IHC and BIG Academy qualify for IESF World Championship main event

Major attendees IHC, academy squad BIG Academy, and finally IESF have made it through the Play-In to complete the team list for IESF World Championship 2022 LAN, which kicks off December 6.

Eight teams will battle through a double elimination best-of-three bracket in Bali for a spot in the best-of-five grand final, where the team coming from the upper bracket will be granted a 1-0 map advantage. $50,000 will go to the eventual winner.

By far the highest-ranked team in attendance at the IESF World Championship will be Mongolian representatives IHC, who sit at No. 35 in the world and just recently competed at the IEM Rio Major. There they crashed out of the Challengers Stage in 12-14th with a single series win over 00NATION to their name.

IHC‘s path to qualification was largely straightforward, beginning with a quick 2-0 over Belgium. The Mongolians dropped a map in their quarter-final against Serbia, three of the Serbian team coming from the current iNation lineup, before sweeping the Romanians of OneTap to secure a spot in the main event.

Germany will be represented by BIG Academy who arrived in Bali with Elias “⁠s1n⁠” Stein and Karim “⁠Krimbo⁠” Moussa in the roster in place of Tizian “⁠tiziaN⁠” Feldbusch and Nico “⁠Aqua⁠” Kembitzky, the latter having played for the squad during the most recent WePlay Academy League season.

After besting Spain, BIG Academy faced a stiff test in the quarter-finals of their qualification run, coming up against a Bulgaria side that featured four of the Fiend roster that peaked as high as No. 17 in the world in 2021. The Bulgarians showed their pedigree by spanking their German opposition 16-2 in the first map of the series, Dust2, but BIG Academy recovered to grind out the remaining maps.

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IESF World Championship set to start

Another close battle ensued for the Germans as they faced IESF, but they ultimately overcame the Russian squad 2-0 to secure qualification.

As for the final qualified team IESF, they breezed through their first two matches of the Play-In 2-0 over Austria and then Norway, before falling to BIG Academy in two close maps. They had one last chance to qualify however, and they took it with both hands by besting OneTap in a routine 2-0 victory. IESF are the Russian team in attendance, largely consisting of the core of QUAZAR.

The three qualified squads join Indonesia in the main event, who made it directly there by virtue of being the host nation. Also waiting are BLUEJAYS, who won the European Championship 2022 to earn their spot, Vietnam and Algeria who won the Asia and Africa qualifiers respectively, and IESF Panam Open 2022 winners Argentina.

The opening matches for the IESF World Championship 2022 are as follows. The bracket order matches the schedule order: