As 2018 comes to a close, it feels like the perfect time to reflect on what has happened throughout the year. As Astralis took to the stage at Altice Arena and picked up their tenth trophy of the year, I couldn’t help but look on in awe. None of us saw this coming. Not the players, not the teams, and not the experts. When 2018 began, everyone was convinced that the year was to be a contest between the likes of FaZe or SK. After Cloud9’s Major victory, some believed it was their time. Other still pointed to the likes of potentially Na`Vi, Fnatic, or Mouz. They were all blown away as Astralis entered the year unheralded and ended the year undisputed. This is the story of Astralis 2018.

For many, the story begins on the day of the roster shuffle. When Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjaerbye decided that he wished to leave the team to join North. For many, this was the turning point. The one moment where the entire history of CS:GO changed. While that is the most dramatic point to begin the story, it is not the only one. In the case of the Astralis members, each of them were faced with difficulties and trials that each had to overcome. Crucibles that forged them into the players that now define the era.

The three long standing members that have been at the center of this team are: Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, Peter “Dupreeh” Rasmussen, and Andreas “Xyp9x” Hojsleth. As a team, the beginning of their stories starts in the Majors where from 2014-2016, they were unable to become champions and were labeled as perennial chokers. Each of these members in turn had their own personal trials they had to face. Dev1ce had to accept the responsibility of being a star player and the leadership that came with it. Dupreeh in 2017 changed his roles as he went from a classic entry fragger to a lurker and then AWPer later in the year. During the TSM period, Xyp9x was given the choice to either step up or get removed when he was lagging behind. Each of them faced their crucible and came out better on the other side. Dev1ce was able to accept the burden of being a star player and performed better as a result. Dupreeh’s change in roles gave him renewed life in CS:GO and his versatile ability has been crucial in Astralis’ success. Xyp9x stepped up his game and became the best support player we’ve seen in CS:GO history.

As for the final two additions of the roster, both had to face their own demons to become the players that they were today. In the case of Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander, he was an exile from the Danish scene. Someone who had the talent, but wasn’t able to put his all into CS:GO. He floated around in the scene for years, and for a time believed it was impossible. He revealed this insecurity to Tomi “lurppis” Kovanen in an interview,

“2015 was probably my worst year in terms of my career; that’s the year where it all started to fall apart. I stopped believing that I had what it took to play on one of the best teams in the world. But even though I stopped believing I feel like there was something inside me that always knew that if I really tried to, I could make it. I had to figure out how to turn around my life and how to get back to the top scene in Denmark.”

That internal belief was something he bet it all on. That was why he was able to make it back onto Copenhagen Wolves. That is why when his lung collapsed again at the semi-finals of Assembly, it didn’t stop him. He rose through the ranks of the Danish scene, until he found himself on Heroic. Then he went on to become the in-game leader of Astralis at the end of 2016.

For Emil “Magisk” Reif, perhaps his story starts at PGL Krakow Major. After that event, he was kicked from North and cried in despair as he believed that was the end of his dreams of being a top CS:GO player. In the eyes of Jakub “kuben” Gurczynski, that wasn’t the moment of failure, but rather the moment of affirmation that Magisk would be a top player. He recalls in an interview with Virtus.Pro,

“I remember that after last year Krakow major, Magisk was sitting in lobby with tears in his eyes, because he just got fired from North. We gave him a beer, invited to our table and tried to cheer him up saying that whole stunning carrier is still in his reach. You can recognize strong players character in the moment of failure. Some are surrendering with failure acceptance, other are bracing up and start working even harder than before. Magisk is a good example for young players who are starting esport carriers and proof that hard practice and self-believing can bring up biggest trophies.”

As for the coach, Danny “zonic” Sorensen, he faced his own trials as a pro player a long time ago in CS 1.6. He was one of the founding members of the legendary mTw squad that faced bitter defeat at the hands of Na`Vi in 2010. While the game itself wasn’t nearly as big as it was now, the passion for victory was just as fierce back then. Those battles, those times, and those moments gave him the experience he needed to become the coach he is today. One that is able to help the tactical and emotional side of the team. Someone who has been able to keep the team focused from event to event to event.

All of those moments were beginning each and of themselves. Each of the members of Astralis struggled with their own personal trials and crucibles. Then all of those moments came together at the beginning of 2018 with the Kjaerbye shuffle. The roster shuffle has its roots from the latter half of 2017 where multiple internal issues and problems had arisen. Dev1ce was dealing with injuries and had to take sick leave. This forced the team to play with a stand-in which caused multiple roles to shift. After dev1ce came back though, the team was unable to settle the disputes as to how the roles should be allocated as Dupreeh and Kjaerbye both wanted to play the same role. In the end, they tried a makeshift style for the ELeague Boston Major where they had Dupreeh be the main AWPer and dev1ce play the rifle. They were eliminated from the tournament in the group stages.

At the time, the team had decided to stick together as they believed they could work it out. However Kjaerbye had other plans as he decided to join North at the last moment. This caused Astralis to scramble to find a fifth player. In the end they settled on Magisk as he was one of the more readily available at the time. During this period, no expert I found was hyped or expectant of the move. Many believed that Magisk had already peaked during his period on North and that at best this was a lateral move for Astralis.

