Once again, the North American CS:GO scene is going through a "shuffle," a term used to describe a period of time during which top teams drop, sign, and trade certain players with other teams, until a point is reached where the scene looks noticably different in terms of rosters. Many teams were affected by the shuffle this time around, including the top 3 teams in the region: Cloud9, Counter Logic Gaming, and Team Liquid. In this feature, we will be analyzing the moves that each team has made during the shuffle.
Team Liquid became a dominant team in North America at the beginning of September 2015, when they signed Spencer "Hiko" Martin. Martin is known as one of the most seasoned veterans in North American Counter-Strike. They already had a rising duo in Nick "nitr0" Cannella and Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski, a very good all-around player named Jacob "FugLy" Medina, and the team's captain, Eric "adreN" Hoag. His YouTube channel makes it clear that he knows a lot about the game, which is expected, since he is the in-game leader for one of the top teams in the region. His big issue, though, is his AWPing.
Hoag has also been the team's sniper, and while he is a decent sniper, it is clearly not good enough for a top tier team like Liquid. A team's sniper is generally supposed to be the most effective player on the team. Some North American examples from other top teams would be Josh "jdm64" Marzano on CLG, or Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham on Cloud 9. Hoag, on the other hand, is statistically the least effective player on the team, making his spot as a player questionable. He would be a great coach for Liquid, since he is clearly not an effective player, but a very smart tactical mind. They could then go the same route as top European teams in having a full-firepower 5-man lineup, with a coach as an in-game leader. This might not be neccessary, though, depending on how well he can use an assault rifle. Why would he switch to using an AK47/M4, you may ask? The answer is because of how Team Liquid took part in this NA shuffle.
Team Liquid were the biggest winners in the shuffle, picking up the Ukrainian prodigy, Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostylev. Kostylev is an 18 year old sniper, who can use a rifle with the best of them as well, which is why he is the player to watch in the coming year. He first got his chance at stardom on HellRaisers in late 2014 but was kicked from the team along with Yegor "markeloff" Markelov (who was one of the most dominant players in the history of the original Counter-Strike, despite his lack of presence in Global Offensive) in January 2015. The two Ukrainians stayed together, joining dAT Team, who later became Flipsid3 Tactics. Kostylev was removed from the team in September 2015, due to his ban from taking part in any ESL-run tournament, including the Valve-endorsed majors, which Flipsid3 qualified for multiple times without the young player.
Being a world-class player, Team Liquid will surely let him play whatever position that he wants to, which will likely be sniper, since he has performed so well with the AWP in the past. This answers the original question, which is why Liquid's in-game leader will start using a rifle more. If he proves to be a decent rifler, along with maintaining his knowledge of the game at the top level, he might really show that he is deserving of his spot on Liquid.
Still, this move involved sacrifice, namely Jacob "FugLy" Medina, who was dropped from the team in order to make space for Kostylev. A better move would obviously have been to remove James "GBJames" O'Connor from his coaching position and then to place the team's in-game leader in the coaching position, leaving room in the server for the Ukrainian without having to remove Medina from the team, who is a very good player in his own respect, and deserves to be on Team Liquid. Medina is now on CLG's CS:GO roster, replacing Pujan "FNS" Mehta, CLG's former in-game leader.
Team Liquid is currently the most stacked team in North America, now that they imported some international talent, and are currently in the running for the title of "Best Team in NA". The only other team that is a likely contender would be the team that took Liquid's former player, CLG. CLG was already one of the best teams in NA, along with Team Liquid and Cloud 9, but now they have increased firepower in Medina, and a very good in-game leader/lurker in Stephen "reltuC" Cutler, along with a tactical coach, who will be assisting Cutler, Faruk "pita" Pita. Cloud 9 could also be in the top 2, assuming that their high hopes for Jake "Stewie2k" Yip can be proven successful, the same way that picking up a young and less-than-proven Mike "shroud" Grzesiek proved to be successful for the organization. Right now, though, the battle for the top spot is between CLG and Liquid.
Team Liquid's current is:
Eric "adreN" Hoag
Spender "Hiko" Martin
Nick "nitr0" Cannella
Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski
Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostylev
Echo Fox is a very new esports organization, founded by Rick Fox, a former NBA player for the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. What started out as an NA LCS team is now a multigame organization, since they signed Torqued. Torqued was a team created by Mohamad "m0E" Assad. The team will likely be led by Sean "seang@res" Gares, who left Cloud 9 because of how time-consuming it was, along with problems within the team and other possible reasons, and he felt that it wasn't worth the time to stay with the team.
