We are back for another season of EPS Germany with our weekly recaps of what happened and who performed well, or not so well. The 17th season kicked off last Friday and almost all of the matches were very close, promising another exciting season and a close fight for the top 4 spots.

Many lineup changes took place during the summer and plenty of new faces received their chance to play at the top. Still, the favorites remain the same as it is expected that the usual trio of mousesports, ALTERNATE and n!faculty will fight for the title in the end. However, plenty of other teams have hopes to challenge the trio or at least be the 4th participant of the LAN Finals in December.

Last season that 4th placed team was TBH, who in the mean time made 4 changes to their lineup. Another challenger will certainly be ESC who acquired Frankfurt 69ers' entire lineup that finished 5th last time, who now with more experience as a team they will try to go a step further. It was exactly these two that met in the season opener at the Intel Friday Night Game held at gamescom in Cologne. They provided us with a great match to watch even though TBHseemed to be in control of the game for the most part. ESChad to fight for their life in the last 6 rounds and actually succeeded to steal the 1 point as the match finished 15-15.

The main favorite and current champion mousesports had a particularly hard summer, after their player Antonio "cyx" Daniloski was killed in a car accident. The 5-time-in-row champion will play this season with Christian "Blizzard" Chmiel as their 5th and it will be a very hard task for them to repeat the perfect campaign from last time, when they stormed to the trophy with 19 wins in 19 matches. In their first test against Alternative, who replaced their entire lineup that finished 10th last season with a team from the EAS, mouzhad to fight hard to earn all 3 points in a match that ended 16-13 for the current champion.

Last season's runner-up ALTERNATE is again going to be the biggest rival to mousesports, as they only made one lineup change, bringing in Rookie of the Season Kenyon "KenaN" Temmel to their ranks. In their first match, they defeated a stubborn ARSENIXside, which had its debut in the top flight, with 16-11.

n!facultywas the only team to really dominate their match in the first round, as they moved past mystical Lambdawith a 16-3 score. That was hardly an unexpected result, as the new mystical Lambda squad is tipped to struggle a lot this season. They are quite an inexperienced side which was picked up from German 3rd tier league and brought straight into the lion's den that the Pro Series is, so it is expected that any points for them will be a big success this season.

myRevengeis one of the new teams in the league this season, but they brought in some more experienced and talented faces to replace the lineup that achieved promotion from the EAS. The new squad is now tipped to even be in line for a place at the Finals, although their first official match didn't look that promising. They did win that duel versus Hardware4u16-14, but it was a very close affair that could have gone either way.

In other matches, mTwdrew with newly promoted Bouncer4You, Frankfurt 69ersdefeated snook16-10 and You Don't Know Mewas better than Tera16-11. Current standings can be found here.

Results from Playday 1 - de_nuke

TBH vs ESC	15-15	Demo	Stats
ALTERNATE vs ARSENIX	16-11	Demo	Stats
Frankfurt 69ers vs snook	16-10	Demo	Stats
myRevenge vs Hardware4u	16-14	Demo	Stats
n!faculty vs mystical Lambda	16-3	Demo	Stats
mousesports vs Alternative	16-13	Demo	Stats
You Don't Know Me vs Tera	16-11	Demo	Stats
Bouncer4You vs mTw	15-15	Demo	Stats

Player performances

n!faculty's Max "ODIE" Knappe was the best rated player in the opening week of the 17th season with a 2.06 rating. The 7th best rated player overall last season continued with great form, running over the rookies in mystical Lambda with 25 kills in 19 rounds, mostly on the Terrorist side.

Another one of last season's stars, Manuel "approx" Zeitz was once again ALTERNATE's leading fragger, this time against ARSENIX in a 16-11 win. Zeitz played well in both halves and was the key man in many rounds that his team won, finishing with week-highest +18 K-D.

Gerhard "gerdi" Grimm, is a new face in n!faculty and he only played one match last season for his previous team TBH. As his new team was making light work of mystical Lambda, Grimm provided great backup for the leading fragger Knappe finishing with a score of 19-7.

As Alternative was giving mousesports a great fight in the tight loss of 13-16, one player stood out among the rookies. It was Johannes "VISION" Lange who kept Alternative close, especially in the second half as CT which he finished with 20-7.

TBH's new young star, Tobias "Troubley" Tabbert had a very good performance at the first IFNG of the season against ESC. Tabbert was the best for his team throughout the whole match, even though they ended up with only a point from the trip. He had some great rounds, especially a 1vs3 early in the match, that could have led the score in a different direction had he not won it.

Top player performances of the week

#	Player	K-D	Rating	Demo
1.	Max 'ODIE' Knappe	25-8	2.06	POV
2.	Manuel 'approx' Zeitz	32-14	1.67	POV (CT)
3.	Gerhard 'gerdi' Grimm	19-7	1.63
4.	Johannes 'VISION' Lange	31-19	1.49	POV
5.	Tobias 'Troubley' Tabbert	33-21	1.47

Team performances

Unsurprisingly, the top team this week was n!faculty, as they were the only ones to dominate their match. Also, the teams who had the least trouble in the other close matches are ALTERNATE and You Don't Know Me in their 16-11 wins.

Top team performances of the week

#	Team	Result	Rating
1.	n!faculty	16-3 vs  mystical Lambda	1.47
2.	ALTERNATE	16-11 vs ARSENIX	1.22
3.	You Don't Know Me	16-11 vs  Tera	1.11

Worst performances

Worst player performance of the week

Player	K-D	Match	Rating
Sebastian 'br4inm4st3r' Lindermeier	3-17	my* vs n!faculty (3-16)	0.22

Worst team performance of the week

Team	Result	Rating
mystical Lambda	3-16 vs n!faculty	0.45

Check out the rest of the stats from the league here, and have a look at the rest of the POV demos here and perhaps scout some of the players for your Dreamteam. Or if you by some chance haven't created your Dreamteam for EPS Germany yet, it's not too late to join, simply click here. Stay tuned to HLTV.org for complete coverage of the 17th season ESL Pro Series Germany.