Renowned event organizer DreamHack will present its first LAN event of 2018, with the DreamHack Masters Marseille 2018 featuring 16 teams. As par for the course, a US$250,000 prize pool is on offer, and the premier event will commence on the 18th of April, with the grand finals falling on the 22nd, a Sunday, which will allow more people to watch. 12 teams were invited, with only four spots falling to battle-hardened teams from the European, North American and Asian regions. Here are the five teams to keep a look out for at Le Dôme, all of which are their first LAN event with new lineups.

Cloud9

The defending Major champions have undergone an unlikely roster change. Jake ‘Stewie2k’ Yip has been with the team since 2016, winning several minor tournaments and then finally lifting the great ELEAGUE Boston 2018 Major trophy in January this year. However, Cloud9 began to hit a snag after the major, with disappointing showings at StarSeries i-League and cs_summit 2. Quarter-finals followed at IEM Katowice and at WESG, but should’ve gone much further, as Brazilian underdogs TeamOne won against them in a best of 3. The cracks were there but became evident, as Stewie2k accepted a transfer offer to Brazilian team SK. At the same time, long-time AWPer Tyler ‘Skadoodle’ Latham suffered motivation problems and looked to become inactive. His status is currently unknown as negotiations with Josh ‘jdm64’ Marzano broke down, leaving open the possibility that Skadoodle will return for one last rodeo with the team in France. Cloud9 has strengthened its leadership structure, adding Canadian in-game leader Pujan ‘FNS’ Mehta. FNS often struggles with getting frags, but will try to set Tarik ‘tarik’ Celik and Timothy ‘autimatic’ Ta up in the best positions to get multi-kills. Cloud9 have only dropped 4 maps in the last 20 online, each against Luminosity, eUnited, NRG, and Liquid. The team will be facing FaZe Clan, G2 Esports and Team EnVyUs in Group A. The team looks favoured against EnVyUs, and equal against G2 but FaZe will be the hardest opponent, in a group of new rosters. Look for FNS’s team to make playoffs but not to go any further.

FaZe Clan

FaZe Clan are currently considered to be the best team in the world, sitting pretty at the top of the rankings despite no big tournament titles in 2018. This is because of their consistent top 4 placings at events, never finishing below fourth in their last five events. However, what was thought to be an April Fool’s joke played on us, became reality as support player Olof ‘olofmeister’ Kajbjer took a leave of absence for unspecified reasons. Benched NiP player, Richard ‘Xizt’ Landstrom was chosen to stand-in for FaZe. The move was surprising, given Xizt has served as an IGL for NiP, and FaZe already have an authoritative figure in Finn ‘Karrigan’ Andersen. It just so happens that FaZe were looking for a rifler to support, and Xizt was an option with considerable experience. The replacement didn’t need to set off fireworks and this heavily implies that olofmeister will return from his break in the near future. The online results so far with this lineup look shaky with a 50% winrate, but Ladislav ‘GuardiaN’ Kovács and Nikola “NiKo” Kovač hope to show their strength on LAN. The team are faced with ruining at least two homecrowd favourites, G2 and EnVyUs, and also face Cloud9, something that is becoming too common for both teams. FaZe still look like a semi-finalist team at least on paper, even without olofmeister.

G2 Esports

G2 and its native owner, Carlos ‘ocelote’ Rodríguez, have given Spanish Counter-Strike a major boost, by signing Oscar ‘mixwell’ Cañellas, who was dropped from OpTic. It looked like he had no future on a top-tier team, but after Richard ‘shox’ Papillon’s wrist surgery, a spot opened up. At the same time, a divide developed between shox, and the rest of his team. Coach Edouard ‘SmithZz’ Dubourdeaux wished to return as a player, and shox was willing to accommodate his wishes. Half of the team were willing, howeverthe other half vehemently opposed the decision. As a result, shox and SmithZz are both benched but remain on good terms with ocelote, while the rest of the team forge ahead with mixwell. The ELEAGUE Season 2 winner is a decorated AWPer, giving great options for G2 to pursue interesting and aggressive double AWPer setups on CT-side. G2 has looked impeccable in the group stages as of late but without shox, there is a higher probability than normalthat G2 will miss playoffs. The team are looking for new strategies to put them ahead of stout opposition including Cloud9, FaZe and fellow French team EnVyUs, so it is likely they will focus on the Spanish hybrid player’s abilities.



