With the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament at epic.TEN just one day away from kick off, it is a good time to take a brief look at how the tournament is shaping up with regards to team sign-ups. In the past epic.LAN has played host to some great, intense competitions with no clear winner in sight until the last few rounds of the final, and the tenth iteration is looking to be no different. A lot of teams have expressed interest in the event and a number of them have begun signing up to the tournament ahead of Friday. Here is a short preview of some of the top contenders:

TeamCRG – redsnake, b3n, mole, reazn, SPUDZ

Those of you familiar with former epic.LAN events will surely remember the TeamCRG name as they were the team that bagged the gold at our last event in the Counter-Strike: Source tournament. They also managed to take silver at the epic.SEVEN event in October of 2011. After a stint in CS:GO though, the TeamCRG camp went silent for a short while, with just one member of the team, James “Redsnake” Littlewood, remaining within the organisation after the rest of his team mates separated from the CRG name. Recently the team resurfaced with a whole new side featuring some well-known faces as well as a few players pegged as up and coming stars. Making his return to the team is Ben “b3n” Wood who has turned many heads at epic.LAN events in the past, pulling his team through many tight situations and aiding them in their successes.
The current line-up also features former Rasta-Gaming player Josh “Mole” Rowley who has also placed within the top three at three separate epic LAN events. With the experience that these players have, their “upcoming stars” reazn and SPUDZ have a tough task ahead of them if they want to see the other three players take even more podium finishes.

Fish123 – jakem, zed, keita, weber, re1ease
The Fish123 name has graced the epic.LAN event once before at the first competitive Counter-Strike event held back at epic.FIVE. Back then they took the bronze medal, however the line-up was somewhat different. In fact, two of the current five members playing under the Fish123 title were in-fact members of the gold medal winning team of epic.FIVE, Rasta-Gaming. Though they enter this tournament as a mix, they do so with a line-up that can strike fear into the hearts of any of their competitors. Amongst them lies some of the best British names to enter into Global Offensive, as well as players that have been considered as international stars. Two of the five players are the recently departed duo from fm-eSports, George “ZED” Bear and Brandon “weber” Weber. The two of them played a key role in the success of their former team.
Also in the mix is Dan “Re1ease” Mullan, who in the past has been praised for his natural ability to play the game as well as his pin point precision when it comes to using a rifle. Even with such skill though, this mix comes in at a strategic disadvantage to the rest of the top contenders, who will likely have more order in their approach to the game.

Infused.tt – KritikaL, Crazysmurf, PEZ, Puls3, ZEOX
The newly adopted Infused side, formerly known as Team-c4u, have been on the Global Offensive radar for a number of months. They managed to shock many with a top three finish at the most recent iSeries event defeating the likes of Reason and other such teams on their route to the lower bracket final. Since then though, their online activity has been somewhat dwindling and with the addition of James “PEZ” Perrot in place of Friza, one cannot be sure of how well they are going to perform.
In an announcement by the team captain Luke “KritikaL” Green, it was stated that the team are focusing on national tournaments before moving on to the international scene. This means that they will be looking to continue to prove their worth amongst their fellow Brits which just means one thing – there will be no lack of motivation within their ranks.  Luke is known for his ability to keep a team on track and help pump them with adrenaline, and though he has been seen to be a bit hot headed at times, he has successfully lead teams to victories within the past, including the fm-eSports side back at epic.EIGHT.
Alongside KritikaL and new recruit PEZ are three remaining players that represented c4u at the iSeries event in November, Puls3, ZEOX and Crazysmurf who are all capable of performing against many of the game's top names.

London Lynx – paynt, som, ALIG, stato, vertiGo
London Lynx consists of five players that have a long standing history of playing games together, having gone under many pseudonyms over the course of many, many years. One thing that has been consistent if not on an upward trajectory is the teams’ ability to cause an upset. They never seem to go into an event with much of a backing and always seem to emerge victorious in situations where they likely shouldn’t. With Roger “paynt” Paynter at the helm this team are destined to beat at least one of the three aforementioned teams, if not all of them.
Many of the teams that come up against the Lynx will certainly underestimate them and will pay in rounds for doing so. If this team manage to catch teams off guard they can take them by storm, however despite having been playing together for a long time it is doubtful that the line-up have put many team hours into the game. On an individual basis, paynt is known for usually having in excess of 100 hours of gameplay across a two week stretch however his team do not likely share such a passion to play the game, on account of having “real lives” to attend to. Watch out for these guys, because they will likely be drunk and have impaired hand eye co-ordination, but that won’t stop them, that will just spur them on further.