A few weeks ago, the first season of the Extreme Masters ended. Now it is time to review the first season of Europe's top league step by step. First of all, the focus is on the qualification for the main round. Everything started in August 2006 with the great kick-off event at Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany...

At this kick-off event the teams from SK Gaming, fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas came to Germany to fight for the first Swedish spot in the Extreme Masters with 160,000 Euro prize money. SK Gaming won both matches in this tournament by a close 16:14 (vs. fnatic) and 16:11 (vs. NiP) and became Sweden's first participant in the Extreme Masters. But this was only the beginning of a great tournament.

In the following weeks further national qualifiers in countries without an ESL Pro Series like Norway and Russia were held to determine their national representatives. The participants who are playing in an ESL Pro Series (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece and Italy) had to qualify by performing well in these national leagues.

12 participants qualified directly for the main round depending on their national rank and their country's rank. 12 other participants survived a two stage international qualifier with some surprising results ie. in Warcraft 3: The Austrian WC3 player Firestrike won 3:1 against RotterdaM from the WC3L team fnatic. Furthermore ThomasG, a talent from Denmark, won 3:2 against the WC3L player Abver. In Counter-Strike popular teams like fnatic, MeetYourMakers.pl and Team Roccat manage to win there matches in the qualifiers and went on to the main round.

Country Ranking
National Qualifiers
International Qualification Round 1
International Qualification Round 2
International Qualification Round 1
International Qualification Round 2

But what happened in the main round? You can read it in our next review.

Kick-Off event gallery