Flynnbombs IEM Katowice Fantasy Guide

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Blast Recap

With Blast Spring Groups concluded the season is gearing up and we have a lot of really good tournaments upon us. Before I dive in to the upcoming tournament in Katowice i want to post some interesting notes and stats from Blast Spring Groups. 

During the tournament I was taking notes and adding stats in to my own spreadsheet, in which i divided every player in to their roles and then I coded my spreadsheet to get an average score for each role. By doing this i thought that i could see if there would be any benefits to pick players from a specific role. And yes, there is a specific role to pick from.

Awp:ers. The boys wielding the big green, or whatever skin they use, all (with some exceptions, looking at you oSee and syrsoN) posted great stats and the average score for a awper in Blast Spring groups was 42,7 points for the whole tournament or 9,5 points per match played within the tournament. 

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After looking at these stats and comparing them to the IGL:s and the Riflers it’s pretty clear that Awp-players is vital when building a team. 

“Why so”, you might think? My feeling, something that gets backed up by stats, is that awpers often ends up on the best K/D in their team thanks to the cost of the Awp and the importance of saving it in saverounds. And as you all know a big source of points in E-GO comes from K/D bonuspoints, making Awpers often getting those extra bonuspoints. 

• Blast note 2

Another thing that stands out from the Blast tournaments is the G2-players. They all, except HooXi, posted great numbers and all scored big points compared to their cost. jks for example was one of the best scoring players in the tournament despite coming for the small cost of $185. From now on i think we can count on G2 and by doing so NiKo, m0NESY, jks and huNter- all are really good picks.

IEM KATOWICE GUIDE

Katowice Play In

With that said, lets look on what to come. Starting off with the Play-In:s 16 teams will battle it out for 8 spots in the main tournament.

With the format being so that for four teams it will be enough with one Bo1-win and one Bo3-win for me it’s obvious that picking players that A) plays a weak team in opening bo1 and B) has a high chance of winning the bo3, is the play here. For example sh1ro is a player i expect great things from, if you pick him and he score 16 points versus Permitta and 14 points versus BIG/Complexity he’ll give you an extra 15 points through padding - that’s something you dont wanna miss out on. Securing those high padded points will be crucial for a great rank in the Play In:s and that’s a play you really should go for. 

Looking at the bracket I think that these teams has the best chance to go 2:0 and securing one day of pointpadding: Furia, OG, Spirit and Cloud9 with NiP, BIG, fnatic and Ence as possible challengers for that 2:0 seed. 

Interesting players

In the Play-In:s I have found a lot of interesting players to pick and some players that are already 100 percent locked in for me. One of these players is, hold your horses now, sh1ro. 

Surprise? I guess not, and i do think he should be locked in every team. Even though he comes with that $225 prizetag he’s by far the best player in this stage. 

I also think that nafany ($178) is a good option and that he can offer a lot of bang for the buck. 

Outside of Cloud9, these players i all consider good options for your teams for a prize between $190 and $210:

yuurih ($209) - SunPayus ($207) - headtr1ck ($204) - flameZ ($198) and s1ren ($194). 

Looking at the budget options these are the standout players:

art ($185) - F1KU ($174) - nexa ($170) and k1to ($189). 

Sell strategy

With the change of the system of sell tokens there is a need of new strategies now compared to the E-GO hosted tournaments 2022. 

You now only have one sell token per stage, you are limited to a maximum of two players per team and if you dont use your token in one stage that token vanishes without being used. 

Therefore you’ll need to have a good strategy about this one and my advice here is to build your team with the goal to have five players all advancing on day one by going 2:0. After day one, if all your players advance, you should do your math to find out which player will give you the lowest amount of paddingpoints and sell that player for a player that you know will play on day two, and in best case scenario on day three too. By doing so you will have a player to use the Captain-bonus on which really could boost your ranking and put you ahead of the pack.