It turned out to be the single best move of the entire year and among one of the best roster moves in all of CS:GO history.The team built up slowly as their first outings were at StarLadder i-League Season 4 and IEM Katowice where they got a respectable top 8 and top 4 respectively.

Then DreamHack Marseille happened about six weeks after that event. By that time, the Astralis war machine had begun. Gla1ve and the team had finished integrating Magisk into the system as they had rebuilt the entire system from the ground up. Years from now, when we speak of the Astralis era, we will point to this event and say this was where it began. It was at this event that Astralis made their first paradigm shift as they innovated the utility meta. They broke apart teams before the action could even start with brilliant usage of smokes, flashes, and most notably HE nades. They destroyed the event and this is arguably the most dominant performance any single team has had at an event. The only comparable in recent memory was FaZe at ESL New York 2017. However there was a significant difference between the performances. FaZe at ESL New York looked like they had broken the game. Astralis at DreamHack Marseille looked like they had solved it.

This was to only be the tip of the iceberg. From DreamHack Marseille to the Faceit Major London, Astralis attended six events. In order they were: IEM Sydney, ESL Proleague Season 7 Finals, ECS Season 5 Finals, ESL Cologne 2018, ELeague Premier 2018, and DreamHack Stockholm.

This period was shocking in a completely different way. If it can be said that DreamHack Marseille was where Astralis solved CS:GO, then I’d say the ensuing six tournaments showed Astralis solving competition itself. The moment someone comes up with something new whether it be strategically, tactically, or individually, it will be scouted, dissected, and assimilated. That is the way of competition itself and so teams that stay get to the top rarely do so. I call this the Sword of Damocles as this is the danger that all those who wish to be king must sit under. This is also why prior to 2018, no team was able to set an era since LG/SK in 2016. Each time a team rose up, they were knocked down. No team could claim dominance during the uncertainty era in late 2016. In 2017, Astralis tried to establish one, but failed. Later on teams SK and FaZe continually fought for it with neither side being able to win consistently enough. Some believed that the age of eras was over, that no one could ever claim dominion over CS:GO again because of this.

However Astralis solved this riddle in 2018. They were not only able to sit on the throne, they stopped all challengers. These six tournaments showed the strength of the Astralis system. They had built an entire infrastructure around the team. Beyond zonic they have a team which includes a psychologist, doctor, physical coach, body SDS therapist, and clinical dietician. That was one aspect of their success outside of their server. Inside the server, inside the game though, they were always one step ahead. Astralis not only set the paradigm of CS:GO at DreamHack Marseille, they kept one step ahead at all periods of time.

Consider the sequence of the six events I named. At IEM Sydney, FaZe pulled out a miraculous 3-0 victory in the finals of that tournament. That finals had FaZe winning in overtime in the first two maps and the third map in the 30th round. In the subsequent tournament at EPL 7 Finals, Astralis had figured out how to shut them down and without ascendant individual performances, FaZe were smashed out of the semifinals 2-0, neither map having FaZe reach 7 rounds.

At ESL Cologne 2018, Na`Vi had an incredible semifinals performance as they upset Astralis 2-1 in the semifinals. That victory was predicated on three factors. First Na`Vi had the awe-inspiring strength of the star players Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and Denis “electronic” Sharipov. Second, Na`Vi made gambles on the CT-sides that caught Astralis off guard. Finally, Na`Vi used a forcebuy style that forced Astralis out of their full buy round game and forced them to battle in an uncomfortable zone.

In the following tournaments, Astralis figured Na`Vi out. In subsequent rematches against Na`Vi, they have been able to figure out ways to smother s1mple and electronic, sniff out the CT-side stacks, and have become one of the best force-buy teams in the world themselves. At DreamHack Stockholm, North pulled off a huge upset victory in the finals of that tournament. One of the big factors of that victory came from a 16-1 victory for North on Dust2. Astralis broke down that map and figured out how North was abusing long control and subsequently fortified and adopted the tactics for themselves. Since then, they’ve become arguably the best Dust2 team in the world.

Astralis have continually stayed at the cutting edge of the meta, both in and out of game. Those were large macro scale changes. As a team though, they made a plethora of small in-game tactical evolutions that continually gave them the edge against everyone. For instance, on Mirage, they pioneered the CT-spawn smoke to cut off mid control for the Ts. They then followed that up in subsequent tournaments with counter strats for the counter to that original setup, whether that be hiding dupreeh behind the sandbags at top or going up top mid to throw nades at the likely positions of the Ts. If we look to their CT-side, Astralis rarely contest for top mid on inferno, yet when they faced MIBR later at ECS 6 Finals, they did exactly that and caught MIBR off guard. Those were the small tactical things they continually improved on throughout the year that gave them the edge against other teams. Thus it came to no one’s surprise that once the FACEIT Major London came around, they took the title in emphatic fashion and established their era.

