With a new Dota 2 competitive season comes a slew of qualifier tournaments, and PGL Wallachia Season 6 is of course no exception.
The regional qualifiers all concluded today, October 5th, which means we now know all 16 squads that will play in Bucharest, Romania later this November.
China — Roar Gaming
Considering that there’s no Xtreme Gaming in the mix as far as the directly invited teams are concerned, it’s real nice to see a set of not-so-familiar faces come in through the China regional qualifiers. Roar Gaming are composed entirely of Chinese players that have stuck around the country’s tier 2 scene for years, so it’s great knowing that they’re going to get some time in the tier 1 limelight when they go to Romania in November.
Now, to be fair, the China qualifiers weren’t exactly the most competitive out there, with only four teams playing in it over the last three days. In fact, all four participating teams came in from the two open qualifier splits, which just goes to show how absolutely devoid of talent the region is these days outside of the big three (XG, Team Tidebound, and Yakult Brothers). Hopefully Roar Gaming do better than expected at PGL Wallachia Season 6, so that Chinese organizations see a reason to get back into Dota again.
Southeast Asia — Team Aureus
Qualifier tournaments involving Southeast Asia always end up being absolute bloodbaths, and this one follows that tradition to a tee. Team Aureus, composed of familiar names like Timothy “TIMS” Randrup and Erin Jasper “Yopaj” Ferrer, had to fight tooth and nail versus Execration in the grand finals of the Southeast Asia qualifiers, with the series going the full five games by the end of it all.
They accomplished this even with Team Nemesis and BOOM Esports also in the field, so you know their reward here was well-earned. All-Filipino stacks are always the pride of the Philippines as the entire Dota community knows by now, but it remains to be seen whether or not they can actually make a splash in Bucharest.
Eastern Europe — Natus Vincere
Little surprise here. Na’Vi have always been consistent when it comes to qualifying coming out of Eastern Europe, although it did take them all five games to do so against 1w Team in the grand finals.
Either way, I fully expected them to win the qualifiers, and so here they are. If nothing else, it’s more development time for young gun Artem “Niku” Bachkur, one of the more exciting new mid laners from the previous season. I’m hoping he really gets it all together this year like Alan “Satanic” Gallyamov did last year.
Western Europe — MOUZ
Finally, we’re going to see MOUZ play at a tier 1 LAN. MOUZ first came back to the Dota scene in April this year, forming a roster around Melchior “Seleri” Hillenkamp that didn’t quite amount to much in the few months that they were together. Since then, they’ve retooled the lineup, still around Seleri, and it’s already paid dividends with this qualification.
Now, whether or not they’ll actually perform at PGL Wallachia Season 6 is anyone’s guess, but at least things are already going much better than they were just a few months ago.
Americas — Peru Rejects
Don’t let the name of this team fool you — Peru Rejects’ roster is filled with mainstays of the South American scene. They beat TaiLung Mafia in four games to qualify out of the Americas region, which wasn’t any kind of surprise whatsoever given the names playing for this team.
The last time David “Parker” Nicho Flores played at PGL Wallachia, he won the whole damn thing. Could he put the magic on once again and shock the world like he did last year?
