The ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, also known as ELEAGUE Major 2018 or Boston 2018, was the twelfth Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship and the second organized by ELEAGUE. The group stage was held in Atlanta, Georgia, United States from January 12 to January 22, 2018, and the playoff stage took place at the Agganis Arena in Boston, Massachusetts, United States from January 26 to January 28, 2018. It featured 24 professional teams from around the world, as ELEAGUE and Valve agreed to expand the Major from the usual 16. All 16 teams from the previous major, PGL Major: Kraków 2017, directly qualified for the Major, while another eight teams qualified through their respective regional qualifiers. Boston 2018 was the fifth consecutive Major with a prize pool of $1,000,000. This was also the first CS:GO Major to take place in two cities.
SK Gaming and Fnatic were the only entering Legends to advance to the playoff stage and retain their Legend status: the fewest in Major history. The two teams continued their respective streaks of making the playoffs at all Majors attended, with Fnatic's run starting at Dreamhack Winter 2013 and SK Gaming's run starting at ESL One Katowice 2015 as Keyd Stars. The new Legends at Boston 2018 were FaZe Clan, G2 Esports, Natus Vincere, Quantum Bellator Fire, Cloud9, and mousesports. Defending champions Gambit Esports, along with 100 Thieves (formerly Immortals), Astralis, BIG, North, and Virtus.pro, lost their Legend status. This marked the first time in Major history that Astralis's core – Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz, Peter "dupreeh" Rothmann, and Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth – did not make the playoffs. This left Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer of FaZe Clan and Freddy "KRIMZ" Johansson of Fnatic the two remaining players to have been Legends at all twelve majors.
The grand finals featured FaZe Clan, the favorite to win the tournament, and Cloud9, the second North American team to reach a Major final. FaZe defeated mousesports and Natus Vincere to reach the finals, while Cloud9 pulled off two upsets with wins against G2 Esports and SK Gaming. Cloud9 etched out the win over FaZe Clan to become the first North American team to win a Major. It would also mark just the fourth time in CS:GO history in which a North American team won a premier international event, after iBUYPOWER winning the ESEA Global Finals Season 15, Cloud9 winning ESL Pro League Season 4, and OpTic Gaming winning ELEAGUE Season 2.
Background Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. In professional CS:GO, the Valve-sponsored Majors are the most prestigious tournaments.
The defending champion was Gambit Esports, which became the first Asian team, and just the second non-European team, to win a Major with their win at Kraków 2017. The Swedish team Fnatic attended as the most decorated CS:GO team in Major history, with three wins.
Format On December 13, 2017, ELEAGUE announced a revamp of the Major format, designed by Valve and ELEAGUE. The offline qualifier preceding the Major would be rebranded as part of the main Major and be called the "New Challengers stage." The teams in this qualifier would be given in-game stickers and receive the associated revenue. Four regional Minors – Americas, Asia, CIS, and Europe – sent two teams each to the New Challengers stage, competing against the bottom eight teams from the previous Major, Kraków 2017. The New Challengers stage was a Swiss-system tournament that took place in Atlanta from January 19, 2018, to January 22, 2018.
The top eight teams moved on to the "New Legends stage", which replaced the group stages of previous Majors. This stage also included the eight Legends from the previous Major, creating a 16-team group stage similar to previous Majors. Like the Challengers stage, the Legends stage used a Swiss-system format, and the top eight teams from this stage moved on to the playoff round. The playoffs, now known as the "Champions stage", remained a single elimination, best-of-three bracket.
Map pool The map pool remained the same as at the previous major, even though Valve released the new version of Dust II in October 2017.
Maps
Cache Cobblestone Inferno Mirage Nuke Overpass Train
Regional qualifiers Each regional qualifier, called "Minors", featured eight teams, whether through direct invitation or through qualifiers. Each minor featured two groups of four teams; these groups were in GSL double elimination formats, which was the format used at every major until the ELEAGUE Major, with the initial matches and winners match being best of ones and the losers and decider series being best of three. Two teams of each group qualify for the bracket phase, which is a four team, double elimination, best of three bracket. Two teams qualify for the major qualifier from each minor.
Each minor also had a 50,000 prize pool with first place receiving 30,000, second place taking in 15,000, and third place raking in the last 5,000.
Asia Minor The Asia Minor took place shortly after the major announcement. Eight teams were invited to the qualifier in Seoul, South Korea and no online, open, or closed qualifier took place. This caused some controversy as minors were intended for all teams to be able to qualify and had no chance to prove themselves; top Asian teams such as Recca eSports, Grayhound Gaming, and Risky Gaming had more success than the likes of The MongolZ and other teams in the minor but were not invited. The Asia Minor took place on October 26, 2017, to October 29, 2017.
Teams
Flash Gaming Kings Gaming Club MVP PK Renegades Tainted Minds The MongolZ TyLoo
CIS Minor The Commonwealth of Independent States Minor took place on the same dates as the Asia Minor in Bucharest, Romania and used the same format as the Asia Minor.
