No LAN in recent memory has starred as many top teams as poLANd.tf 2025, with Europe's fourteen top teams in attendance. Four teams from each group will make it to playoffs in the Upper Bracket, two to the Lower Bracket, and one will be eliminated on the first day. Let's see who in group B is hoping to claim those coveted spots.

ANTICIDE

• Pocket Scout: Blanc
• Flank Scout: menex
• Pocket: ry4n
• Roamer: Charlie
• Demo: hugee
• Medic: theos

As individuals, ANTICIDE have been up-and-comers for a long time but in the past six months have arrived in style, particularly at ÜBERFEST 2024 where menex and ry4n faced each other in the Grand Final. They have played with and against each other in various combinations but only at the start of 2025 did this roster come together. Already, strong performances online have seen them take the final S49 Premiership playoffs spot, but their trip to Łódź has an unwelcome twist: Scout .pandemiC will not be joining them, triggering an avalance of adjustments. Pocket Blanc is moving to Scout to fill that void, while Roamer ry4n is taking his space in the combo and super-sub Charlie comes in to Roam for them. It's an audacious experiment; we'll see how well it works for them.

TFTV: Season 49 was your first as a team and you're already in Premiership playoffs, was this your goal from the beginning?

ry4n: yea, its a new team but with the players we had playoffs was the goal even if we had to take it game by game and maybe have a couple rough losses because we were new and still trying to work better as a team

TFTV: Which player on your team do you think deserves more recognition?

ry4n: maybe theos, pretty underrated but hes very nice and good

TFTV: Online, a lot of your losses have been by one or two rounds, will LAN give you the edge to turn that around?

ry4n: if we have our full roster i could definitely see lan giving our team an edge compared to online (two 100 ping turkish scouts moment)

We also caught up with Charlie to get his thoughts on the last-minute call-up:

TFTV: You haven't played since December, how do you feel to now be stepping into .pandemiC's shoes?

Charlie: I'm very excited. It obviously means that Blanc moves to Scout and ry4n moves to Pocket with me on Roamer, Blanc already proved he can do this in Prem and ry4n thinks he can influence the game more from Pocket Soldier. Charlie also plays.

Danish Tyrant Regime

• Scout: flick
• Scout: smile
• Soldier: amppis
• Soldier: Nicky
• Demo: AlienSmiley
• Medic: juxta

The Danish Tyrant Regime arrives in Łódź with a mission: to prove that all you need to win are Scout mains. Six of them, to be exact. This may seem an unorthodox strategy but it’s worked so far; they’ve been competitive against the lower half of Premiership though have struggled against the top teams. It’s a team crammed with experience, in particular flick’s silver medal at poLANd.tf 2024 with The Last Resort and amppis’ multiple LAN podium finishes, including Rewind and Rewind II. The question is whether this can provide the edge that DTR never found online: if it can, a top four finish is within their grasp.

sammakot

• Scout: alov
• Scout: snh
• Soldier: silves
• Soldier: Roticher
• Demo: ALX6
• Medic: Robert

A quick glance at the Premiership table shows the relative newcomers sammakot sitting with a respectable 12 points in 6th place, however it was close to being somewhat of a disaster. After qualifying by beating #BIGBLOKESZN, they failed to secure even a single point for the next two months, only turning things around against the officials-only Garda Panteri and already playoff-bound ANTICIDE in the final weeks. While sammakot’s wins came in games with little to no stakes for both them and their opponents, this late surge of form may prove crucial in helping their confidence for the upcoming LAN. In Łódź, sammakot must show they’ve learned from the Premiership teams they’ve faced, and at the first LAN for several of their players we’ll find out how they withstand the pressure.

$moke break

• Scout: 0mger
• Scout: saltyy
• Soldier: jekeb
• Soldier: Phnx
• Demo: Luka Enderman
• Medic: Faust

One of the top teams in qualifying, $moke break didn’t even drop a map as they booked their tickets to poLANd.tf 2025 in dominant fashion. There are, however, questions: most notably, Soldier SAKE has been called up as /for fence’s seventh player, leaving $moke break to shuffle fast: Phnx has moved to replace him, with Luka Enderman arriving to fill the gap. This may make a difference, or it may not: unlike most other teams they haven’t been playing the online season together so hadn’t had that chance to build their synergy anyway. They should make it into playoffs, there’s enough talent on this team for that, but a deep run looks unlikely.

Velo Gaming

• Pocket Scout: dempsey
• Flank Scout: Tob
• Pocket: Potato
• Roamer: croud
• Demo: Cyanic
• Medic: deli

On paper, Velo Gaming should be the worst team in poLANd.tf as the only Div 3 team in attendance – nevertheless, they are in Poland They qualified directly by taking second place in the group of four, with strong performances from a different player every map; if those peaks can come at the same time the underdogs will suddenly become very dangerous. Making it into playoffs would be a win but it’s by no means impossible: all they need is a few good results, and their qualifier and ETF2L results have shown that those are well within their grasp.

MPREGALODONS

• Pocket Scout: JENNY
• Flank Scout: tikkeh
• Pocket: Samski
• Roamer: Maccy
• Demo: Dejvi
• Medic: dft

MPREGALODONS qualified comfortably, beating most other teams with ease and only losing to $moke break in back-to-back overtimes: not a fun loss, but one easily swallowed with six tickets already in hand. Since then, they’ve played a full season of Division 1 with this exact roster, securing the fourth and final playoffs seed, and come into LAN as a cohesive and well-drilled unit. Last year, the first Lower Bracket round saw three upsets out of four; MPREGALODONS stand a good chance of making it there and repeating that.

MANDEM

• Pocket Scout: balder
• Flank Scout: inso
• Pocket: ronz
• Roamer: haunts
• Demo: zambz
• Medic: ouppy

Since MANDEM stormed onto the European scene in mid-2023, they have been Premiership title contenders every season, even winning in Spring 2024. But their only LAN attendance in this timespan was last year's poLANd.tf Winter 2024, where a MANDEM roster with 3 mercs managed to place third. This time, they travel to Łódź at full strength, and will be looking to carry their superb online form into offline results in their first LAN showing as a complete team.

TFTV: You've lost your star Demo in Fancy, how is zambz fitting in as a replacement?

balder: Not having Fancy is obviously a big blow since his raw output and impact inside the game is pretty much unmatched when he is on his top-game. However, even more damning than that is the loss of 1.5 years of synergy and chemistry in the game that is impossible to replace. Same sentiment goes for Lardox who as secondary caller has been crucial for the team and me in building the system we have.

Zambz has some of the biggest shoes to fill and to live up to the level of fancy would be impossible for pretty much anyone. With that said, as a replacement Zambz is without a doubt one of the best options and has been gradually improving as the season has gone. He is easy to play with, a good listener and has insane mechanics as well.

TFTV: This is your team's first LAN together, how have you been preparing?

balder: Almost all the time up until LAN has been used to get the new players integrated to the system and strats that we have set in MANDEM for the last couple of seasons. Obviously it is not an easy task to get people on the same page with something that has taken multiple seasons to build but the improvement has been noticeable and satisfactory for what has only been 2-3 months of playing together.

TFTV: Which player on your team do you expect to pop off most at LAN?

balder: inso.

Additional contributions by Benpl.