The kick-off of the eSports Heaven Vienna, or Mad Catz Invitational, its around the corner so, it is time to a brief analisys of each one of the four groups. As it is known, a total of 16 teams will take part in the Austrian battle, including the champion of the last eSports Heaven stop Ninjas in Pyjamas and many other European top squadrons. But, we will also see the presence of other not so known teams that go to the battleground in the search to become the surprise of the tournament as the serbian representative, Team e Sports Serbia. With this being said, lets jump into the groups!

Group A: NiP, Imaginary, TCM, Nostalgia.

This is one of the groups in which we can guess who will come on top, but it is hard to pick which of the remaining three troops will take the second place. The current world champions will firstly face the Russian representative Nostalgia, match that promises to be an interesting one as the ninjas will attempt to continue their winning streak in LAN tournaments. The group also have French presence, with Imaginary Gaming, which come from various decent presentations in online tournaments as the first cup of the EMS One Season, where they reached the semifinals stage and if we talk about offline events, they ended second at Epsilan 10. And the fourth team is the brand new TCM-Gaming's squad which generated expectations after one of its members gave an interview where he expressed confident enough to end between the top 5 teams.


f0rest's squad will try to continue its winning path in Vienna.

Group B: VeryGames, Anexis, ALTERNATE, logiX.

If a follower of the scene would see a group like this one a few months ago, for sure would say that Team VERYGAMES would end leading it. The reality seems to be a little different today, as two of their rivals showed great performances in various tournaments and leagues, on the internet as well as in LAN. The danish side Anexis come from a streak of two titles in a row the past weekend, the Gaming.dk League Season 5 first, and the HKLAN later. In the other hand, Team ALTERNATE achieved two 5/8th places on the EMS One Cups, results that are not that good, but become valid as it seems that they have improved in a wide range of in-game aspects. Completing the group there is another german squad, logiX which is probably the weakest, but the surprise factor is valid for every participant.

Group C: ESC Gaming, Natus Vincere, TeamCRG, n!faculty.

The Group C, shapes to be one of the most interesting for numerous reasons; The Golden Five travel to Vienna with the hope to extend their victorious path in offline tournaments, after being crowned champions at the fifth Season of the EPS Poland.Another fact that will make us wait for this group anxiously, is that eSports Heaven Vienna will mean the LAN debut for the ucrainian giants of Natus Vincere , a few months after making the transition to CS:GO. Poles and ukrainians will share the group stage with n!faculty , who lately has been with ups and downs on online and LAN competitions, and travel to Vienna with the hope to give another hit as in the past week, when they defeated NiP. Last but not least, the british CRG joins the tourney focusing on improve their offline gameplay, after getting a third place on the Epic.TEN.


Natus Vincere debuts in a LAN tournament

Group D: Lemondogs, LDLC.com, 3DMAX, e-Sports.rs

The last group, is probably the one which will be more disputed, as we see a trio of 'second line' teams along with Lemondogs . The swedes have proved themselves at LAN on late 2012 reaching the semifinals stage on both Thor Open and Dreamhack Winter. The same situation applies for the slovak-czech troop of 3DMAX which finished as runner-up at the IEM Katowice, and the french squadron LDLC that managed to place third at the tenth edition of the Epsilan. This group also features the one which is probably the most unknown of the teams participating, but will surely put all they effort to raise the Serbian flag high; we are talking about e-Sports.rs.

Now, we only have to wait for the Mad Catz Invitational to start. Comment below and share your predictions! Also, make sure to follow the complete results and place your bets. To do so, you can click here.