While best known for their escapades on Summoner’s Rift in League of Legends, Moscow 5 started out in 2001 focusing mainly on Counterstrike (1.6) and Dota, with a little bit of Fifa and Warcraft 3 thrown in.
It wasn’t until late last year, at both at Dota 2’s International and League of Legend’s IEM Kiev, that Moscow 5 placed themselves properly on the competitive map, with strong performances in both competitions. They went on to take first place at IEM Kiev, and taking another first place at IEM Hanover.
Since then, they’ve been going from strength to strength, recruiting players like PGG and Vigoss for their Dota 2 team, while their LoL team continues to impress.
Throughout this year they’ve been placing 1st and 2nd at tournaments like Corsair Vengeance, ESL Major Series and recently coming second in Dreamhack’s League of Legends tournament.
They’ve also been placing extremely highly in all of the Intel Extreme Masters warmups, putting them in a good position to head into the tournament when it kicks off in Cologne, at Gamescom this year.
On the Dota 2 side, they’ve qualified for the second International, coming 5th in last year’s tournament, and while the competition is considerably more fierce when you take into account teams like mTw and Na’Vi, they’re seeded to do respectably.
Whether the arrest of their leader, Dmitry Smilyanets, is going to have an effect on their performance at either IEM or the International remains to be seen, but such controversy swirling around you while you just want to play your best can’t be all that healthy for your state of mind.