We are happy to announce that adding to the North American power at ESL One Cologne 2017 will be no other than OpTic Gaming! OpTic will join mousesports, Cloud9, Immortals, SK Gaming, Virtus.pro, FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, FNATIC, North, G2 Esports and Ninjas in Pyjamas in the battle for the ESL One Cologne championship and a US$250,000 prize pool.

In February, OpTic lost stanislaw who joined Team Liquid making the team use stand-ins as they have not found a permanent replacement yet. Hiko joined OpTic for both DreamHack Masters Las Vegas and IEM World Championship Katowice. The team finished both events in the group stage, ending Katowice without a single map win.

Nevertheless, OpTic’s most recent results are rather optimistic. With jasonR as their fifth player, the team finished second at the iBUYPOWER Invitational Spring, defeating Team Liquid in the semifinals 2-0 and conceding 0-2 to Cloud9 in the finals. During their performance at cs_summit, they fought their way through the lower bracket, gaining wins against ENVYUS, Liquid and Cloud9, finishing the tournament at third place. OpTic’s most recent tournament was IEM Sydney where they made it to the semifinals, falling 0-2 to later champions, SK Gaming, in the end.

We are curious as to how OpTic Gaming will perform at ESL One Cologne this year especially since they are more than likely have a stable new roster by then. Will the Green Wall stand tall and strong in the LANXESS Arena?

See you there!

We now know all of the invited teams confirmed for the event: OpTic Gaming, mousesports, Immortals, Cloud9, North, G2 Esports, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Natus Vincere, FNATIC, FaZe, Virtus.pro and SK. Be sure to be among the roaring crowd that will once again fill LANXESS Arena - get your ticket here!

Remember to keep your eyes peeled to ESL CS on Twitter and Facebook for all updates about invited teams, qualifiers, and more.