DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015 Major: Team EnVyUs, autographs and the Fantasy game

DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015 was the seventh Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major and the last of 2015. Team EnVyUs, beaten in the Cologne 2015 final two months earlier, won it with a 2-0 final against Natus Vincere. The sticker set followed the Cologne model and gave autographs a new use as pieces in the Fantasy Team Game.

The tournament

DreamHack organised the Major at the Polyvalent Hall (Sala Polivalentă) in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, from October 28 to November 1, 2015. The eight Legends from Cologne were invited directly. The other eight places went to the top eight of a single offline qualifier at DreamHack Open Stockholm, where teams from the regional qualifiers met the bottom eight from Cologne. Cluj-Napoca was the first Major to fill its Challenger spots that way.

• Group stage: four GSL groups of four. Opening, winners' and elimination matches were best-of-one; the decider for the second playoff place was best-of-three.
• Playoffs: a single-elimination bracket of best-of-three series.
• Maps: the same seven as Cologne: Cache, Cobblestone, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage, Overpass and Train.

The prize pool was again $250,000: $100,000 to the winners, $50,000 to the runners-up, $22,000 to each losing semifinalist, $10,000 to each quarterfinalist and $2,000 to every other team. No Challenger reached the playoffs, so all eight Legends kept their status. One of them now played as G2 Esports, the former Team Kinguin roster.

EnVyUs' road to the title

EnVyUs met Fnatic, the champions of the previous two Majors, in the quarterfinals. They lost Mirage 9-16, then won Cobblestone 16-9 and Cache 16-2.

The semifinal against G2 Esports was closer. G2 took Dust II 16-10, and on Inferno, HLTV's report describes G2 opening the second overtime with three straight rounds to hold three match points. EnVyUs levelled at 21-21 and won all four rounds of the third overtime to take the map 25-21, then won Cache 16-7. Natus Vincere reached the final by beating Luminosity Gaming and Ninjas in Pyjamas, both 2-0.

The grand final was played on November 1:

Train was Natus Vincere's pick. EnVyUs went 7-0 up and led 9-6 at the half, Natus Vincere moved ahead 11-10, and in round 28 Happy saved a round with a grenade on a defusing opponent before EnVyUs closed the map 16-14. Cobblestone, EnVyUs' pick, opened with an apEX quad kill in the pistol round and an NBK- ace in round seven; EnVyUs led 10-5 at the half and won 16-5. HLTV noted that it was Natus Vincere's first Major final.

HLTV's event page lists kennyS as the MVP. In its 2015 player ranking, HLTV gave him a 1.48 rating in the final and a team-leading 1.23 over the event. For kennyS and apEX it was a first Major. Happy, NBK- and kioShiMa had already won one with LDLC at DreamHack Winter 2014.

Stickers, autographs and the Fantasy game

Valve released the set on October 20, 2015, eight days before the event. Its Pick'Em page said 50% of the proceeds from team stickers and autographs went to players and organisations. The structure matched Cologne, with one change to the foil autographs:

At Cologne, foil autographs were split across four group capsules. Here they were split by status instead, so the winners' foil autographs are in Autograph Capsule | Legends (Foil) | Cluj-Napoca 2015. Gold logos and gold autographs again exist only on Souvenirs.

The Fantasy Team Game was new. Valve's page explained that you built a roster of five players from autograph stickers you owned, and those players scored points from their real performances. Team stickers stayed the game pieces for Pick'Em. Autographs placed in a Fantasy roster were locked until the end of the event, and a team sticker used for a pick was locked for that day.

A few autographs stand out. Nikola "NiKo" Kovač played his first Major here for mousesports, so his Cluj-Napoca 2015 autograph is his earliest. Cloud9 dropped the G2A suffix it used in Cologne. And Sean "sgares" Gares's autograph is again listed as "seang@res".

Souvenir packages

Souvenir packages again dropped to viewers watching in-game or on Twitch, one for each of the seven maps, each holding a skin from that map's collection. According to the Counter-Strike Wiki, every Souvenir carried a gold DreamHack sticker, the gold logos of both teams and a gold autograph of the round's MVP.

The final was played on Train and Cobblestone, so only those two packages include final drops. The Cobblestone package was the fifth of the ten Major packages that could contain an AWP | Dragon Lore, covered in our Dragon Lore history. For how souvenirs evolved after this, see our souvenir packages guide.

The next Major moved to North America with a much bigger prize pool: MLG Columbus 2016.

Collecting Cluj-Napoca 2015 items today

• Read the full name. This is the only Major held in Romania, and its items end in "Cluj-Napoca 2015". DreamHack also ran Majors in 2013 and 2014, so check the year on DreamHack-branded items.
• Know the finishes. Team logos exist in paper, foil and gold, with no holo. Autographs come in paper, foil and gold, and gold is Souvenir-only.
• Check the Souvenir details. The gold stickers show the two teams and the round MVP. A Train or Cobblestone Souvenir with EnVyUs and Natus Vincere logos may come from the final, but the stickers alone do not prove which match it dropped in.
• Inspect the scrape. Applied stickers can only get more worn, and a scraped foil or gold sticker is worth less to most collectors.
• Search by sticker. The sticker filter on Buy lets you find guns carrying a specific Cluj-Napoca 2015 sticker.

Sources

• DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015 — Liquipedia
• EnVyUs win CS:GO's seventh major — HLTV.org
• EnVyUs survive G2 scare — HLTV.org
• Release Notes for 10/20/2015 — Counter-Strike blog (Valve)
• Cluj-Napoca 2015 Pick'Em Challenge — counter-strike.net (Valve)
• Top 20 players of 2015: kennyS (6) — HLTV.org
• DreamHack Cluj-Napoca 2015 Autograph Capsules — Counter-Strike Wiki