the world stage.

Australian CS

Five Oceanic teams competed at IEM Sydney. Chiefs failed to make an impact, while Legacy did their best after their last minute arrival for Natus Vincere, who suffered visa issues. ORDER triumphed over Legacy and managed to take it to three maps against the favourites Cloud9, who barely took overtime on Inferno. Jay ‘liazz’ Tregillgas’ rifling was crucial to ORDER’s form as he found the third highest rating (1.25) of the tournament, a surprising result for the 20-year-old Australian.

One of the Oceanic teams, Grayhound didn’t have high expectations playing in their first international tournament in 2018, albeit on home soil. Although they lost against Cloud9, AWPer Sean ‘Gratisfaction’ Kaiwai thrust the team into the spotlight after leading the team to a best of 3 victory over Brazilian legends, SK Gaming. Erdenetsogt ‘erkaSt’ Gantulga pulled the team to a first map victory over FaZe, before falling 10-16 on the next two maps. It was a great tournament for the team, and they will be heading to ESL Pro League S7 finals in Dallas with boosted confidence.

Renegades, the top Australian hope, defeated Legacy handily in their derby, and went on to upset FaZe 2-1. They were then upset themselves, as East Asian rival TyLoo took them down 0-2. ‘The Boys’ delivered a great series of CS against mousesports, including a memorable Inferno where IGL AWPer Noah ‘Nifty’ Francis found 51 frags in 48 rounds. The team staged a comeback to overtime, but lost their drive and place at the tournament. Nevertheless, it was a great result for the team and the Renegades will reunite with their Grayhound brethen in Dallas, USA for the ESL Pro League S7 finals.

Losers

SK Gaming

Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo has much on his plate nowadays, as another group stage exit beckoned in the Southern Hemisphere. The transition from Portuguese to English as the language has not worked, as Jake ‘Stewie2k’ Yip continues to settle into his role in SK. The team looked very uncoordinated on the T half of Mirage against TyLoo, leading to the eventual overtime loss. Home favourites Grayhound put SK out of their misery as FalleN and Marcelo ‘coldzera’ David lost form on the decider map, Overpass.

Coldzera looked off as Fernando ‘fer’ Alvarenga was the top SK player in Sydney. FalleN will no longer need to worry about his plate now, as the in-game leader reins have been handed to coldzera. Coldzera explained to HLTV that the decision was taken because “FalleN wants to focus more on his game and because he is feeling that everyone can read him“. But, the underlying issues still remain such as sub-par communication and late round calls, plus executes.

The poor performance comes amidst rumoured contract issues between the Brazilian core, SK Gaming, and Immortals. According to DBLTAP, Noah Whinston’s Immortals has signed the Não Tem Como team, which features benched SK player, Joao ‘felps’ Vasconcellos. Likewise, SK Gaming currently have Ricardo ‘boltz’ Prass on the active roster, who is still contracted under Immortals. ESL rules dictate that an organization must not field more than one team at an event. The Belo Horizonte event will take place in June, while FalleN’s team will be out of contract in July.

Assuming the report is factually correct, if NTC qualify, it would bar the team from competing. If that were the case, it would make more sense that the two organizations find a beneficial agreement quickly. Such an agreement to host their correct teams would need to be finalized in the next few weeks. Although it concerns the two organizations mostly, this is a still a headache for coldzera and his teammates, one they didn’t need.

MVP.PK

The Koreans surprised the community with a playoffs showing at WESG 2017 Finals, putting up their best fight against eventual winners, fnatic. However, it appears that was a one-off as the team struggled to make an impact. They lost against a struggling G2 badly, and looked incredibly shaky against Chiefs. The team tied 8-8 on the first map of Inferno before imploding on their CT side, and they never recovered from that loss of momentum as they lost Mirage 4-16.

MVP.PK bow out with only a win against one of the weaker teams in the tournament. Min-seok ‘zeff’ Park led the way with a 1.10 average impact rating overall, while Hyun-pyo ‘XigN’ Lee also had decent form. Keun-chul ‘solo’ Kang suffered an uncharacteristic loss of form, only achieving an 0.79 average impact rating, and 0.46 kills per round.

The team will play the ESL Pro League S7 finals as one of two Asian representatives, meeting an in-form Natus Vincere in the first round. With their current form, MVP look impossible to pull a win against the CIS giants, and must dig deep to find consistency, especially as the team appears to have stagnated. Riding off their WESG form, they are still in the HLTV top 30, but for how much longer?

fnatic

The most controversial inclusion on the list, given their playoffs status. Yet, the third best team at present have much to worry about. The team took an easy win against Chiefs, but G2 were a tougher opponent than they should’ve been. It went to the third map of Overpass, and Maikil ‘Golden’ Selim’s team barely scraped three rounds to close out the game 16-14.

The deficiencies of Golden’s T side calling showed up again in the series against Astralis, the team only finding five rounds overall on two maps, leading to a massively demoralizing loss. Although Astralis are the team to beat at the moment, the team failed to put up a fight and were sent to the quarter finals against a recharging FaZe. Fnatic looked flaccid on Cache and once again failed on the T side, finding only two rounds. FaZe found 15 rounds on Mirage, and let their guard down, bringing the scoreline to 14-15. Fnatic failed the defuse and their Sydney journey ended with a quarter-finals exit.

The team looked far better practising without Golden at Katowice, and KRIMZ and co. will surely be second-guessing their decision to keep him on the roster. However, it must be stated that if Jesper ‘JW’ Wecksell had performed on Mirage, the team would have likely overcome FaZe with their momentum. Fnatic failed to qualify for the ESL Pro League S7 finals and will therefore have plenty of time to think over their problems and resolve them. Whether they will or not, is an entirely different matter.