The rest of the team is lesser-known North American players, and Gares recently quit from competitive play, which are two reasons why fans believed that this would be a "stream team," or a team that was not very serious or dedicated to winning as much as just a group of friends who were playing for fun. On the contrary, it was announced that this team would be participating in the first season of E-League, Turner Broadcasting's first Counter-Strike league, along with being the first ever televised Counter-Strike league. This implies that the team will be more serious than expected, since this is a highly-anticipated league with a $1.2M prize pool.
There does not appear to be anything special about this team, unless this turns out to be the perfect combonation of decent players, which is very unlikely. Echo Fox's inuagural CS:GO roster is:
Mohamad "m0E" Assad
Sean "seang@res" Gares
Ronnie "ryx" Bylicki
Trey "tck" Martin
Armeen "a2z" Toussi
Image source: Link
NRG Esports is another team that was founded by members of the NBA, when co-owners of the Sacramento Kings bought an LCS team, similar to Rick Fox, and are now in NA CS, just like Rick Fox. On January 22nd, NRG signed ex-Method, which is made up of three Americans and two Europeans. Led by Fatih "gob b" Dayik, this team bombed out of the MLG's Last Chance Qualifiers, losing 0-2 to OpTic Gaming, a newer combination of seasoned veterans.
This team includes Peter "ptr" Gurney, who previously was on SPLYCE and CLG. He is known to be a difficult teammate, and to burn bridges with former teammates, sometimes even in public. Besides this, he is a good AWPer by North American standards, and will definitely be an impactful member of the team. The two other Americans are Justin "just9n" Ortiz and Samuel "SileNt3m" Portillo, who were both on the Method lineup that left the organization recently. The best result they had with Method was winning RGN Spring Classic in May 2015, so not much is expected of them internationally, but maybe they will perform better with their new teammates.
The first European to join ex-Method is Nikola "LEGIJA" Ninic, who was most recently the coach for the now-FaZe Clan CS:GO roster, back when they were Kinguin/G2. Before that he was a player for mousesports and a few other low-tier European teams. He will be an interesting addition to this team, especially since there might be communication issues, depending on the quality of his spoken English.
Lastly: Fatih "gob b" Dayik. He was the mastermind of mousesports, and has been playing with mousesports for most of the last decade, ever since Counter-Strike 1.6 in 2007, when he first joined the organization. He would leave for a few months a couple of times throughout his career, but he always returned to mousesports. He is a very smart in-game leader, and used to be famous for being one of the best ever, along with names like Kevin "Ex6TenZ" Droolans. The current meta is not good for players like Dayik and Droolans, since it is very reliant on firepower and loose play, rather than tactics and strategy. Of course, there are some successful tactical teams, like Luminosity Gaming and Natus Vincere, but the most dominant teams all have five players who are all fraggers. Dayik and Droolans are not fraggers, and this meta is really hurting them, causing such a smart and legendary player in Dayik to be kicked from his team, even after turning down offers from higher-paying teams.
Overall, this team might do well domestically, thanks to Dayik's leadership abilities and Gurney's sniping ability, but this combination of players will most likely never perform in international LAN events or high level North American tournaments with teams like Cloud 9, CLG, and Team Liquid.
NRG's very first Counter-Strike roster is as follows:
Fatih "gob b" Dayik
Justin "just9n" Ortiz
Samuel "SileNt3m" Portillo
Peter "ptr" Gurney
Nikola "LEGIJA" Ninic
Image source: Link
Team AGG currently has two players from Canada, while the other three are from the USA. The core is made up of Kyle "OCEAN" O'Brien and Ellis "els" Clay, who have been around ever since the roster left FolloweSports in October 2015. Along with them are Russel "Twistzz" VanDulken, David "inVert" Munroe, and Steven "rooRoooo" Herrell from the United States. The team has never made a big mark on the pro scene, with their best result since October 2015 making it to the semifinals of the RGN Showseries. Based on who is available in North America at the moment, there is really no chance of AGG becoming a team to watch out for. The most note-worthy piece of this team would be the fact that they have a very cool logo. However, their multi-national roster is:
Kyle "OCEAN" O'Brien
Ellis "els" Clay
Russel "Twistzz" VanDulken
David "inVert" Munroe
Steven "rooRoooo" Herrell
