What to expect from Wildcard v. BIG

After impressing the world during their Perfect World Shanghai Major run, and now after some more experience taking on EU competition, Wildcard begins their IEM Katowice campaign against BIG.

Wildcard are testing the waters

After Shanghai, Wildcard jumped into some EU competition, and won the online Frost and Fire Europe event with wins over Insilio, SINNERS, and 9Pandas. Their hot streak cooled off against Astralis though, losing to the Danish roster decisively at BLAST Bounty Season 1. Astralis proved to be too tall a task, but Tim "susp'" Ångström has proved he's ready for a bigger stage.

• JBa is capable of big performances

• Capable of starting strong, but can also come back

• Need to address the Mirage/Train weak point in map pool

BIG are hyped up

BIG brought on Can "kyuubii" Ali and former academy player Marcel "hyped" Köhn to start the season. Hyped lived up to his namesake, going +27 against SAW in his debut. However he went quiet in the team's loss to G2, during which BIG let a map one win on Ancient slip away.

• New additions are already showing up in server

• JDC remains a consistent force

Previous Matchups

This is the first meeting between the two teams.

Likely Vetoes

Here's how the map veto should play out:

• Wildcard bans Train

• BIG bans Nuke

• Wildcard picks Inferno

• BIG picks Mirage

• Wildcard bans Ancient

• BIG bans Anubis

• Decider is Dust2

Wildcard faces an uphill battle, but they've shown an ability to handle EU opponents. It will likely come down to who makes a bigger impact: susp or hyped.