15,000 people watching the best teams in the world go at it.

Starting on Tuesday, Cologne will host the fifth iteration of one of the most liked events the CS:GO event calendar has to offer right now. After the three more or less diluted events we had two weeks ago, ESL One Cologne will provide a stage for 12 of the current HLTV top 15 teams — the last event where that happened was DreamHack Masters Marseille.

In anticipation of the action finally kicking off in four days time, here are 6 things to keep an eye on during ESL One Cologne.

#1: MiBR’s return to the big stage

How will the roster perform in their first showing under the new banner?

Just a week ago, one of the worst kept secret in the history of Counter-Strike has officially been revealed to the public: the team around FalleN and coldzera has made the switch from SK Gaming to the MiBR franchise revived by Immortals CEO Noah Whinston who is now the CEO of his third esports franchise.

In 2012, the organisation formerly known as MiBR officially closed its doors, so the first match vs. Renegades will have a lot of emotions attached to it for the whole scene and especially their Brazilian fans.

Two years ago, the legendary LG/SK roster has won ESL One Cologne right after changing organisations; granted they have been in a much different situation back then, but maybe that’s a good sign nonetheless.

#2: ENCE’s return to the big stage

Can allu carry this all-Finnish lineup to glory?

Almost three months ago, another organisation from the past opened up for business once again. The Finnish guys from ENCE eSports are back with an all-Finnish lineup surrounding allu and talents like Aerial and 16-year-old sergej.

Since banding together, the guys have played many qualifiers in order to make it to a larger offline event and thanks to the GG.Bet Majestic, they have been able to make it to Cologne as one of the qualifiers.

As it will be the first real offline experience for four of these players, expectations obviously are pretty low, especially considering the starting field. Nevertheless, this will most certainly be a very good opportunity for these guys to get comfortable at such a big stage — everything else can only be seen as upside.

#3: FaZe’s quest to win the Intel Grand Slam

karrigan and co. are only one tournament win away from $1,000,000

Next up, we have one team that will be travelling to Germany with a lot of extra motivation. FaZe Clan currently is the only team with three out of the four necessary wins to claim the $1,000,000 bonus a team can earn by becoming the Intel Grand Slam winners.

Just like for the ECS Season 5 Finals as well as ESL One Belo Horizonte, they will play with cromen, their current stand-in of choice. In Brasil about two weeks ago, this worked very well, so it will be interesting to see if they will be able to make it two in a row.

#4: Astralis’ capabilities to play spoiler

Astralis, obviously, hasn’t given up on winning it themselves

The team to beat, however, is still the team that is sitting pretty at the HLTV #1 spot, Astralis. While almost every other contender has played at least one tournament between ECS Season 5 and ESL One Cologne, the Danish side has decided to take a break, as they often do.

Still, back in London at the beginning of the month, they proved their dominance over the CS:GO scene once more; nobody was able to touch them. It’s in the nature of things that they are the most likely candidates to spoil FaZe’s hopes of getting the Intel Grand Slam title.

In contrast, Astralis could even become the second team to have three out of the four necessary wins, only requiring them to win one of the following three ESL or DreamHack Masters events.

#5: The first performance of mouz | Snax

Can the change of scenery unleash the Polish “Ronaldinho of CS”?

People who listen to the Tuesday Morning Esports Talk know that I said mousesports would look at signing ScreaM almost by default in case they would want to add more fire power to their lineup because of the high buyouts in the scene right now — and, well, I turned out to be extremely wrong just about a day later.

Mousesports decided to pick up 24-year-old Snax from Virtus.Pro, who reportedly cost them about $300,000. That in itself is a huge gamble for an organisation like mouz, even moreso for the fact that we haven’t seen VP.Snax play well for some time now. Much of that can of course be attributed to the state VP finds itself in but nevertheless, it’s a lot of risk to take on.

On the other hand, considering Snax was known as one of if not the best player in the world for a period of time, sky’s the limit for him in a functional team where he is relieved of all of the baggage from his former team.

Obviously, not everything will be expected to click right away after a few days of practice, but it’ll be interesting to see how these five players will perform.

#6: The unfolding of the Swedish shuffle

draken will play his first tournament with fnatic

Talking about roster moves, in the last couple of weeks, fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas more or less performed a straight swap with Lekr0 moving to NiP and draken, in turn, moved to fnatic two weeks later. While we were able to witness NiP’s first performance with the new starting five in Shanghai about two weeks ago, it will be fnatic’s first showing with the new composition.

A lot of people have been talking about the implications of these moves, who got the upper hand out of all of this and how both teams will perform going forward. But as we all know, the truth can only be found on the playing field, so we’ll have to wait and see how both teams will be able to perform on the big stage Cologne will provide for the 16 teams competing.

Photos courtesy of ESL, twingalaxies.com, HLTV and CybBet