The first period of Astralis in 2018 displayed their innovation, their consistency, and their dominance. The second would display their clutch. The label of “chokers” was once applied to this Danish team for their underwhelming performances in big game matches, however after the Major they were tested in this manner at multiple tournaments: BLAST Istanbul, IEM Chicago, and ECS Season 6 Finals.

By the end of that run of tournaments, they had not only showed that they could play under pressure, they had proven that they were the most clutch team in the world. In all three tournaments, Astrails did not show up with their A-game. They didn’t show up with the high level of play that was characteristic of them in the first period of their era. There were multiple reasons why. Teams had started to adapt to the in-game tactical edges. The individuals themselves were playing sub-par relative to the level they had throughout the year. Finally, the fatigue and emotional drain of being number one seemed to start getting to them. However each time Astralis looked to be knocked out, they rallied back to win the game. At BLAST Istanbul Finals, they won the tournament in the 30th round of the third map after giving up a large lead in the second map. At IEM Chicago, they played a miraculous semifinals against Fnatic where they were down 15-9 to only rally back with heroic plays and tactics to force overtime and win. At ECS Season 6 Finals, they matched up against MIBR again and won an incredibly close finals 2-0 with the inferno going all 30 rounds and then winning the second map in double overtime.

Then Astralis wrapped up their year with EPL 8 Finals and BLAST Lisbon. At EPL 8 Finals in Odense, they dominated the tournament and won the tournament adding another trophy to their list. On top of that, it was their fourth victory in the IEM Grand Slam, which made the first Grand Slam in its history. This was even more amazing considering that they had skipped two of the easier events in the ESL Grand Slam (Belo Horizonte and ESL New York). One ongoing story through all of this was Astralis’ undefeated win streak on Nuke which hit 27-0 by the end of the EPL 8 Finals. This becomes important as we enter Astralis’ last tournament of the year at BLAST Lisbon.

In this tournament, Astralis faced off against Na`Vi in the finals. What made this finals special was that Astralis unveiled a hand they had been saving for Na`Vi since for months. In that finals, Na`Vi had the gall to ban Nuke against Astralis and so Astralis punished them with a Cache pick.

“We have been playing Cache once in a while to make sure we can play it just to play it against teams like Na`Vi” – Magisk, in an HLTV Interview

Cache had been Astralis’ permaban for nearly their entire era. It seemed like a dangerous pick considering that Astralis weren’t battle-tested on the map and even more so when Na`Vi won the first map on Overpass. However, once again Astralis proved their greatness as they beat Na`Vi on the map and closed out the finals 2-1.

That brings Astralis’ year to a close, and what an year it has been. Since coming together with this five man lineup Astralis has attended sixteen tournaments. These are their results:

Major Victories: FACEIT London

1st: BLAST Lisbon, EPL 8, ECS 6, IEM Chicago, BLAST Istanbul, ELeague 2018, ECS 5, EPL 7, DreamHack Marseille

2nd: IEM Sydney, DreamHack Stockholm

3rd – BLAST Copenhagen

Top 4: ESL Cologne, IEM Katowice 2018

Top 8: StarLadder i-League Season 4

That was Astralis 2018 and yet when I reflect back on it, I can’t help but feel a sense of awe and wonder. Consider for a moment that all of this was only possible because each of the players fit together into the system in a perfect way. Dev1ce as the hybrid AWPer who can also play on the rifle for their T-side. Dupreeh as the primary entry who can pivot to lurker or secondary AWPer. Xyp9x as the world’s best support player. Gla1ve as the best tactical in-game leader in the world and an incredibly high individual perform. Magisk as a passive lurker who can pivot to entry and is a master of controlling micro-space.

Each of these players came into these roles because of the trials they faced along the way. Dev1ce took up the AWP to fill the role that TSM needed in 2016 and with it, eventually developed the superstar mentality needed to become the star and leader his team needed going forward. Dupreeh’s falling form in 2016 had him role switch to lurker and secondary AWPer in 2017, so when role switched back in 2018, he became a far more dangerous player as he added so much more to the team. Xyp9x accepted the criticism his teammates had of his individual level and has since, almost never let it drop. He has become world renowned as one of the greatest clutchers in CS:GO history. Gla1ve’s fall from grace in 2013 saw him develop the professionalism and individual skill he needed to eventually became the all-time great leader we see of him today. Magisk’s removal from North put him in tears, but that allowed him to become the final piece that Astralis needed to become the world dominant team this year.

In a sense, the Age of Astralis was created off the back of their crucibles. It was through their pains and failures that the players came into their ultimate success. One that no one expected. At the beginning of the year, four of the five players were unceremoniously knocked out of the group stages of the Major with the fifth wallowing away in NA. By the end of the year, they have continually broken every narrative and record. Before 2018, people believed the age of eras was over and then Astralis did it. People believed no team could play all seven maps and by the end of 2018 Astralis have played all seven in the finals of a tournament. Astralis started off this year unheralded. They then went undefeated on Nuke, uncontested in the ESL Grand Slam, nearly untouched through the entire year, and now end 2018 undisputed for this is the best year any CS:GO team has had in all of CS:GO history.

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