The Intel Extreme Masters World Championship in Katowice, Poland, is nearly upon us, and teams from the home continent of Europe are the clear favorites to hoist the silver chalice at the end of the week. It's the third-most important international tournament on the League of Legends calendar, behind Riot's Mid-Season Invitational and the World Championship. But this year's field, or lack thereof, is a mixture of top teams from major regions with notable absences from North America and China.
China's EDward Gaming was supposed to be in Poland, but last-minute visa issues stopped the ongoing LPL dynasty from competing. Taiwan and LMS' Hong Kong Esports was the emergency replacement to ensure an eight-team field. HKE will join fellow Taiwanese side Flash Wolves at the IEM World Championship. Flash Wolves currently sit without much opposition atop the LMS spring standings through the first half of the regular season.
For North America, every team declined, deciding to focus on the NA LCS split instead of traveling to Europe for a weeklong event before hurrying back for the second half of the season. Instead, G2 Esports, the leaders of the European LCS, took the North American spot at the table, making the competition nearly 50 percent EU LCS teams.
It has been five years since the legendary Russian club Moscow Five won the inaugural IEM World Championship, and Europe, the host country of the event, has failed to win the title since then. More than ever, with three of the EU LCS' strongest teams playing in Katowice, it's time for the European region to defend its homeland and bring back the IEM trophy.
If not, it'll go down as one of the worst defeats in Europe's long League of Legends tenure.
Europe's three protectors: G2 Esports, Unicorns of Love, H2k-Gaming
I need to reiterate how important it is that one of the three EU LCS clubs wins this tournament. Although you can argue that Flash Wolves are on a similar level to these three, it would be disastrous if three of the top four best teams in Europe (along with Misfits) failed to take the tournament while playing close to home on their continent against a weakened field of teams at a major international event.
No team will feel the pressure more than G2 Esports, the back-to-back European champions who have made a habit of crushing domestic play and showing up limp at international competitions. During their reign as Europe's kings, G2 came in last at the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational and finished in last place in their group at the following World Championship. A team chock-full of All-Stars, the IEM World Championships are the perfect place for the samurai of G2 to finally find a bit of success on the international stage. A finals appearance at the very least, if not winning the whole thing, would at least be a bit of momentum for a team that has come up short twice in a row when Europe has rallied behind them to succeed.
Coming into the event with a perfect 7-0 record and a recent sweep over a then also-perfect Unicorns of Love team, G2 Esports couldn't arrive in Katowice with a better mindset. G2 has beaten H2k, UoL and Misfits, and with the same five players returning from last year's summer split and Worlds, inexperience shouldn't be an excuse anymore. It's finals or bust for G2 in Poland.
When talking about Unicorns of Love, IEM has become synonymous with the team's legacy. The Unicorns first burst onto the scene three years ago, when they upset home-crowd favorite TSM at IEM in the Bay Area with imaginative play and unorthodox drafting. Although the team lost in the finals to Cloud9, the Unicorns left their mark on the international scene and have become a fixture in the EU LCS since then, even making a finals against Fnatic. Late last year, Unicorns again made their presence known at an IEM Bay Area event, once again upsetting TSM in the playoff stage and going on to win the tournament to book their ticket to Katowice. The event will be star rookie jungler Andrei "Xerxe" Dragomir's debut on the international stage, and the success of the Romanian teenager could be the difference between Unicorns' winning their first major title and falling in the group stages.
The final team, H2k-Gaming, unlike G2 and Unicorns, is still looking for its first trophy. A perennial favorite in the EU LCS, H2k still hasn't tasted EU LCS gold or a trophy at an international event. After making the semifinals of the Riot World Championships last year, the club is hungry to win the IEM equivalent with an almost entirely new roster from the one that lost to Samsung Galaxy in November at Worlds. The player to watch from H2k will be ace mid laner Fabian "Febiven" Diepstraten, the former Fnatic star breaking out as a player back in 2015 as a rookie when he shined at both the Mid-Season Invitational and at Worlds. He is no stranger to the limelight on the international stage, having made the Riot Worlds semifinals that year as a rookie, and this could be Febiven's time to take over another tournament.
The attackers: Flash Wolves, Hong Kong Esports, M19, Kongdoo Monster and ROX Tigers
Out of this group of teams, Flash Wolves are the ones that stand out as the best competitors to challenge the trio of EU LCS clubs for the championship. The Flash Wolves, though changing at the AD carry position, have kept the familiar core of Hung "Karsa" Hau-Hsuan, Huang "Maple" Yi-Tang and Hu "SwordArt" Shuo-Jie. These three have been through it all on Flash Wolves, and being at a major international tournament such as IEM Katowice is just another day in the park for them.
Along with HKE, however, Taiwan's strength is always in question. Some years, the region looks as strong or even stronger than some of the major regions such as Europe, NA, and China. In others, though, the region can be fool's gold, the top team or two beating up on the lower clubs, and the best team gets exposed on the world stage. At least for a majority of the time, Flash Wolves have been legitimate contenders to make it deep at foreign events, and this shouldn't be any different. Flash Wolves also want their first international gold after so many semifinal disappointments, and this would be the tournament to do it in.
M19, the former Albus Nox Luna, also known as the first wild-card club to make the Riot Worlds playoff stage, come into the tournament looking like cannon fodder. The team is 4-4 and not even in the top three in their league, lagging behind Virtus.Pro and Vega Squadron. Again, this is the team that came into Worlds last year talking about how they rarely practiced and played World of Warcraft to warm up for teams such as the ROX Tigers, and we all saw how that turned out, so I wouldn't count them out fully just yet.
Finally, for the strongest region in the world, South Korea, IEM Katowice will be an interesting experiment of how truly strong the region is. Kongdoo Monster and ROX Tigers, the two teams representing South Korea, are a combined 3-13 coming into the tournament and are fighting to avoid relegation more than thinking about qualifying for MSI or the World Championships.
ROX or Kongdoo should not win this tournament. The EU LCS trio or Flash Wolves should not let these two teams win this tournament. If somehow, someway ROX or Kongdoo win the IEM World Championship, it would be an embarrassment for the EU LCS as a whole and the LMS. South Korea doesn't even bring a midrange team such as Afreeca and still wins a major international event with one of its worst teams? That isn't to say ROX or Kongdoo wouldn't be a contender if they landed in NA or EU LCS, but at least when South Korean teams dominate at international events, it's SKT T1, the undisputed best team in the world.
A scene of a Tiger or Monster playing holding up the IEM World Championship would be a dark day for the EU LCS.
G2 Esports, Unicorns of Love and H2k-Gaming, the protectors of Europe, will attempt to make sure that scene doesn't become a reality.