The 4th team in each group qualifies through the play in phase
Play-in:
the 3rd seed from China, NA, EU and LMS play the top teams from each wildcard region for the 4 last spots. Since Gigabyte Marines made it into MSI GPL got a pool 2 seed in the main event and a spot in play-in for their 2nd best team.
Group A
Team WE - China
Gambit - CIS
Lyon Gaming - LAN
Group B
C9 - NA
Team One - Brazil
Dire Wolves - Oceania
Group C
Fnatic - Europe
Young Generation - 2nd seed GPL
Kaos Latin Gamers - South America
Group D
Hong Kong Attitude - LMS
1907 Fenebache - Turkey
Rampage - Japan
Each team plays 2 bo1's vs the 2 teams in their group, then the group winners plays a random 2nd place teams in a bo5 for a spot in the main event.
gonna watch the Gambit games they got Diamondprox and Edward from the old Gambit lineup + Kira and PVPStejos(roleswaped from jungle to top) from Abus Nox Luna
Fenebache has Move who played for Gravity/UoL and Frozen from Longzhu
gotta watch C9 and Fnatic to see if the manage to mess this up.
Not a big fan of the play-in format, I think two 6-team groups would be a lot better and only take one more day to complete. We don't need to see Team oNe play anyone twice. With this format it's unlikely we see any games between Team WE, Fnatic, or Cloud9 at this tournament.
One of Team oNe eSports and 1907 Fenerbahçe will make it to groups which is great for TSM as now they'll only have a 50% chance of Team WE being in their group.
A group of TSM, Flash Wolves, Misfits, and 1907 Fenerbahçe would be the best chance NA has had at semifinals since 2013 when C9 got slotted into quarters.
Group C
G2
Samsung
Royal Never Give Up
1907 Fenerbahçe
Group D
Flash Wolves
Misfits
TSM
Team WE
Not to be lost in this is with Cloud9's defeat of Lyon Gaming, NA has won their first Bo5 running their record to 1-3. (3 previous defeats to Korea's Samsung.)
Looking for all 3 LCK Teams to stomp, as well as RNG.
FNC/GAM and EDG/AHQ could be somewhat interesting.
I think G2 vs SSG and SKT vs C9 both have interesting storylines with enough chance of upsets to be interesting. LMS has traditionally been rolled over by China and FNC/GAM are just two of the worst teams in the tournament, they're both fighting to get out of the group 2nd and lose in the quarterfinals.