When you get down to it, ﻿mousesports﻿’ new roster is just another attempt at making an international mix-team work. And there are many boxes a team like that needs to fill in order to be successful.





As a spectator, we aren’t afforded many specifics as to what these are. There are entire aspects of the game that are impossible to observe from our vantage point as an outsider looking in. Fans only ever get the implicit effects of good or bad communication, and we can guess with little accuracy how relationships between players affect in-game performance.





As such, when roster move announcements come around, the average pundit is forced to bake their theoretical Counter-Strike cake mostly without the out-of-game icing that’s necessary to paint the whole picture.





Photo via ESL





With only in-game information and a narrow bandwidth of interview answers to draw on, our criteria in evaluating new rosters is forcibly more focused. The non-player is coerced into assessing rosters on their observable in-game components alone: The balance of roles, win conditions, team dynamic, map pool, tactical depth (or lack of it), and firepower.

The recently announced mousesports lineup, in this sense, is an interesting one to dissect. After weeks of rumors, the final roster will consist of Robin “﻿ropz﻿” Kool, Chris “﻿chrisJ﻿” de Jong, ex-﻿FaZe Clan﻿ in-game leader Finn “﻿Karrigan﻿” Andersen, ex-﻿Hellraisers﻿’ star AWPer Özgür “﻿woxic﻿” Eker, and 16-year-old Slovakian David “﻿frozen﻿” Čerňanský.





On one hand, there are decent on-paper role balance and win conditions with these players. While on the other, there are the caveats around woxic and frozen’s big stage experience, alongside their respective player cultures. With Karrigan at the helm of another ambitious international line-up, it’s worth looking at what this team represents and what makes a successful mix-team.





What makes an international mix-team





By mixing four, five, or even six nationalities together into one team, you undoubtedly bring on cultural baggage, in-game or otherwise, that will create fault lines.





CS:GO history is littered with no shortage of examples. From the early days of the Kinguin and ﻿G2 Esports﻿ rosters to ﻿Made in Brazil﻿'s failings with Tarik “﻿tarik﻿” Celik and Jacky “﻿Stewie2k﻿” Yip, mixed teams tend to crack under the minutiae of bringing such different players together.





The best international teams are those that transcend these out-of-game caveats with either earth-shattering firepower or intelligent roster construction. In lieu of having the resources of a FaZe-type organization, this mousesports lineup seems to be leaning toward balancing roles.





Photo via ESL





… Good?





It was this strength in balance that served to characterize much of the success of the 2018 mousesports lineup.





With Tomáš “﻿oskar﻿” Šťastný, Miikka “﻿suNny﻿” Kemppi, Martin “﻿STYKO﻿” Styk, as well as ChrisJ and Ropz, mousesports was a team crafted from many corners of the globe, but with a specific directive in mind.





“I think that the big strength in our team is that we have a great balance of dynamic between passive and aggressive players,” SuNny said in an interview with Rivalry at IEM Sydney 2018. “I think that is a strength for us, it means Oskar and Ropz have a bit more space than other star players. Obviously we don’t emphasise our stars as much as FaZe but we have a wider playbook because of the room our individuals have to work with.”





This iteration of mousesports, at their best, thrived on the interplay between each member of the roster. From SuNny and ChrisJ finding space aggressively in the fragging pack, to Oskar’s independent star AWPing and STYKO’s support play, and ropz’s late-round clutching, every player served a distinct purpose.





There was a clear logic to the way mousesports was shaped upon creation.





“Before Mouz, in my past teams, I was always kind of playing that lurk role,” SuNny said. “So I was always alive and closing rounds. But in this team they needed a smart player in the middle area to close out the gaps, and abuse the gaps if there is one. Like, between Oskar and ChrisJ.”





With versatile talent put into the correct positions of a rational team dynamic, mousesports were able to play far greater than the sum of their parts and ascend into the elite. When, however, it came time for a roster move, a problem arose. If everyone is in a logical “correct” position, and yet you’re still losing games, who do you replace?

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… Or bad?





Unfortunately, the team decided that their often bottom fragging, yet integral support player STYKO would be the one to swap. In his place, they bought in snax as a replacement, and in spite of winning ESL One New York 2018 with the ex-Virtus.pro member, were worse off for it.





