PGL Wallachia Season 8: Format, Schedule, Fixtures and More

A month after the end of Season 7,  PGL Wallachia returns for Season 8 on April 18. Teams have mostly already traveled to Romania and are waiting for the beginning of the tournament right now.

Let's take a look at the tournament lineup, the alterations we had due to visa issues, the matchups for the first round in the Group Stage, and interesting matches to watch during day one.

PGL Wallachia Season 8: Lineup

As usual, we begin by checking all of the 16 invited teams that will battle for first place in yet another million-dollar total prize pool.

Team Yandex are the standing champions of PGL Wallachia after defeating Team Liquid in a thrilling 3-2 in the last edition's Grand Final, consolidating their status as a top Tier 1 team.

Here is the list of invited teams taking part in the next PGL Wallachia:

• Team Yandex 👑
• Tundra Esports 
• PARIVISION 
• Team Spirit 
• Xtreme Gaming
• Team Liquid 
• BetBoom Team
• Aurora Gaming
• Team Falcons
• Heroic
• MOUZ
• Vici Gaming
• Natus Vincere
• GamerLegion
• Virtus.pro (OG's slot)
• South America Rejects (former paiN Gaming)

We had a lot of problems, including visa issues, as usual for PGL Wallachia. The first replacement is Alik "V-Tune" Vorobey standing in for Ivan "Pure" Moskalenko in the Tundra Esports roster.

Next in line, Bohdan "Batyuk" Batiuk will take the offlane on Team Spirit, while Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov is absent dealing with personal issues, as announced on Team Spirit's Twitter profile.

OG could not field a roster at all, also due to visa issues. This opportunity allowed Virtus.pro to step in and take their slot as a chance to make some bank in a big tournament.

Finally, paiN Gaming released their roster not long ago and kept their slot, but will be competing using a new name. Instead of rolling back to Perú Rejects, they chose to play as South America Rejects.

PGL Wallachia Season 8: "New" Talent

Every tournament has its share of new faces every now and then. This time, PGL Wallachia brings in a national treasure to join the team of analysts during Season 8.

Omar "w33" Aliwi will join the talent roster and share his point of view concerning matchups, team prospects, patch 7.41, and much more during the next week.

Group Stage Schedule: Round 1

PGL Wallachia has kept a very safe and standardized format for a while now, with a Group Stage using a modified Swiss Stage and Playoffs in a double-elimination bracket with best-of-3 series and a Grand Final as a best-of-5.

This means we have a schedule for the first round of the Group Stage, and the following matchups will be decided based on the results of previous rounds.

Here is the schedule for the opening day of PGL Wallachia Season 8:

• April 18 — 08:00 GMT — Xtreme Gaming vs. Natus Vincere
• April 18 — 08:00 GMT — Team Spirit vs. Vici Gaming
• April 18 — 11:00 GMT — Team Liquid vs. GamerLegion
• April 18 — 11:00 GMT — Aurora Gaming vs. South America Rejects
• April 18 — 14:00 GMT — PARIVISION vs. MOUZ
• April 18 — 14:00 GMT — BetBoom Team vs. Virtus.pro
• April 18 — 17:00 GMT — Team Yandex vs. Team Falcons
• April 18 — 17:00 GMT — Tundra Esports vs. Heroic

Interesting Matchups

Finally, we have our list of interesting matchups that should be points of interest for the first round. PGL tends to avoid big teams facing each other in the first round, but there are so many strong rosters this time that it was nearly impossible to avoid it.

PARIVISION vs. MOUZ

The first interesting matchup on the list is PARIVISION facing MOUZ. PARI is slowly climbing back to the top and has recently won the PREMIER SERIES against Nigma Galaxy, which is a good boost in team morale.

On the other side, we have MOUZ, who also had a pretty good performance, placing 3rd in the PREMIER SERIES, but still need time to adapt to the absence of Melchior "Seleri" Hillenkamp, who retired in late March.

Team Yandex vs. Team Falcons

My personal favorite is the matchup between the standing Wallachia champions and the current TI champions. Yandex is in a pretty good phase and we hope the downtime did not blunt their skills.

Team Falcons played without Stanislav "Malr1ne" Potorak in Wallachia Season 7 and will go in at full strength this time to make up to the fans for the 12th-place finish last season.

Tundra Esports vs. Heroic

Finally, we have Tundra Esports facing Heroic in the last matchup of the day. Tundra has won both DreamLeague Season 28 and ESL One Birmingham, coming in as one of the strongest contenders for the PGL Wallachia Season 8 Championship.

On the other side, Heroic got pushed out of the ESL Pro Tour in the first quarter by paiN Gaming and only managed to get a Top 6 finish in both BLAST Slam VI and Wallachia Season 7 so far. This will be a good way to see where they stand this time. 

Closing Thoughts

PGL Wallachia Season 8 seems to be very interesting based on what we can expect from the first round of the Group Stage. Tundra Esports is the team to beat and Team Liquid returns to Tier 1 after missing ESL One.

If you want to stay informed on PGL Wallachia Season 8's developments, results and highlights, keep an eye on the news section of the Strafe website!

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Featured Image Source: Twitter (@PGLDota2)