What to expect from Wildcard v. BIG

A disappointingly close loss to Virtus.pro today has set up Wildcard to fight for their tournament life against BIG tomorrow. With BIG being a team Wildcard has previously found results against, and with the Germans suffering at this tournament, there is hope and a reason to believe Wildcard can take BIG down and advance to round five of the swiss stage.

Close but no cigar

Wildcard have come so tantalizingly close to winning a number of maps at Cluj-Napoca, however they have continuously fallen short on numerous occasions. This cannot happen again tomorrow as Wildcard have no more breathing room.

• Wildcard previously smashed BIG at Katowice

• JBa finally had a good map on Inferno against VP today

• phzy is still a rock for this team

BIG problem

As previously mentioned, BIG lost to Wildcard at IEM Katowice 2025 in a convincing fashion and have overall struggled at this tournament. Their win against FlyQuest wasn't exactly a tour de force and overall the team are quite vulnerable.

• tabseN has a dismal 0.72 rating at the moment

• BIG's map pool shouldn't leave Wildcard too worried

• BIG are still a relatively new team at things considered

Previous Matchups

Wildcard claimed a 2-0 victory at IEM Katowice 2025 when the team faced each other back in January.

Likely Vetoes

As always, these vetoes come with the caveat that they are highly speculative as they depend on whether Wildcard, as the higher-ranked team, chooses to pick first or ban last. We will assume they ban last.

• BIG ban Anubis (0 maps played in 2025)

• Wildcard ban Train (Played once here needing overtime against MIBR)

• BIG pick Ancient (56% Winrate, 16 maps played)

• Wildcard pick Inferno (56% Winrate, close games v. MongolZ and VP)

• BIG ban Dust2 (Three game losing streak)

• Wildcard ban Mirage (33% Winrate)

• Nuke as a potential decider

Analysis: Overall I think Wildcard are in a great position for a 2-0 win over BIG. Wildcard have shown they can play a lot of maps competently while in Romania, and overall BIG that don't have maps they can pull out that will make Wildcard shake in their boots. I think there's a great chance for a repeat of the 2-0 win from Katowice here tomorrow.

Wildcard will head into battle against BIG at 09:00AM.