ESL One Cologne 2018 was a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament run by ESL. In July 2018, sixteen teams from around the globe competed in an offline (LAN) tournament that featured a group stage and playoffs with a 125,000 prize pool. It would be the second consecutive year since Cologne 2016 in which Valve decided to pass up on the historic tournament series as a Major host in favor of the FACEIT Major: London 2018.
This tournament was also the eleventh tournament of the first season of the Intel Grand Slam, which a list of international premier tournaments run by ESL and DreamHack. Each team gets ten tournaments that it participates in to have a chance at winning four of them. The first team to win four titles earns an extra $1,000,000. FaZe Clan (ESL One New York 2017, Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII - Sydney, and ESL One Belo Horizonte 2018) leads the way with three wins. SK Gaming (ESL One Cologne 2017 and ESL Pro League Season 6) and Astralis (DreamHack Masters Marseille 2018 and ESL Pro League Season 7) are tied for second; however, SK Gaming's players contracts expired with the team and the players opted to sign with the Immortals-owned mibr brand. G2 Esports (DreamHack Masters Malmö 2017), Ninjas in Pyjamas (Intel Extreme Masters Season XII – Oakland), and Fnatic (Intel Extreme Masters Season XII – World Championship) have one title each. ESL One Belo Horizonte 2018 precedes the Cologne 2018 event.
The finals featured Natus Vincere – which defeated Fnatic and the favorites to win the tournament Astralis – and the dark horse and hometown favorites BIG – which defeated G2 Esports and upset FaZe Clan. Natus Vincere would end up winning the tournament over BIG 3-1 for its first Intel Grand Slam win.
Format ESL invited eleven teams to compete in the tournament. Two teams from Europe, one team from North America, one team from Asia, and the winner of the GG.BET Majestic tournament competed for the last five spots. The format of the group stage was two groups of eight teams in a double elimination bracket. The initial matches were a best of one and then every other match was a best of three. The teams to win their brackets moved on to the semifinals while the next two teams were in the quarterfinals. The playoffs was a six team, single elimination best of three bracket, but the grand finals was a best of five.
Map pool The event used Valve's Active Duty map pool. On April 20, 2018, Valve announced that revamped Dust II would be replacing Cobblestone in the Active Duty map pool.
Maps
Cache Dust II Inferno Mirage Nuke Overpass Train
Broadcast Talent
Desk host Alex "Machine" Richardson Stage host Oliver James "OJ Borg" Borg Interviewer Tres "stunna" Saranthus Analysts Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill Janko "YNk" Paunović Duncan "Thorin" Shields
Commentators Henry "HenryG" Greer Jason "moses" O'Toole Lauren "Pansy" Scott Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett Observers Heather "sapphiRe" Garozzo DJ "Prius" Kuntz
Qualifiers European qualifier Two teams from the European qualifier moved on to the main event in Germany. North tore through the bracket after suffering an initial scare against the unknown WASD Sports while Gambit qualified through the loser's bracket after HellRaisers forfeited the series.
North American qualifier One team from the North American qualifier was given a ticket to Cologne. Renegades dominated competition as the Australian team defeated OpTic Gaming in the finals.
Asian qualifier The Chinese powerhouse TyLoo looked to cruise its way to the main stage, but B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape pulled off a massive upset against MVP PK, the second seed in the qualifier, and then defeated the first seed TyLoo to qualify for the event.
GG.BET Majestic GG.BET Majestic would determine the final team in Cologne 2018. Gambit Esports and North were invited, but since the two teams had qualified for Cologne, two other teams would take their places. Team EnVyUs and AGO Gaming were two runner-ups for the European side, but both teams could not attend, so ENCE eSports would take North's spot. AVANGAR took Gambit's spot.
Participating teams Eleven teams were invited and five teams qualified through their respective qualifiers. Teams were seeded based on ESL's ranking system.
Direct Invitees
Astralis BIG Cloud9 FaZe Clan Fnatic G2 Esports mibr mousesports Natus Vincere Ninjas in Pyjamas Team Liquid
Qualifier winners
North (Europe) Gambit Esports (Europe) Renegades (North America) B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape (Asia) ENCE eSports (GG.BET Majestic)
Group stage The format of the group stage was two groups of eight teams in a double elimination bracket. The teams to win their brackets moved on to the semifinals while the next two teams were in the quarterfinals.
