Starting off this series is the team that is considered to be the best in the world. Fnatic have just won a major title at ESL One Cologne and have thus wrapped up their third major win. It is no wonder that this team has proven to be able to react to different situations and to counter a variety of tactics since their lineup consists of both aggressive as well as passive players.
The lineup
pronax
JW
flusha
KRiMZ
olofmeister
Their current ingame leader is the 24-year-old Markus “pronax” Wallsten, a real mastermind in reading enemy movements.
Jesper “JW” Wecksell is their primary awper and in doing so amongst the best in the world, maybe slightly behind KennyS and Guardian.
Robin “flusha” Rönnquist is seen as one of the most consistent players in the CS:GO scene and since his acquisition in August of 2013 he has proven himself to be a valuable asset in regards to both his aggressive and his defensive techniques.
There are only a few players that could manage to hold a bombside singlehandedly and Freddy “KRiMZ” Johansson is definitely the best example of a defensive player that can survive such situations and even win rounds in which he should clearly be outmatched by pure enemy manpower.
The last to mention would be Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer, widely considered to be the best player worldwide, although he himself denies that saying that it is easy to maintain such a high level when great players are backing him up.
The play style
Fnatic can be considered a late-game team. It often occurs that a team manages to get a huge lead over them, just as it happened at ESL One Cologne, where – in the first map of the final – fnatic stood on the brink of losing the map with a 10-15 score line in favor of Team EnVyUs. Though it was not such a big round difference, the Frenchmen were close to winning the map. In the end, fnatic managed to get the match into overtime and even beyond that, closing it out with a 19-15 win.
In that game the Swedes showed their uncanny ability to remain fully focused in moments of highest pressure. What eventually happened was that EnVyUs got nervous and the players made mistakes. The same amount of pressure was laid on fnatic, even more since they were far behind on the scoreboard, but still they made no mistakes. They were fully committed to the game and kept the pressure rolling onto nV. The same happened at the ESEA Pro League finals, where they managed to win over Cloud9, again 10-15 behind on Dust II.
This qualifies as a logical reason for their success, but it goes far beyond than just their ability to stay focused. What makes fnatic so special is their adapting play style. We have seen aggressive teams like Virtus.Pro and Team EnVyUs failing on CT side because of their lack of defensive play. Fnatic does not have that problem since even their most aggressive players can opt to stay defensive and not break out of the chain to make a hole for the terrorists to break in. And even when it comes to teams like VP, who seem impossible to stop as terrorists on maps like Mirage, fnatic develop a balance of aggression and defense, holding the bomb sides safely while still going into the open sometime to catch an enemy off guard.
Their play style can totally alter within a few rounds, which makes it almost impossible to counter their movements. And while the enemy team struggles to even understand the actions of the Swedish team, they themselves have already found a loophole in their enemies’ constant gameplay.
The team's history
Despite the fact that all of fnatic’s players are Swedish, the organization is actually based in Great Britain and was founded in Australia back in 2004.
However, its first appearance in Counter Strike was not to happen until 2006. Already then, it started to win big tournaments and over the time of professional Counter-Strike, players such as current NiP-members f0rest and Get_RiGhT competed under the fnatic brand. With the switch to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in 2012, a new and actually Danish roster including current TSM-members Xyph9x and karrigan was signed. This lineup, however, was not kept for long as fnatic picked up the former Epsilon eSports roster, which at that time consisted of JW, flusha, Jonathan “Devilwalk” Lundberg, Andreas “Schneider” Lindberg, and Andreas “MODDII” Fridh. The latter was soon replaced with pronax and under that lineup they quickly managed to win Dreamhack Winter 2013. As schneider and Devilwalk departed, pronax’s friend olofmeister was signed along with LGB eSports colleague KRiMZ. This lineup has not changed ever since, though Devilwalk left his position as a coach to re-enter into the active CS:GO scene. With their recent major victories (ESL One Katowice & Cologne) they have managed to put themselves onto the very top of the professional gaming industry, which has allowed all the fnatic players to go full-time with their gaming duties.
Their reception
The tournament commentators and analysts desks are all very certain in the opinion that the perfect team chemistry and balance of aggression and defense have justifiably put the team into the spotlight of every CS:GO tournament. However, their often brutally overwhelming wins and seemingly clinical executions have lead the team to face strong aversion from many fans who saw their teams getting beaten out of a tournament by fnatic, noticeable recently when a group of seemingly “hardcore” Virtus.Pro fans booed olofmeister on the stage of ESL One Cologne. VP player TaZ however shut down this behavior quickly when taking over the microphone of the moderator on stage and telling his team’s supporters to show respect.
They might not always be the fan-favorites, but definitely a team that deserves to be in the spot it is standing in right now.
The series of CS:GO Who is who will return in just a week with the French Team EnVyUs, who have recently made it to the Grand Final of ESL One Cologne, finishing off in a respectable 2nd place against fnatic.
Photos taken from: ESL Flickr; pcgamer.com; 5eplay; escene.de
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