Article by: Chris "confire" Luong and Andrew "Conflict" Nguyen

This is the third part of X3O's Winter Classic 2008's "Who is Who", if you missed the earlier editions, you can check them out below:

Part 1 (X3O)
Part 2 (Gravitas, LOOK, deadendtheory)

With a lot of newer, up and coming teams attending, we at X3O-Gaming.com thought that they deserved some spotlight. Normally when someone starts to watch a tournament from the comfort of their home online, they focus on the main three or four teams that they know. X3O-Gaming.com wants to make it easier for you at our Gaming Center's debut event of 2009. We are going to start giving you, the fans an overall summary on the teams that will be attending. We will be adding to this list as time goes on, so stay tuned to learn about all the teams that will be attending the first ever X3O Winter Classic.

Click HERE to view the event page of X3O's Winter Classic 2008. The team list is HERE!

Frag Dominant (as of 1/21/09):

• Nazar "steno" Vynnytsky" Basol
• Michael "chE" Guevara
• Richard “levy” Levy
• Fadil "Nepo-" Canovic
• Liridon "quas" Ademaj

FD, formerly known as EG.usa on a couple different occasions. The core of this team - Cavallero (evolution), Vynnytsky (steno) and Guevara (chE) finished 4th at the WCG 2007 Finals as eMazing Gaming (eMg) behind emuLate (who finished 1st), NoA (currently mTw) and Amazing Gaming. The team picked up Levy (levy) after his huge performance at the ESL Continental Finals Americas with MoB Gaming. Since the pickup, they were dropped by the Evil Geniuses organization (obviously not due to the pickup) in favor of the former compLexity squad (plus their former EG.usa teammate Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert). Soon after, they were picked up by one of the top North American organizations in Frag Dominant. They will definitely be heading into the Winter Classic with a vengeance having much to prove after being dropped by Evil Geniuses and picked up by Frag Dominant. If they place under a top 3, much like Gravitas I would expect the team to possibly change their roster. In other words, they better not go home with less than a Bronze medal and part of the cash purse.

*The preview was written with a former roster (12/27/08). The roster has been updated (as of 1/27/09).

Drift (as of 12/27/08):

• Santos "HeLLScreaM" Torres
• Frank "illuzion" Liccardo
• Andre "bleek" Manzi
• Stephen "diko" Leblanc
• TBD

Well this team has not been in competition since their last X3O event, yep all the way back in May of this past year - 2008 Dust-Off Championship Series Qualifier 2. Speaking to Torres (HeLLScreaM), I found out that none of them have been playing since then and have reformed just for this Winter Classic event! Being inactive for more than 6 months, they really are in attendance just to be there however I can see them possibly surprising and in turn upsetting some teams with a roster composed of a few top tier amateur players.

Southern Aggression (as of 12/27/08):

• kaymize
• ChoppeR
• misfolk
• opi
• Grizzly

The Atlanta based team has preparing pretty hard for the upcoming event, creating new unique strategies to use against top level teams like X3O and Frag Dominant. With the upcoming Winter Classic, they added Grizzly to the roster, former Green Berets player who also helped zsm place 5th at the 2008 Dust-Off Championships Final. Their online experience can pretty much sum up what they will bring to the table at the Winter Classic, finishing top 10 in CAL-Main and starting off 2009 with CEVO-Open. They have a ton of potential with plenty of room to grow. Expect this team to do some damage in the group stages of the Winter Classic.

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As always, stay tuned here at X3O-Gaming.com for the latest Team X3O news, coverage and more!