The KODE5 USA Finals are to take place this weekend in Dallas, Texas. The eight teams participating, are of America’s top Counter-Strike talent. They will be battling it out to represent the USA in an all out war against the rest of the world at the Global Finals in Russia. We will be bringing you up to the minute coverage with scores, along with other content throughout the whole event. Lets get started with a little preview to this weekend’s event.
The event is formatted to be a double elimination, single map tournament. Below are the seeds and the first round match-ups.
1. EG.usa
2. x3o
3. Gravitas Gaming
4. compLexity
5. Frag Dominant
6. Texas All Stars
7. Pandemic
8. eMazing Gaming
EG.usa vs eMazing Gaming
Frag Dominant vs compLexity
Gravitas Gaming vs Texas All Stars
Pandemic vs x3o
On the next page of the preview, you can find reviews of the teams as they go into the event.
This is a team that is still trying to get back on their feet since switching back to 1.6 from source. The all famous ex-coL players teamed up with n0thing, as they entered the 1.6 world again. Lately their online play has been showing great improvement and they are really starting to get back on track. On LAN at the recent ESL Extreme Masters event, EG had a less than stellar showing and was knocked out in the group stage only winning one match. They will surely be out for redemption this weekend.
x3o for some time now has been seen as America’s top Counter-Strike team since the elite left for the CGS. During this season of CEVO and ESEA x3o has been stellar and really on their game only dropping a few matches. They were a bit disappointing on LAN at the ESL Extreme Masters like EG was, but they will surely be a top contender to represent the USA.
Gravitas has been up there along with x3o as a top contender for the USA scene. Lately they have experienced some inconsistencies with their online play after starting out the season strong. I have to say that Gravitas looked the best out of the American teams at the Extreme Masters. Earlier they added hostile to their roster and have made small changes here and there. They will be a big threat to the rest of the competition as they bring it to LAN.
compLexity’s new roster has been having mixed results all over online with hard luck in ESEA-I, and dropping some unexpected matches in CEVO-M. This will be their return to LAN and many people feel that this will be the first major test for the young squad. The team is another one of those squads formed from former CGS players returning back to the favored CS 1.6. It will be interesting to see how they do against the rest of America in their first LAN appearance.
After being released from EG once the organization decided to go a different directly, the players (minus n0thing) joined up with Frag Dominant. Ever since week 2 of CEVO they have traded matches in a win, loss, win, loss fashion. After spitting in the face of their old organization during a match against EG.usa, the team continued the trend up until the final week. Recently they have made additions to their roster before the event when they added aZn and evolution.
This team went to the KODE5 USA qualifier as a pug that coL.zid played with. After an impressive showing making it to the finals, they were beat by EG.usa. The team is set to be playing Gravitas in the first round of the USA finals so they have their work cut out for them. zid obviously won’t be playing with the team as he will be playing for compLexity in the event so they had to find a replacement for him. They will surely have their work cut out for them.
Recently Pandemic acquired MoB Gaming’s CS team. The former Pandemic boys have now been reunited with their old organization and have been experiencing the same trend coL and EG have since their return to 1.6. They have broke even in this season of CEVO so far when you look at their record. This will be their first LAN as Pandemic, so we shall see if they can hold their own.
Formerly Team 34, these guys have been viewed as the big underdogs as they have pulled out some big surprises online so far. After putting x3o into overtime during week 1, and beating EG.usa 16-8 during week 2, they saw little success losing all their matches from week 3 up until week 6 where they broke the trend. I have high hopes for these guys as they take their game to LAN and we should expect to see some surprises from them.
Stay tuned to compLexityGaming.com this weekend as we bring you more content and keep you updated on the event!