In June, it counts. We had to wait by far too long for the first big Dota 2 offline tournament with more than four teams in this year. Jönköping, the DreamHack city, will be the place to be next weekend with twelve Dota 2 teams already invited. It's the last test before The International 2.
The final rehearsal
With The International 2 knocking on the door, the DreamHack tournament can be seen as the final rehearsal for the European teams qualified for The International. syndereN will lead his new teammates to Jönköping, trying to hold the title he gained back in winter with the Wild Honey Badgers.
Na'Vi will be there, Darer has been invited, absoluteLegends even travels to Sweden from Australia. Team Evil Geniuses have already come to Europe bootcamping in Denmark. Counter Logic Gaming is the local hero in Jönköping, and mTw is last in the group of TI2 participants at the Dota 2 Vengeance Cup. Narrowly, mTw made it all through the lower bracket into the grand final of the West qualifier, beating NEXT.kz 3-1 in the end. This way the number of TI2 teams playing in Jönköping is six.
Speaking about TI2 participants, Moscow Five originally was invited to play at the Dota 2 Vengeance Cup as well. However, before the tournament even started, two replacements had to be made. This was necessary because Copenhagen Wolves disbanded and Moscow Five wasn't able to get the visa problems solved in time. Scandinavian teams fill the gap caused by Wolves and M5. Team Infused from Sweden and team The Tough Bananas, currently also participating in GosuLeague division 2, will play in the group phase of DreamHack Summer instead.
Furthermore, the participation of team Virtus.Pro is still unsure. The team's German player, KuroKy, has called a disband of the team 'quite possible' in a forum post after the disappointing early out in the TI2 West qualifier. Nevertheless, DreamHack has as of now not recieved any information from VP about the team not participating.
In total, twelve teams participating in the main round, the group phase, are already determined, be it due to a direct invite, or by an online qualification tournament. Four remaining teams will fill the 16-team group phase. Because the DreamHack allows teams to qualify locally through a BYOC tournament and three days set limits to the tight schedule, the groups A and B have been filled completely with teams already, while groups C and D for now only have two teams in it and will include the BYOC-teams.
| DHS 12 Teams | |
| Group A | Group B |
 mouz TTB Darer Keita | Infused Quantic Absolute Legends  Virtus Pro |
| Group C | Group D |
Na'Vi CLG BYOC Qualifier BYOC Qualifier | mTw EG BYOC Qualifier BYOC Qualifier |
This asymmetric design of the groups should give Na'Vi, CLG, mTw and EG slight advantages, because of the lack of strong teams in the BYOC-tournament for now. DreamHack seemingly prefered a schedule with groups being playing one after the other rather than a more balanced distribution of the BYOC-teams among the groups. Both options would have been possible.
Claiming to be the first
Overall, whether this tournament is a success for the teams or not, depends on the claim of each team. Na'Vi certainly wants to keep the impression of being invincible whenever it counts, at least in best-of-threes. The International participants want to show the world and themselves they are on the right path to getting ready for Seattle. BYOC-participants want to have a hell of a time and teams like EG and aL want to make sure the long distance travel was worth the effort.
In detail: Na'Vi has won The International and the ESWC tournament in 2011, only the Star Championship was lost in the final. In 2012, the only offline tournament so far, the StarSeries finals, have also been won by Na'Vi. Dendi's team is the favorite for winning the DreamHack and will certainly not give up the title lightly. Not with SEK400,000 in total to be distributed, not even thinking about the prestige surrounding the DreamHack winners.
absolute Legends, Quantic and Evil Geniuses have come all the way from Australia and the United States to Sweden. They are bootcamping, for sure, but they could basically bootcamp anywhere in the world. They come to Scandinavia because of the DreamHack. They want to take part in the final rehearsal. They want to compete with all the other top Dota 2 teams with absolute equal circumstances, just as The International will provide. These teams would certainly not be happy with a third or fourth place in the group phase, resulting in DreamHack being a 1-day-learning lesson for the team.
European top teams like mTw, CLG and mousesports would gain lots reputation and acknowledgments for a possible DreamHack win, as the half-yearly events in Jönköping are the biggest eSports events in Europe, only challenged by ESL's events at the exhibitions CeBIT, Hanover, and gamescom, Cologne.
For the smaller teams competing, they only have to look at 2011's events to gain motivation for giving their best: WHB was recruited by mTw after the DreamHack success. Monkeybusiness finished 4th in ESWC and became SK Gaming shortly after, fnatic hired ESWC's 3rd, GamersLeague. There is no better recommendation than winning a major LAN tournament, if you want to progress in eSports.
Going public
The Dota 2 Vengeance Cup is going to be much bigger than last year's. Not only is it double the amount of teams, and much more well-known teams this year. This time, DreamHack also provides a dedicated Dota 2 tournament stage. Only Starcraft 2 and League of Legends are granted this special area. The host of the Dota 2 show will be Tobi 'TobiWan' Dawson, who already casted at the DreamHack Winter 2011.
Hopefully, the teams won't be able to hear his commentaries this time. At the DHW 2011, TobiWan was forced to limit his casting to play-by-play commentary, in order to avoid spoiling important information. With a dedicated Dota 2 stage, including seats for the audience, the DreamHack planners might have solved this problem for the DHS tournament.
To even increase the amount of awareness raised by the Dota 2 tournament at the DreamHack, the grand final will relocate to the entertainment stage DreamArena Extreme on Monday evening. While the first match is played at the Dota 2 stage, the second and the possible third match of the grand final is played in front of a huge eSport-audience. The schedule places Dota 2 right before the Starcraft 2 final, giving all chances for a high amount of viewers on the official stream.
Mental high performance
Despite all the fan's expectations, one shouldn't underestimate the effort, the teams are investing. In total, the maximum number of games, a team could have to play at Dreamhack is 9 best-of-ones and 3 best-of-threes, all within three days. This would be going all the way through the 256 team BYOC-bracket to the top 4, then playing all three group matches, followed by the quarter final, the semi final and the final. This kind of starting from the BYOC tournament and winning the cup was exactly what Wild Honey Badgers did last Winter.
The amount of pauses the teams get is quite limited, because of the whole tournament lasting only three days. The official schedule allows the teams to take 90 minutes for each group phase game, or three hours for a playoff match in best-of-three format. All this happens in the somewhat noisy LAN-style atmosphere. The same hall C of DreamHack, where the Dota 2 teams play their matches, is home of the Starcraft 2, the League of Legends, the Heroes of Newerth, the Counter-Strike 1.6, the Quake Live and the Street Fighter tournament. Both the Dota 2 stage and the LoL stage are located in the "eSports" Hall C.
Schedule Dota 2 Vengeance Cup:
Saturday, 14 CET: BYOC tournament
Saturday, 14 CET: Group A
Saturday: 19 CET: Group B
Sunday, 12 CET: Group C
Sunday, 17 CET: Group D
Sunday, 22 CET: Quarter final 1 & 2
Monday, 09 CET: Quarter final 3 & 4
Monday, 12 CET: Semi final 1
Monday, 15 CET: Semi final 2
Monday, 19:30 CET: Final game 1
Monday, 21 CET: Final game 2 & 3 (DreamArena Extreme)
GosuGamers.net will be on-site at Jönköping, bringing you photos, video interviews, insight stories and much more.