SK Gaming

SK Gaming recently fell from their top three placing to just outside of the top six in the HLTV team rankings. The Brazilian team were in the top five from the beginning of January 2016, but dropped out last week. Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo’s team has looked off the beaten path since their lame-duck major run with Joao ‘felps’ Vasconcellos. Ricardo ‘boltz’ Prass’ form has dropped off and support player Epitacio ‘TACO’ de Melo left SK to join North American squad, Liquid. FalleN tried to make a power-play and entice Natus Vincere’s duo of Egor ‘flamie’ Vasilyev and Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev but were swiftly shut down by Na’Vi’s CEO, Yevhen Zolotarov. Rumours suggest that flamie was even willing to pay a part of his buyout, highlighting his willingness to leave the team. These events were unfolding amid other rumours that FalleN and his team are looking to join Noah Whinston’s Immortals brand, once their SK contract ends in just a couple of months. In TACO’s place, Stewie2k joined the team, the first time an American player joins a Portuguese-speaking team.

The language spoken is English and the four Brazilian players are trying to accommodate Stewie2k, who is their ‘temporary’ fifth player, according to the official SK press release. The new-look SK have been experimenting with positions, switching boltz and Stewie2k around, and this hurt their online form at first, losing to Cloud9, NRG and OpTic. However, their results have stabilized, albeit against lower-tier teams, and this team could still achieve great results yet. The team are placed against top-3 European team, mousesports, Ninjas in Pyjamas, and Serbian mix team Valiance, who made their way in from the Europe qualifier. Chris ‘chrisJ’ de Jong’s team look like the biggest threat, but the Swedish Ninjas cannot be counted out either. Valiance are a hungry team not used to tier 1 competition, so SK will need to be careful not to be upset. SK will be hard-pressed to make the playoffs based on the strength of the opposition, but if anyone can do it…

Team EnVyUs

Vincent ‘Happy’ Cervoni has never betrayed his nickname more than ever, with his Team EnVyUs only winning 11 times in the last 30 maps. The home tournament will be a huge turning point for the team going forward, as this is the first offline event with the full lineup(the team fielded stand-ins at the WESG World Finals). EnVyUs made use of their academy team as Ali ‘hAdji’ Haïnouss was brought up to the main squad two months ago. Fabien ‘KioShiMa’ Fiey won a major championship with the organization, but returned to the team in a significantly worse state than before. Although KioShiMa is a support, the changes were made to boost the team’s firepower and supplement Adil ‘ScreaM’ Benrlitom and Cedric ‘RpK’ Guipouy. Since RpK fell ill at the ELEAGUE Major, he has not looked the same turret as before, with the lowest rating showing his drop in form at 0.93.

All of the players have been blowing hot-and-cold to some extent, with ScreaM slightly having more consistency over the others, with 56% of his ratings above 1. Happy is currently on a streak of 4 ratings above 1.20 but all are online, instead of offline, where skill counts more. EnVyUs’ online commitments have not been kind to the team, as they currently lie in the relegation spots of ESL Pro League S7 with a 7-13 record; likewise in ECS Season 5, they are last with a 3-9 record. The same problem that is currently plaguing Gambit, is now affecting EnVyUs. None of the players can hit their stride at the same time, leading to some lopsided matches and performances. If the team can hit their shots and play together, perhaps the boys in blue have a shot at turning things around. However, it’s far more likely that we will see EnVyUs fall in the group stages, even accounting for a weakened Cloud9 and FaZe. At this point all Happy can hope for is a French miracle to happen.