Photo via ESL





“The biggest issue when Snax came in was communication, it wasn't that it was his fault,” SuNny said in an interview with HLTV after ESL One New York 2018. “Removing STYKO showed that our communication was flawed and that he was a big part of why we were successful.”





SuNny’s thoughts on the issues that came with removing a player like STYKO shows the important role balance in a successful mix-side. Unless there’s the bank roll of someone like FaZe in the mix, then simply stacking talent on top of talent isn’t going to fix core issues in a team.





Being able to transcend the inherent problems that come with a mix-team approach requires careful planning, talent acquisition, and role assignment. This brings us to the current mousesports lineup.





How does this mousesports lineup stack up?





It seems that a similar sort of logic that guided the creation of the 2018 mousesports lineup has also carried over into this 2019 iteration.





Loosely, it would appear that ChrisJ, frozen, and karrigan form the entry pack, with w0xic on the AWP playing aggressively with the rifle in-place of karrigan when need be, and ropz on the wings/in late-rounds. Or in another sense, Karrigan replaces STYKO’s support roles and alleviates the calling burden on ChrisJ so he can entry, frozen swaps out SuNny’s spots, and w0xic swaps Oskar’s.





This rough outline highlights many of the gambles mousesports are taking. First and foremost is frozen. Frozen is, by and large, an unproven entity on big international stages. He is undoubtedly a young player brimming with mechanical ability, being a staple of the FACEIT Pro League weekly rankings and play professionally from a young age.





If balance is one of the biggest prerequisites for a mix-team performing at the highest levels, then frozen will be the most important factor in mousesport’s success.





Photo via DreamHack





Based on his stats from past teams, he seems to be a player comfortable in more aggressive positions. He averaged a quite high open-kill-attempt percentage in EXatus’ 2018 officials at around 20 percent. Being comfortable in forward, pressuring positions on both sides of the map is a good foundational trait to have for integrating into mousesports.





ChrisJ and ropz are both players that can deliver star impact, but not in a tournament-to-tournament type of fashion. Ropz relies on the space created by his entries to have enough of a foothold to close rounds and work his own individual pays. And ChrisJ’s style is notoriously volatile, hinging on his own momentum at an event and the tendencies of his opponents. SuNny outlined about his role that, “my strengths are that I understand what is going on at the map at everytime. I’m making important moves and putting a lot of things in place for our team.” Given Frozen will be replacing him, these are the characteristics that should be apparent in his game.





In 2019, the year he turns 17, frozen will become a similar foundation between the two arms of the mousesports ropz/ChrisJ fragging dynamic.





Should frozen not live up to his hype as the next big CS:GO prodigy, though, mousesports do have the guaranteed nature of Karrigan’s calling going their way. A successful international mix-team hinges on players being in the right roles and trying to play greater than the sum of their parts, and there is no IGL better at this than the Dane.

“If you are sniper and you are good at entry fragging then he will send you wherever you want to go. If you want to peek B on Mirage, he will let you and then somehow create a tactic around this call,” FaZe’s Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovácson said in an interview with Duncan Shields. “He knows exactly how to use his players. Obviously we are the team of huge individuals. We are all good individually. It was a question of how can he make it work. But he makes it work somehow.”





Karrigan, as he did with Guardian, will give a similar level of freedom to w0xic, the former star AWPer of Hellraisers. W0xic, will, in this sense, be the wild-card. How he peaks in this mousesports lineup decides the height of their ceiling as a team and upset potential against legit international entities. On Hellraisers, alongside Issa “ISSAA” Murad and Vladyslav “Bondik” Nеchуроrchuk, w0xic was one of the players who would get the team motivated after every big kill. He would scream in the pressure-filled moments and create a flow of momentum that was integral to his own success as a confident AWPer. If he can get online alongside one or two of the other names on this team, then they boast very serious firepower.

But for all the potential upsides, the question for mousesports will be the same that is posed to all international mix-teams: Can their talent and in-game cohesion transcend the inherent communication and playing culture issues that will arise down the line? Or maybe more importantly, will the temptation of free agent talent sabotage the potential of young talent through roster moves?





If history tells us anything, the answer to these questions will be laid out clearly in the next three months.