The Good: NIP

Back to Legends, baby. The illustrious Swedish organization was the second to last team to earn a legends slot at the Katowice Major. Even though they were not one of the first teams to qualify, they have the potential to be as strong as any team in the playoffs. They opened the stage by winning a 30 round thriller on Nuke against NRG, largely thanks to 30+ kill performances by Fredrik ‘REZ’ Sterner and Patrik ‘f0rest’ Lindberg. To close out round one, NIP were edged by Liquid on Overpass 16–13. After running over HellRaisers in the 1–1 match, they lost a qualification best of three against MIBR in round four. To close out the final day, NIP garnered the seventh legends spot by defeating Vitality in three maps.

Over the previous two weeks of the Major, NIP had been working hard to build a case for their map pool. They have been making Mirage, Train and Overpass focal points of their game plan and are capable of competing on Inferno. Not only is their map pool refined, each player on the roster has shown their capabilities of top-level play in Poland. Every single member on the NIP roster finished a game with a rating of 1.50+ and an ADR nearing or above 100 at the New Legends Stage.

The playoffs drought is finally over and this NIP lineup looks ready to make some noise in the Major playoffs on Friday. They face Astralis in the quarter-finals and appear to be the best fit for upsetting them in the first round of the playoffs. Taking an early lead on Astralis by winning Mirage is their best bet in the best of three. Cache and Dust should be the first maps banned, and Nuke should be picked by Astralis. Getting Train or Overpass as the final map would be a godsend for NIP. The safe bet is that Astralis will opt for Inferno to close the best of three. Combine f0rest, REZ and Jonas ‘Lekr0’ Olofsson playing good CS with a refined map pool and some confidence, and we could have ourselves a historic Major upset.