FnaticRaidCall Summary: August

The month kicked off with the FnaticTV publishing a handful of exciting videos featuring in-game footage of the FnaticRC Counter Strike team taking on various opponents. The beginning of the month also marked an end of an era as FnaticRC Captain Richard "xizt" Landström parted ways with the team in order to seek new pastures elsewhere.

Replacing xizt will be none other than the Swedish top player Emil "FYRR73" Karlsson, known for his time in teams such as H2k, Lions and more, who is now going to branch out for FnaticRC. With the signing of Emil, it was also revealed that the FnaticRC Counter Strike team was going to be globetrotting as they will fly out to Shanghai, then Iran and Portugal before arriving in Jonkoping, Sweden for Dreamhack Winter 2012 - the upcoming months sure do look interesting!

The month of August kicked off with the Summer Assembly 2012, a huge event with a ton of great competitors. FnaticRaidCall was able to send Moon, Naama, Harstem, and NightEnD to the tournament, and Moon finished with a fantastic 4th place in a field of top talent! There were certainly some amazing games out of all our players in that tournament.

Shortly after the Summer Assembly, we were happy to announce the Fnatic Breakdown series, where we take a high level game and analyze it moment-by-moment with a player. The very first one is a Summer Assembly game between FnaticRC.Naama and EG.HuK, and we were able to get comments from Naama himself on what he was thinking during certain moments in the game.

One late weekend in August was a particular treat for Starcraft 2 fans, with the Campus Party EU happening on one continent while MLG Summer Championships were occurring on another. NightEnD and Naama went to Berlin, while Fnatic players Oz, aLive, and Rain had all earned paid tickets to Raleigh for the Summer Championships based off their earlier Summer Arena performances. aLive finished an incredible 9th place at the MLG Summer Championships, and you can read the whole weekend's recap here.

While Oz and aLive will start GSL Season 4 in Code A, they will still have a chance to earn Code S berths with quality performances. NightEnD absolutely killed it during the ESWC Romania tournament, taking first and earning a paid trip to this years ESWC, alongside last year's winner Stephano and everyone who won their country's qualifier in 2012.

Between seasons, the North American Star League has been hosting King-of-the-Hill style events called The Gauntlet on every server, and Fnatic's Harstem (on EU) and aLive (on KR) won enough games in a row to qualify for fan voting into the finals. Be sure to vote on the NASL Facebook page to see our players in the finals!

Fnatic has also had several happy announcements that aren't directly related to competitions. Our Starcraft 2 manager Elroy 'Noname' Pinto joined us full-time at the London HQ, MLG Anaheim breakout star ByuL turned 20 years old, and we saw how incredibly popular our interview with Naama was so we went ahead and interviewed Academy player Harstem too!

This month was a big one for League of Legends. They had the most important tournament of their careers, Riot Season 2 EU Regionals. They needed to finish top 3 in order to advance to the Season 2 Finals and confirm a spot on the Season 3 Pro-League.

Their first opponent was Curse.eu, so either Fnatic or Curse was going out in the round-of-eight. It was Curse.eu who lost, Fnatic taking them out 2:0 to advance to the semi-finals versus Moscow Five. Arguably the strongest team in the world right now, Moscow Five stood in Fnatic's way. The boys were unable to beat them and finished with the score 2:1. However Fnatic became just the third team in the world to take a map off Moscow Five offline. The guys then had to face CLG.eu for the third and final spot, a team that Fnatic always struggles against. Once again, they struggled and unfortunately lost 2:0. This gave Fnatic the 4th place finish at Riot Season 2 EU Regionals, just out of the top 3.

Next up was Campus Party where Fnatic got some sweet, sweet revenge for their finish at GamesCom. The boys showed that they are still a top competitor and one of the best teams in the world by winning the entire tournament without dropping a single map. They defeated the likes of TT Dragons, Mousesports, SK Mix, Eclypsia and Meet Your Makers. In total the boys earned themselves $25,000 and will now focus on preparing for the Season 3 Qualifiers. You can read the GamesCom and Campus Party EU recap here.

This month marked the beginning of a whole new era for FnaticRC. For the very first time, we signed a North American player in the form of PowerNet. The American will be assembling a North American DotA2 team, which means that we will have two teams representing the Black and Orange.

Apart from that, our European DotA2 team enjoyed a month without any important tournaments taking place. However, they trained well and had a terrific time during our numerous RaidCall Fundays with their fans, where you had the chance to meet them on RaidCall and play some fun games. Be sure to join the DotA2 squad in future RaidCall Fundays for a chance to interact directly with your favorite players.

AUGUST ISSUE WRITTEN BY:

Corin Porter
Casper Ackermann
Harry Wiggett
Andreja Mahovic
Dominik Hünitzsch