IEM Katowice 2024 Play-in Preview - Part 1

With the first big event of the year edging closer I thought I’d start it all off with a small guide of the teams who’ll be competing for a spot in the prestigious IEM Katowice tournament and the mighty Spodek, divided into two parts. There will be a prediction at the end of the article so you can either read through it all or just scroll down to the bottom to take a look!

Cloud9:

Considering the players that this stacked team have signed, they have not had the best start to CS2. Yes, they demolished their opponents in the RMR - but considering the opposing sides that was kind of expected. The team had some disappointing results at the end of last year and have yet to reach the expectations that had been set on them. Coming 5-6th in BetBoom Dacha where they were heavy favorites and only winning against an ENCE team that was pretty much at their wits end at the BLAST Premier World Finals. All eyes were on the Russian team, who is playing without an AWPer, at BLAST Spring Groups but they went out in the consolidation final after a surprising loss to BIG. The pressure is on for this Cloud9 team and the seeding is in their favor heading into the play-in.

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Rebels:

The ESL Polish Autumn champions. This is the old Paloma roster with Szpero as coach and a new player in Mariusz 'casey' Jarząb. Not much is known about them, as they are a new team and the first team that Grzegorz 'SZPERO' Dziamałek coaches. I can’t really see them do much against a power house such as Cloud9. Being an unknown entity can definitely play in their favor in this matchup and of course there is the surprise element, especially in a BO1’s. The chance is slim for an upset even if it is always there. Hopefully they can play without pressure and show the entire tier 1 scene what they’ve got.

The chances of them making it past Cloud9 is slim, I’d say. Take a look at how the game is going and maybe throw in a small bet mid-game, if possible.

Eternal Fire:

The Turkish side has finally found stable footing after a time of roster changes left, right and centre. At the end of last year they placed second at the PARI Please tournament and ESL Challenger Jönköping. They started the year off strong in the closed qualifier by going 3-0 where they upset MOUZ in the final game to book a ticket to the RMR. The super star Ismailcan 'XANTARES' Dörtkardeş and youngster Ali 'Wicadia' Haydar Yalçın lead the way and top the team in terms of HLTV rating while Özgür 'woxic' Eker and Buğra 'Calyx' Arkın are lurking around the 1.02 mark. This Eternal Fire roster might be the one to take them to the next level, but it is still early days of CS2 so only time will tell how far they can really go.

BetBoom:

Expectations were high on this BetBoom roster and they are edging closer reaching those expectations event by event. They have had some ups and downs since they formed. With ex-C9 IGL Vladislav 'nafany' Gorshkov, ex-spirit rifler Pavel 's1ren' Ogloblin and ex-VP rifler Aleksandr 'KaiR0N-' Anashkin one would think that they should be able to be amongst one of the better teams out there to challenge the tier 1 teams. In the RMR the team faced off against their Russian friends in C9 but got run over by the superstar squad. They then faced off against an OG with a completely new roster and managed to make their way to the RMR. The sky's the limit for this young team and we’ll have to wait and see just how far they’ll be able to go.

Heroic:

The Danish team is back in Katowice and now with an all-new roster. Having brought in Kyxsan from Apeks, Nicoodoz from Fnatic, and superstar Nertz from ENCE this Heroic squad is a team to be reckoned with. At least on paper. After going through the grueling Open Qualifier and barely scraping through the Closed Qualifier the team managed to get to that elusive RMR. At BLAST Spring Groups they were not able to keep the momentum going as they lost to Cloud9 and BIG. The first matchup is a really tough one and probably the worst they could get in Astralis. The Danish team boasts 4 out of 5 players in the HLTV top 20 and is the arch-nemesis of the Heroic organization. A lot is at stake and not just in terms of the game.

Astralis:

As previously mentioned this Astralis team contains 4 of the 20 best players on the HLTV top 20 list. They had a convincing win against NIP at Copenhagen Games Week, but that is also a NIP with a completely new roster and without any obvious superstars at the moment - so should be taken with a grain of salt, especially since it was a showmatch event. Their first big event of the year came at BLAST Spring Groups where they had a great showing. With wins against Falcons, Vitality and BIG they managed to qualify for BLAST Spring Finals in London later this year. Nevertheless, the pressure is truly on for the Danish side and expectations are higher than they have been in quite a few years. The history of these organizations makes the matchup just a bit spicier and we’ll have to wait and see if this superstar Astralis team can live up to the expectations that have been set for them.

ENCE:

I guess that you could say that ENCE is back to being an underdog after being one of the favorites the past few months ever since the BLAST Major in Paris. They were not able to retain a majority of the old core and opted to go with the core of 9INE instead. The Polish team had a fairytale run at the BLAST RMR and were not able to retain their form at the Legends stage. And after that they had some disappointing results considering the amazing CS that we saw from them at the RMR. This will be the first event for Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander & co with this new lineup and it will be interesting to see what they will show up with.

BIG:

BIG came into the year strong with first place finishes at CCT 2023 Online Finals 5 and YaLLa Compass Fall 2023 but could not capitalize on the momentum after the player break. They stumbled in the RMR and after a narrow OT win over Permitta they lost 3 games in a row against BetBoom, fnatic and Nexus. A huge blow for the German organisation and players who failed to qualify for the BLAST Major last year as well. With that out of the way they have one less event to worry about - albeit being one of the biggest and most important events of the year. The team gave quite a good showing at BLAST Spring Groups where they took some upset wins against Heroic and Cloud9 and played a close game with Astralis before getting knocked down to BLAST Spring Showdown. The pressure is on for the German side and if there is a time for them to rise to the occasion and continue playing the way they did at BLAST then it’s now.

Prediction:

So what do I think of the matchups and the teams’ progress? I think Cloud9 and Astralis are heavy favorites to make it through. Cloud9’s path is definitely easier on paper than Astralis’. If they’d win against Rebels, which they should, then they’ll face off against either Eternal Fire or BetBoom. And despite them both being good teams, belonging in the upper echelon of tier 2, I just can’t see Cloud9 lose and miss out on qualifying for the main-stage of the event. When it comes to Astralis.. Heroic is not a bad team and may prove to be a hard matchup for the Danes, especially in a BO1 where anything can happen pretty much. If they do continue in the same fashion as they did in Copenhagen last week then it might be a blowout. But everything can happen in BO1's!