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PGL Wallachia tournaments are among the most exciting tournaments out there. Because they don’t directly tie in into any of the leaderboards and as such, don’t directly contribute to other tournament invites, they typically have two interesting properties.
They are occasionally skipped by some of the top teams. There are only five qualifier slots, with the rest being direct invites, and depending on their schedule, some, but not all top teams often opt to take a break instead.
These tournaments are also a lot more experimental, at least that’s how they generally feel. Because the overall pressure is lower, some of the top competitors get to use Wallachia tournaments as a high level sandbox. Testing unique strategies and trying out unconventional approaches might not be the most effective approach for winning the title, but it is great for developing as a squad.
For these two reasons I am personally a big fan of PGL Wallachia. As a spectator and caster both they provide me with tons of excitement and talking points, while oftentimes resulting in unexpected match outcomes. So today we are going to have a quick overview of top3 dark horses of the tournament.
Tidebound were both impressive and disappointing in their recent tournament, ESL One Raleigh. Impressive, as they’ve always managed to take at least one game from the tournament’s favorites during the group stage. Disappointing, because they lost the series to one of the arguably weaker opponents in their group.
They are a team that from the looks of it has an incredibly high potential, but lacks consistency. We’ve seen them perform exceptionally well since the start of the year, so if the trend continues, and if their opponents will opt to concentrate on developing new strategies as opposed to simply winning, they have a good chance of high placement.
We didn’t have a LAN champion from the Chinese region in what feels like forever, and Tidebound were the closest to get to that title. We wish them luck and hope that they will, indeed, work on refining their gameplay and improve their overall discipline.
It is hard to stand out as a Dota player in Eastern Europe — the region is filled with exceptional young talent. That said, Niku is definitely one of the players to keep an eye on.
Talented, mechanically solid and exceptionally creative is how I would describe this 16-year old player. Watching him play his signature 
Puck is like watching a Jazz concert. It is hard to understand why and how it works, but the end result is a harmonious spectacle.
For this reason alone, we feel like Navi Junior is worthy of attention. It is hard to imagine them winning the tournament and a top8 placement could already be considered a success for this relatively young squad, but we could be witnessing a future Dota superstar in the making.
It is hard to answer whether Nigma is back, since it is hard to realistically say where exactly they are getting back to. Are they back to being relevant in the Dota esports landscape? Certainly, but they were almost always around the respectable level of being able to qualify to the big international LAN tournaments.
Are they back to being a Champion squad? Well, not to offend anyone, but have they ever been one? Realistically, Nigma has always been a solid, entertaining team that is yet to prove itself as the top spot contender. Optimistically, they have been improving ever since the start of the year and are slowly getting better and better.
Is the pace of their improvement high enough to keep up with the top teams of the world? We are not certain. What we are certain of is that Nigma can no longer be seen as a team that required the creation of its own Qualifiers region to participate in LANs. They are an equal and sometimes scary opponent for every single Wallachia participant and any underestimation is ill-advised.
PGL Wallachia Season 4 starts on the 19th of April and as mentioned previously, it is shaping up to be one of the more entertaining tournaments of the whole pre-TI season. It has all the top teams playing in a LAN environment with, potentially, slightly lower stakes to allow for heavy experimentation and meta developments.
The tournament is already exciting, but you can make it even more exciting with BetBoom. There is a lot of room for upsets and unexpected outcomes in PGL Wallachia and with a wide array of betting options, BetBoom can elevate your experience.