Teams
Team Spirit (Invited) Tengri (Invited) AVANGAR (Open 1st–4th) NOTBAD (Open 1st–4th) pro100 (Open 1st–4th) Quantum Bellator Fire (Open 1st–4th) Nemiga Gaming (Open 7th–8th) forZe (Last Chance)
Europe Minor The Europe Minor took place on November 2, 2017, and ended on November 5, 2017. No team was invited to the minor, but eight teams – GODSENT, HellRaisers, Heroic, Ninjas in Pyjamas, OpTic Gaming, Space Soldiers, Team EnVyUs, and Team LDLC.com – were invited to the closed qualifier. Another eight teams qualified through an open qualifier, which was a 512 team bracket. There, the sixteen teams played in a Swiss group stage, with all matches played online. The final eight teams went on to go to Bucharest to determine which two teams would move on to the New Challenger stage.
The open qualifiers were played on the platform CEVO, as opposed to the more popular ESEA, which is run by ESL, and FACEIT as both had been used for the qualifiers in the past. However, ELEAGUE's decision to use CEVO spurred controversy in the community as CEVO's anti-cheat system was not as well developed as ESL or FACEIT, leading to many players, particularly in the Europe open qualifier, to play with cheats on. Many of these cheaters were banned mid-match, causing many forced forfeits in the 512 team bracket. Teams
OpTic Gaming (Closed #1–2) Space Soldiers (Closed #1–2) AGO Gaming (Closed #3–5) Windigo Gaming (Closed #3–5) Team EnVyUs (Closed #3–5) (Closed #6–8) GODSENT (Closed #6–8) Pride Gaming (Closed #6–8)
Americas Minor The Americas Minor took place on the same dates as the Europe Minor in Toronto, Canada. Two teams were automatically invited to the minor: Team Liquid and Counter Logic Gaming. One team from the South American open also qualified for the tournament. The remaining five spots went to the top five teams in the North American open qualifier. There, eight teams were invited – , Ghost Gaming, Immortals, Luminosity Gaming, Misfits, NRG Esports, Rogue, and Splyce – and another eight teams qualified through an open qualifier.
Teams
Counter Logic Gaming (Invited) Team Liquid (Invited) compLexity Gaming (North America #1–2) NRG Esports (North America #1–2) Luminosity Gaming (North America #3–5) Rise Nation (North America #3–5) Team One (South America Open) Misfits (North America Last Chance)
Broadcast talent The broadcast talent of the Boston major was announced on the same day as the preliminary group stage.
Desk host Richard Lewis Stage host Sue "Smix" Lee Master of Ceremonies Alex "Goldenboy" Mendez Commentators
Anders Blume James Bardolph Daniel "ddk" Kapadia Henry "HenryG" Greer Jason "moses" O'Toole Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett
Analysts
Sean "seang@res" Gares Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert Janko "YNk" Paunović
The casters also served as analysts when not casting Observers
Heather "sapphiRe" Garozzo DJ "Prius" Kuntz
Broadcasts The major was streamed in various languages across Twitch. ELEAGUE also streamed the major on its website and YouTube.
ELEAGUE TV 1PV 99Damage Brekan Gamers Club GamerHUTV GamerTV Hitpoint Huomao Moreira Pitu Herranz Starladder wiizz
Teams competing Legends
Gambit Esports
Astralis Virtus.pro BIG Fnatic North SK Gaming Kraków 2017 Bottom 8
Cloud9 FlipSid3 Tactics G2 Esports mousesports Natus Vincere Sprout Esports FaZe Clan Vega Squadron Regional Qualifiers
Renegades (Asia Minor #1) Flash Gaming (Asia Minor #3) AVANGAR (CIS Minor #1) Quantum Bellator Fire (CIS Minor #2) Space Soldiers (Europe Minor #1) Team EnVyUs (Europe Minor #2) Team Liquid (Americas Minor #1) Misfits Gaming (Americas Minor #2)
Controversy Several problems arose from the Major. The most common complaint was that the announcement of the Major was announced so late that several players were not able to obtain visas to their Minors or the Major itself. In addition, Valve did not allow coaches Luis "peacemaker" Tadeu of TyLoo and Wilton "" Prado of Team Liquid to have their own stickers despite peacemaker standing in for Hansel "BnTeT" Ferdinand, who had visa issues, and standing in for Lucas "steel" Lopes, who had to sit out due to rules regarding roster locks. peacemaker said on Twitter that he was unhappy with the way ELEAGUE and Valve were handling player roster locks and the sticker situation – as player situations, handled by ELEAGUE, amounted to teams having to play with their original rosters and fifty percent of sticker sales went directly to the players and organization – and the team was considering to forfeit its spot in the major since peacemaker's role was a coach and not a player. In addition, peacemaker left TyLoo beforehand to become the coach of the Danish organization Heroic. TyLoo later confirmed its absence at the major as Flash Gaming, the third-place finisher from the Asia Minor, set to take its place as peacemaker and TyLoo could not work out a deal together.