Images sources: techwelike.com, Helena Kristiansson (ESL Flickr)
The Ninjas in Pyjamas roster:
Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg
Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund
Adam "friberg" Friberg
Richard "Xizt" Landström
Jacob "pyth" Mourujärvi
Recent achievements:
3rd-4th at DreamHack: Cluj-Napoca
2nd at Fragbite Masters Season 5
Brief overview:
The Ninjas have been in the Counter-Strike scene for its entirety, and ever since the launch of CS:GO, they have remained at the very top, until recently. Their historic 87-0 run, that could only be stopped by the upcoming Virtus.Pro of 2014, has made them known to the world and will keep their memory alive for a long time. Unfortunately, they are just that. A memory, right now, of what the NiP of old was able to achieve.
With the removal of Robin "Fifflaren" Johannson from their starting roster, they immediately took away their success. It was a well-made decision, since Fifflaren usually competed on the lower end of the score board, but ironically it was with him that they were able to win the ESL One Cologne major in 2014. After that, Mikail "Maikelele" Bill, a skilful and smart player, entered, but was unable to bring the former success back, despite the increase of fragging power. He did not remain for long and for the first major of 2015 they had already signed a Finnish AWPer, Aleksi "Allu" Jalli. He undoubtedly contributed much, though once again, after Katowice, NiP did not compete for the prime spot anymore and their downward spiral continued. Though they might have reached the quarter-finals of Cluj, the last major to happen in 2015, they then got torn to pieces by Natus Vincere, unable to secure any more than 9 rounds over the course of two maps. Fragbite Masters was the last appearance for Allu, as he parted ways with the organisation. Katowice actually marked the last time that NiP had gotten into a major semi-final.
Their recent signing of pyth has set high hopes and a decent amount of pressure on the shoulders of this man and until now he failed to deliver in that respect. His North American experience was cut short, as he was very unlucky and unsuccessful with Winterfox, and many people argue that there are many players that would, skill-wise, deserve this spot more. Their entrance to the GEC finals was blocked by ex-Titan (now G2) and their overall performance of this year does not indicate a sudden resurgence. But then again, we have not seen much and should hope for the best. If all of the players were able to bring their A-game, then NiP might actually deserve their spot in the top ten again, but sadly they were unable to do so for more than one match in a row for the majority of the second half of 2015.
But this is Katowice. And this is f0rest, who, on Dust2, blindly sniped Xyp9x through middle doors, pulled out his CZ, put down dupreeh around the corner, leg-shot device and then knifed him, all the aforementioned happened in under 10 seconds. This is GeT_RiGht, whose amazing clutch against TSM was elected to serve as the Intel Extreme Masters ad that ran in all stadiums, in all tournaments.
This is just to remember how good they can be, how much they can achieve and maybe they just need time to integrate pyth, to let him shine and bring on effective teamplay again. Whichever way their roster change has panned out, it will be demonstrated on the big stage soon.
Fun facts:
- NiP hold the record of most Major Championship 2nd place finishes (four in total)
- Nuke used to be one of their favourite and strongest maps, sadly it was removed from the official map pool
- As mentioned above, NiP won 87 LAN matches concurrently before they lost their first offline match to Virtus.Pro
