Opening bloodbath: Perfect World Shanghai Major Opening Stage preview
The second CS2 Major is close to kicking off and the Opening Stage looks set to be a bloodbath.
The Opening Stage for the Perfect World Shanghai Major is one of the hardest to call in recent memory, with all 16 of the teams having a solid chance of making it to the next stage.
With that said, let's look at the teams that will be competing and their opening matches.
The teams
Of the 16 teams taking part in the Opening Stage, only six of them are European.
Of those teams, the highest ranked is Virtus.pro, who looked confident as they advanced from their RMR with a 3-1 record. Joining them is BIG, who will be disappointed to miss out on the Elimination Stage after going 3-0 in RMR B.
There's also Passion UA, an unlikely candidate who progressed through the RMR after unlikely wins against VP and Spirit, as well as fnatic, Cloud9, and GamerLegion.
The Americas will be represented by three North American and four South American teams.
Photo: Michal KonkolFrom NA, usual suspects Liquid and Complexity will be in Shanghai, but the bigger story is the presence of Wildcard after they went 3-0 in the NA RMR with three strong victories over Liquid, paiN, and 9z.
From Brazil, FalleN's FURIA are the headline act, they will see strong competition in their opening game from GamerLegion.
Also present are MIBR, paiN, and Imperial. paiN and Imperial will be the ones to watch in the opening matches, they play eachother in the final game of round one.
Finally, we have the Asian teams. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, The MongolZ made it, they qualified from the Asian RMR with relative ease. They will be joined by FlyQuest and the only Chinese team in the competition, Rare Atom.
Photo: Stephanie LindgrenThe full team list:
- Virtus.pro
- BIG
- fnatic
- GamerLegion
- Passion UA
- Cloud9
- Wildcard
- Liquid
- Complexity
- MIBR
- FURIA
- Imperial
- paiN
- The MongolZ
- Rare Atom
- FlyQuest
Photo: Michal KonkolThe opening round
Look away now, Europeans, these games are not in sociable hours.
Kicking off at 04:00 CET, the final matches in the first round are set to start at 06:00 CET, although it is likely they will start later due to prior games running over.
The matches
- FURIA vs GamerLegion - 04:00 CET
- Virtus.pro vs MIVR - 04:00 CET
- Liquid vs Cloud9 - 05:00 CET
- Complexity vs FlyQuest - 05:00 CET
- BIG vs Passion UA - 06:00 CET
- fnatic vs Wildcard - 06:00 CET
- The MongolZ - 07:00 CET
- paiN vs Imerpial - 07:00 CET