I wanted to jot down some ideas on how I envision the TI7 Qualifiers are gonna go. These are all just guesses, I have no inside info on this.

The Quasi-Locks

As it stands these are the teams who, in my eyes are most deserving of a direct invite to TI7 (in decreasing order of my perception of ‘deserving’).

OG (Kiev Major winners, Boston Major winners) EG (Top 4 at Kiev Major, winner of Manila Masters, runners-up at EPICENTER 2). Liquid (Top 8 at Kiev Major, winners of EPICENTER 2 and Starladder Invitational #2). IG (winners of DAC 2017, top 4 at Kiev Major). VP (runners-up at Kiev). ???

I think VP’s status is something people have questioned — not winning a significant international LAN since The Summit 7 (nearly 6 months ago). That said, Valve invited Ad Finem to The Kiev Major with a 2nd place finish at the Boston Major followed by one of the most poor inter-Major performances we’ve ever seen.

IG’s performance in 7.X hasn’t been all 100% smooth, but they did win DAC after defeating Newbee (twice), EG, and OG (4–2 on aggregate games, 1–1 in matches); and also placed top 4 at Kiev.

The Mystery Slot

No, the final spot is not (necessarily) a newly formed Xiao8 stack sneaking in at the last second. It’s the first one of the following teams that satisfy the attached conditions:

Newbee, if they win Galaxy Battles VGJ, if they win The Summit 7 Team NP, if they win The Summit 7 {Newbee, VGJ, Team NP (in this order)}, if they come 2nd at Galaxy Battles/Summit 7. Newbee (current ｆｉｌｌｅｒ ｐｉｃｋ).

Regional Qualification Spots

Even if China sneaks the Mystery Spot (the 2nd Chinese team to get a direct invite), they still have the most teams from a region in the top 20 (21 actually, since Wings has disbanded but haven’t decayed enough to leave the top 20) ratings as it stands with 6 teams (Invictus Gaming, Newbee, LGD, LGD.FY, Vici Gaming, VG.J) — one more than Europe and SEA’s 5 (NA has 3, CIS has 1). China having 4 spots here seems fair, their 5th team can try sneak in via the Wildcards.

China — 2 Europe — 1 CIS — 1 North America — 1 South America — 1 SEA — 2

Wildcard Spots

The wildcards are a complicated thing this year — determining the best 2 teams from 6 in a single day is not clean and easy; so my best guess is that CIS and Europe’s runners-up fight for a single Wildcard spot; and similarly with South and North America. This means that there’s still :

18 teams invited to Seattle

representation from every region

similar regional breakdown to previous years (we’ll dig into this next paragraph).

Here’s my Wildcard splits.

CIS + Europe — 1 China — 1 SEA — 1 South + North America — 1

Regional Overview

Although the EG/Secret switcheroo last year makes direct comparisons complicated; excluding wildcards, and assuming Newbee or VGJ are the 6th spot — lets’s look at the regional breakdown:

China — 4 (IG, Newbee/VG, 2 qualifier spots) [no change from last year] Europe — 3 (Liquid, OG, 1 qualifier spot)[-1 from last year] CIS — 2 (VP, 1 qualifier spot) [+1 from last year, counting NaVi] North America — 2 (EG, 1 qualifier spot) [no change from last year] SEA — 2 (2 qualifier spots) [-1 from last year] South America — 1 (1 qualifier spot) [+1 from last year]

Perhaps SEA would feel the most hard-done by with the regional shifts, since all 3 of their teams finished in the top 8 (4th, tied 5th, tied 7th) — but one has to remember the movement of players from SEA to other regions since then (Forev and Dubu to DC, Demon going to complexity, MP and MidOne to Secret). Europe also drops a spot, but I think will be the strongest contender to win a Wildcard slot (last year Escape became the first European team to make it through the Wildcards since 2012 when Mousesports won the Wildcard match against World Elite to replace MUFC).

Regional Qualifier Format

I’m happy with 10 team bo1 round robin into a 4-team Double Elimination (DE) bo3 tournament and a bo5 grand final. For SEA and China (the two regions with 2 spots each) I’d shortcut the best performing round-robin team directly to TI; the next four teams into the DE. In all regions, the top team out of the DE is invited directly, the runner-up filters into their Wildcard playoffs (if applicable), or to TI Wildcards.

Onwards

As I said in the opening paragraph — these are just my guesses. Valve could invite 4 teams, or do a completely different system. This is how I’d do it, with the current information available.