Nordavind and Japaleno are the first two teams to make it through the European Minor's Open Qualifier, with six more to join them from three more Open Qualifiers, and where they will meet eight invited teams for as many slots in the Minor.
Nordavind come from adding Morten "zEVES" Vollan Christensen to the roster right before starting the qualifying process to the Minor, and beat teams like Conquer—who eliminated Tempo Storm—and Imperial on their way to qualification, with Haakon "Radifaction" Tholo and Håkon "hallzerk" Fjærli putting in several good maps each to secure a spot in the closed qualifier.
Radifaction played great CS to help his team through
Their final match of the day against Imperial, saw the Norwegian side take Train (16-10) and Nuke (16-6) despite having lost the opening map, Dust2 (13.16), with Radifaction posting a 106.1 ADR average in the series.
Europe Minor Open Qualifier 1 - FACEIT Major 2018Best of 3 NordavindMatchpage 2 1 3rd June 2018 Imperial 13Dust2 16 16Train 10 16Nuke 6
Nordavind
K - D
+/-
ADR
Rating 2.0
Haakon 'Radifaction' TholoRadifaction
72 - 50
+22
106.1
1.50
Håkon 'hallzerk' Fjærlihallzerk
71 - 42
+29
83.6
1.38
Jon 'ztk' Erik Øygardenztk
48 - 44
+4
66.8
1.01
Henrik 'baby' Beckerbaby
53 - 55
-2
72.0
0.99
Morten 'zEVES' Vollan ChristensenzEVES
47 - 55
-8
71.6
0.99
Imperial
K - D
+/-
ADR
Rating 2.0
Žygimantas 'nukkye' Chmieliauskasnukkye
55 - 53
+2
81.4
1.10
Nemanja 'nexa' Isakovićnexa
57 - 60
-3
86.1
1.03
Kevin 'kRYSTAL' AmendkRYSTAL
51 - 55
-4
74.2
1.02
Jesper 'TENZKI' PlougmannTENZKI
41 - 60
-19
67.1
0.82
Rokas 'EspiranTo' MilasauskasEspiranTo
42 - 63
-21
57.5
0.70
On the other side of the bracket, it was Japaleno who made it all the way, as the former Red Reserve players who in May said they were motivated to continue together beat teams such as fnatic Academy and Singularity to assure their assistance in the closed qualifier.
Japaleno won the Swedish derby against Singularity
The match against Singularity, who are back to playing with Hugo "HugoXD" Hallgren after things didn't work out with Andreas "znajder" Lindberg, took three maps, of which Japaleno won Inferno (16-12), lost Nuke (12-16), and sealed the deal on Overpass (16-8) where the whole team stepped up.
Europe Minor Open Qualifier 1 - FACEIT Major 2018Best of 3 JapalenoMatchpage 2 1 3rd June 2018 Singularity 16Inferno 12 12Nuke 16 16Overpass 8