Group A Winner's bracket
Astralis came in as the best team in the world and proved its dominance by easily handling ENCE eSports. Cloud9 had Martin "STYKO" Styk come in as a stand-in as the team struggled to find a permanent replacement for Pujan "FNS" Mehta and after STYKO was removed from the mousesports active lineup. Although STYKO struggled somewhat, Cloud9 had no problem taking care of Ninjas in Pyjamas, as the Swedes had only a few highlights in the game. mousesports also had a new player on the team after replacing STYKO with Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski, as Snax left the legendary Polish squad Virtus.pro. However, mousesports did not need Snax to shine as mousesports easily took down Gambit Esports. In the first upset of the day, G2 Esports took down the rising Natus Vincere in a very close match as the French were able to overcome a 9–0 deficit as Edouard "SmithZz" Dubourdeaux shined. In the first best of three, Astralis was able to stifle a Cloud9 comeback on the first map and then erased all hopes in the second map with a 16–1 win as Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz dominated the field. G2 continued to crawl its way through the winner's bracket as Kenny "kennyS" Schrub showed why he was considered the best AWPer one time. Both G2 and Astralis secures spots in the playoffs. In the loser's bracket, ENCE pulled off a massive upset as Aleksi "allu" Jalli was able to completely thrash his former team and the Ninjas in Pyjamas were eliminated. Gambit had the unfortunate luck to run into a top three team in the first round of loser's as Gambit could do nothing to stop the power of Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev, who many are calling the world's best player. Gambit was eliminated. ENCE somehow managed to pull off an even bigger upset against mousesports by sweeping the decorated European squad in two close maps as allu took revenge on another one of his former teams. Natus Vincere and Cloud9 were also part of a very close series, but it was s1mple to outduel Timothy "" Ta to eliminate Cloud9. In the winner's finals match, G2 made a massive comeback against the world's best, but Astralis was able to take the map into overtime. Astralis took that small wave of momentum into the next map and finished off G2 with ease to guarantee a spot in the semifinals. ENCE continued its Cinderella story as it took the first map against Na'Vi. In the second map, Na'Vi looked to easily take it, but Jere "sergej" Salo was rolling as ENCE started to make a comeback; however, Na'Vi was bailed out by s1mple and Denis "electronic" Sharipov and Na'Vi scraped by and then easily took the third map to move on to the playoffs.
Group A matches Astralis 16 Nuke 5 ENCE eSports Cloud9 16 Inferno 3 Ninjas in Pyjamas mousesports 16 Dust II 8 Gambit Esports Natus Vincere 14 Inferno 16 G2 Esports Astralis 16 Mirage 12 Cloud9 Astralis 16 Overpass 1 Cloud9 Astralis Inferno Cloud9 mousesports 14 Dust II 16 G2 Esports mousesports 16 Mirage 10 G2 Esports mousesports 9 Inferno 16 G2 Esports ENCE eSports 16 Inferno 6 Ninjas in Pyjamas ENCE eSports 16 Train 2 Ninjas in Pyjamas ENCE eSports Nuke Ninjas in Pyjamas Gambit Esports 6 Overpass 16 Natus Vincere Gambit Esports 5 Train 16 Natus Vincere Gambit Esports Inferno Natus Vincere mousesports 17 Inferno 19 ENCE eSports mousesports 12 Mirage 16 ENCE eSports mousesports Dust II ENCE eSports Cloud9 14 Inferno 16 Natus Vincere Cloud9 12 Overpass 16 Natus Vincere Cloud9 Train Natus Vincere Astralis 19 Dust II 16 G2 Esports Astralis 16 Nuke 4 G2 Esports Astralis Overpass G2 Esports ENCE eSports 16 Dust II 14 Natus Vincere ENCE eSports 14 Mirage 16 Natus Vincere ENCE eSports 7 Nuke 16 Natus Vincere
Group B Winner's bracket
FaZe kicked off group B with a closer-than-expected match against B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape. The two top five players on FaZe, Nikola "NiKo" Kovač and Håvard "rain" Nygaard, were able to carry their team to an easy terrorist side to send the team from Singapore to the loser's bracket. mibr made its Global Offensive debut after signing one of CS:GO's most successful cores, but the legendary Brazilian brand struggled against the Noah "Nifty" Francis-lead Renegades. However, Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo's team showed signs of its old self: making improbable comebacks. Despite Renegades's 6–0 start and 10–5 halftime score, Marcelo "coldzera" David and Fernando "fer" Alvarenga showed why they were ranked as the best and third best players in 2017. Fnatic vs. North showcased two teams who had been struggling. Fnatic started out strong, but North winning five rounds in a row to start the second half suddenly made the game close. In the end, Fnatic was able to clutch out the 30th round to advance in the winner's bracket as Jesper "JW" Wecksell showed signs of the 2015 Fnatic days. BIG seemed eager to play in front of its home crowd and after picking up Owen "smooya" Butterfield, the team showed rapid paces of improvement. This showed in the match against Team Liquid, North America's best team as BIG was able to completely run over Liquid's defense. Although Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski topped the scoreboard out of all the ten players, the rest of his Liquid teammates struggled. After having never beaten any of FalleN's teams in his career, Finn "karrigan" Andersen found his second series win in a row in two relatively close maps as surprisingly karrigan topped the scoreboard over his superstars. In the other winner's match, Fnatic was able streak away with the series win after a close first half on the first map as the Swedes advance to the playoffs. In the loser's side, Renegades made quick work of B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape and eliminated the Singaporeans. Team Liquid struggled heavily at the event after falling to the declining North, even after a solid third-place finish at ESL One Belo Horizonte and a second-place finish at ECS Season 5. However, the American team fell to Mathias "MSL" Lauridsen's team and was ultimately eliminated. In a very tense best of three, it was the Australians and the Germans to provide the best series of the group stage. Renegades and BIG took one map each, but the third map was a toss-up. In the end BIG to end up on top in overtime behind Johannes "" Wodarz's 31 kills. Although not as exciting, North and mibr played a close best of three that went all three maps, but it was the star dup of fer and to outduel Valdemar "valde" Bjørn Vangså and North was eliminated. In the maps they won, the players of FaZe completely dominated Fnatic. The Swedes were able to take a map, but the result was not close. The final decider match ended up being a thriller. BIG and were able to split the first two maps at the same score. The third map went to double overtime and mibr looked to take it. However, BIG was able to shut down mibr's offense and BIG would face G2 Esports in front of its home crowd. With 's exit, the two-time defending champions of ESL One Cologne was out of the tournament.