Preview of WePlay! Clutch Island

General information

WePlay! Clutch Island will be happening from 16 till 26 June. The tournament is supposed to start today and take place online. An unusual number of teams is going to participate. While all the viewers are used to seeing 4, 8, 12, 16, participant, WePlay! break all the standards and invite 13 rosters.

Invites

The invitations were also distributed in an odd way. Eight teams got invited to the first stage. The owners of the invites are HellRaisers, Nemiga, ESPADA, and Moscow Five Academy that got to Group A as well as forZe, CR4ZY, Gambit Youngsters, and Syman Gaming representing Group B.

Five other invitations to the third stage were given to the players who got placed on the first positions in the regional rating: Hard Legion Esports, Team Spirit, Virtus.pro, Winstrike, and Natus Vincere.

Format

The group stage will define two best participants from each group entering the upper bracket of the second stage. The collectives taking the third places will get to the lower bracket and the team that will be placed on the fourth positions will finish their way in the championship. In the second stage, four contestants of the upper bracket will fight for two invitations to the third stage whereas two participants in the lower bracket will play for one invitation to the same third stage.

The third stage where five invited teams from the regional rating are playing will be happening in the same way as the first one. Two best teams from each quartette will make it to the playoff but this time the teams that take the third places will not enter the playoff but will fight for the fifth place.

What should we expect from the teams?

All the contestants could make up three categories: favorites, outsiders, and the teams that we do not know what to expect. The first category is represented by Natus Vincere as the team is in optimal gaming shape and is at the top of the world rating created by HLTV. The favorites are also Hard Legion Esports together with Team Spirit. Both teams have been showing good results recently and deserve the right to take the first and the second place correspondingly in the regional rating according to RMR Rankings.

Virtus.pro and Winstrike that also got invited to the third stage make up the category of the teams that are anything to expect from. Everybody remembers the time when Virtus.pro showed great results as AVANGAR but after their transfer to VP lost the gaming shape and cannot return to where they started. Their performance at ESL Road to Rio showed that they cannot be ignored but we also cannot be sure that the team is going to succeed.

Outsiders are represented by CR4ZY and Moscow Five Academy. The first players did not show any result even though they got assembled last year while the representatives of the second team have just started to play together recently. It will be interesting to watch the esportsmen from the legendary tag in the CIS area, Moscow Five, even if the roster is academic.

All the other participants are the ones that could be described as “Who knows what we should expect”. The CIS region is one of the most unpredictable ones in the shooter discipline, so the tournament is going to have numerous intrigues and the answers to the question that we have will appear pretty soon.