BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023 preview

BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023 is the start of the second half of the season, not just for BLAST but for everyone else in CS:GO. This tournament offers around $180.000 in prize money and features 12 teams.

The location is Copenhagen, which is the ideal place for a lot of viewers because it allows them to watch the matches at reasonable hours.

BLAST Premier: Fall Groups format

The competitive format of the tournament is the usual one: three groups of four teams followed by a play-in stage. The winners of the groups advance directly to the BLAST Premier: Fall Final.

The remaining teams advance to the play-in stage, where the 2^nd place competitor from each group waits in round 2 for the winner between the 3^rd and 4^th place teams from two other groups.

In total, six of the 12 teams will qualify for BLAST Premier: Fall Final.

Fall Groups talent reveal 3! 🙌

Clue 3: He has the same name as a human mage in Dragon Age: Origins… (Ok, this one is a little harder) pic.twitter.com/dEL2zGzFrx

— BLAST.tv (@BLASTtv) July 2, 2023

Participants

Here are the 12 teams that will take part in BLAST Premier: Fall Groups:

• Team Vitality
• Evil Geniuses
• Ninjas in Pyjamas
• Complexity
• Heroic
• BIG
• Natus Vincere
• Astralis
• FaZe Clan
• OG
• G2 Esports
• Team Liquid

This list is full of great names but many of these teams have gone through serious roster changes. These changes could potentially lead to their downfall. Or, why not, to the heights of esports glory.

In particular, Vitality, Liquid, and Na’Vi need to prove themselves and show their fans that the recent decisions they made were good. From the outside, some of them don’t look very good.

Despite winning the Paris Major, Vitality decided to bench Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen and replace him with Shahar “flameZ” Shushan. This is a very risky move given dupreeh’s formidable experience and flameZ’s lack of accomplishments.

In Liquid’s case, the changes have been even more radical. Both Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella and Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski are gone, and their replacements are little-known players from Russia (Robert “Patsi” Isyanov) and Bulgaria (Aleks “Rainwaker” Petrov).

The team moved to Europe, which was a rather strange decision after so many years spent in North America.

The third team that made massive roster changes in recent months is Na’Vi. Only Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and Valerij “b1t” Vakhovsjkyj were allowed to stay.

The favorites of this tournament seem to be Heroic, Natus Vincere, FaZe Clan, and G2 Esports. The only problem is that all four of them will play in just two of the three groups.

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