After a week of battling some of the top teams in the CIS, Team Empire has taken first place in CIS Carnage 2014, wresting the $2,500 grand prize from Relax in a 2:1 Grand Final. Relax walked away with second place and $1,000, and Power Ranges rounded out the podium with a third place prize of $500.
CIS Carnage 2014 was completely organized and sponsored by famed Russian caster Ivan "pingeee" Nikiforov. Eight of the best teams in the CIS faced off in 2 separate GSL format groups with the top two teams from each group moving on to face the top two teams from the other group for best-of-3, double elimination playoffs. In the group stages, Virtus Pro and Power Rangers were able to knock out RoX.KiS and The Retry in order to move on to the playoffs against Team Empire and Relax, who had, in turn, beaten Flip.Sid3.ru and NEXT.kz.
In the first round of the upper bracket, Relax and PowerRangers pulled the upsets, successfully beating Virtus.Pro and Empire. Interesting fact is that carry player of Na`Vi, Alexander 'XBOCT' Daskhevich played stand-in for both teams in those matches (the were played right after each other). Jokes were made in the community that the upper bracket final between the two teams would in fact come down to stand-in.XBOCT facing up versus himself. However, XBOCT did not play for any of the teams in that match and they had to resort to other stand-ins from that point, such as IllidanSTR and BzzIsPerfect. Worth noting is that both those players are part of other teams participating in the tournament.
Despite the early 2:0 defeat at the hands of Power Rangers, Team Empire managed to burn their way through the lower bracket, taking Virtus Pro 2:0 and redeeming themselves against Power Rangers in a close 2:1 victory to secure their spot in the Grand Finals versus Relax. This win comes out just a month after Empire went undefeated in Bigpoint Battle #11 and places the team in good spirits as they prepare to face Fnatic next week in the ESP Shock Therapy Cup.
CIS Carnage prize distribution
1st - Team Empire - $2,500
2nd - Relax - $1,000
3rd - PowerRangers - $500
Source: cis-carnage.com
