The Imperial take home surprise DreamHack trophy

DreamHack’s latest summer event saw an unexpected winner as The Imperial took home first place.

The Imperial managed a 2-0 win over OpTic Gaming in the grand final to take home their $50,000 cut of the prize pool.

The participants list consisted of six invited teams along with qualifiers The Imperial and North America’s compLexity.

Group A saw The Imperial and North wiping out AGO Esports and Red Reserve, respectively. The Imperial won both of their matches, 16-12 against North and 16-4 against AGO. Despite their one loss, North managed to recover to advance.

Group B went without upsets as OpTic Gaming took first place with a 2-0 record and Gambit Esports followed in second. OpTic won 16-8 against Gambit and 16-5 against compLexity, while Gambit swept both Renegades and compLexity.

This left OpTic, North, The Imperial, and Gambit to strut their stuff in the playoffs. OpTic took down North 2-1 in their semifinals match, while The Imperial did Gambit dirty with a clean 2-0 victory, leading to the OpTic versus The Imperial final and The Imperial’s tournament victory.

There were several roster changes made prior to the event. Renegades lost coach Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunović while Gambit’s head coach Andrey “Andi” Prokhorov parted ways with his team. Gambit also benched Denis “seized” Kostin and added Nikolay “mir” Bityukov on trial, while DreamHack Summer champion The Imperial signed former Sprout player Kevin “kRYSTAL” Amend.