Photo by: ESL FlickR / Helena Kristiansson (1) (2)
EnVyUs' starting roster:
Nathan "NBK" Schmitt
Fabien "kioShiMa" Fiey
Vincent "Happy" Schopenhauer
Kenny "kennyS" Schrub
Dan "apEX" Madesclaire
Recent accomplishments:
1st at DreamHack Open London 2015
1st at GFinity Champion of Champions
1st at DreamHack Cluj-Napoca (major title)
1st at Global eSports Cup
Brief overview:
EnVyUs have been a hot contender for the world's #1 title for the past few months, starting off with ESL One Cologne last year, when they made a second place finish in the finals falling short to Fnatic. After their victory over them at GFinity, it was clear that for the time being they had surpassed them. So it was not that much of a surprise to see the Frenchmen wrecking Fnatic off the next major at Cluj-Napoca in just the quarter finals. Their recent form, however, has experienced a slight drop-off. In order to change that they have overhauled their internal structure, bringing in Mathieu "Maniac" Quiquerez as a coach and handing the in-game-leading duties over to NBK instead of having Happy call the strats. This has served the purpose to let the latter loosen up, since his play style has often lead to highlight-worthy plays and he should be free of additional pressure to be as focused as possible on doing so.
What strikes the eye most is the composition of this team. All of the players have at one or another point in their career been an entry-fragger, lurker, AWPer, or even all of the aforementioned. This goes in line with their puggy, aggressive play style that relies on fast executions more than on strat-heavy and methodical play. Many teams have tried to follow the French's example and have mostly failed in doing so. It is the unique team chemistry that guarantees double-peaking, re-fragging and all that important stuff even in the midst of entering a bomb-site on a 15 second timer. Their seemingly loose and uncontrolled rushing is actually very well planned out and this is probably why there are so many few teams that can successfully imitate their gameplay.
Alongside Fnatic they are one of the teams that is simply tight-packed with talent. Even their supportive player, NBK, is able to step up hugely, due to the fact that he once played as an AWPer at the very front of the action. At any given moment they might explode again and although falling short to both Fnatic and Astralis in Barcelona, they might eventually bring their A-game to the spotlight again, and this would mean that simply no one could be able to stop them ever again.
Fun facts:
- The French squad actually belongs to an NA organisation, as EnVyUs resides in the U.S.
- Many of the players come from the Source era and the team is actually comprised of an intermix of all the previous French teams. Most of the above have in former teams already played with each other.
- Happy is, as aforementioned, renown for his crazy plays and probably his most notable highlight is an ace that he did on Inferno against TSM, only using a Deagle and getting four one-shots. You can watch it here.
