The idea of a farm team is something that is prevalent in sports. In CS:GO, it’s something different as the “farm” teams are just tier 2 teams who get farmed by better teams. It is also hard to designate what a farm team means. It’s easy to point out Epsilon and say they are a farm team as they never made any kind of international result at a Major tournament. But what about a team like LGB esports? They got to the playoffs of two Majors before their players got farmed. As I pondered this question, I came to the conclusion that the most interesting “farm” teams were the ones that were used to create championship level teams. With that in mind, these are the three teams I consider to be the best farms in CS:GO history.

OpTic

The choice of choosing OpTic here is contentious as the lineup I am talking about is the one that won ELeague Season 2 2016 and got 2nd place at ECS Season 2 Finals soon after. The reason I’m putting them here is because four of the five players go on to do even greater things in their careers once they leave the OpTic team. That lineup included: Tarik “tarik” Celik, Will “RUSH” Wierzba, Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz, Keith “NAF” Markovic, and Oscar “mixwell” Canellas.

The first to leave was stanislaw as he believed that lineup had hit it’s ceiling. At the beginning of 2017 he moved on to Team Liquid as their in-game leader. It wasn’t the home run that people expected it to be until the latter half of 2017. At that point, Liquid made multiple roster shuffles to the roster which got the team two incredible runs as they got 2nd at ESG Tour Mykonos and ESL ONE New York 2017. Even though the run was short, I rate these runs as even better than Stanislaw’s time in OpTic as they beat more top teams including SK twice and Astralis once. He has continued to prove his worth as an in-game leader by getting compLexity to the Legends spot at the FACEIT Major.

Tarik and RUSH were the next to go as they joined Cloud 9. Cloud 9 has since won the Major with Tarik becoming the in-game leader of the squad. As for RUSH, he was one of the best entry-fraggers in the world during OpTic, but has since shifted to a support role on Cloud 9. While neither player has hit their peak, both have shown incredible heights.

The most surprising player to come out of the OpTic goldmine was NAF. He was the last NA player left in the OpTic team and the team decided to go to Europe and build around mixwell. It looked like the end of NAF as all of his former teammates looked to be going on to do better things without him. As a player he was inconsistent, but he found himself once he moved into Renegades. He became the star player of that team and the main engine. He was able to show how incredible he was so that teams could no longer ignore him. This was why Liquid ended up recruiting him and together with NAF, Liquid have become the best NA team in history.

Dignitas/North

Whatever else you want to say about Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen’s leadership, you cannot deny that this guy makes young stars shine. Since he took over as the in-game leader after Dignitas wanted to replace Henrik “FeTiSh” Christensen as in-game leader. MSL took up the role and was incredibly successful. His teams were always well run and got good results.

So good in fact that teams started to farm his star players. The first to go was Philip “aizy” Astrup as he left the team to join G2. In his wake, Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjaerbye became an incredible player as he took up aizy’s leftover roles. So incredible that Astralis recruited him when they needed a new player. After Kjaerbye, MSL got Emil “Magisk” Reif and Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke to become star players while under his system.

It’s incredible how much young Danish talent that has gone through the Dignitas/North lineup. The only disappointing one was aizy as he never reached that form again after joining the international lineup of G2 (now known as FaZe). Kjaerbye went on to win a Major after joining Astralis. Magisk was one of the best players at the end of 2016 before he fell off and was kicked. He then returned to Astralis in 2018 and became the third star of the squad and an incredible anchor player. K0nfig was one of the best players in 2017 and was inexplicably left out of the Danish shuffle and joined Optic Gaming instead.

If we’re counting, three of the biggest star talents in the last few years have come out of the MSL system with: Kjaerbye, Magisk, and k0nfig. Aizy has proven himself to be a good player at times, though not at the level people expected when he first hit the top of the scene. Denmark has become the best Counter-Strike nation in the world in recent years and part of it has to because of how much young talent that the Dignitas/North squad has molded into international star players.

While MSL is no longer at North, the team continues to bring up the next generation of Danish players. Valdemar “valde” Bjorn looks to be in his best form on this squad. More recently they brought back Nicklas “gade” Gade and he’s looked good for his role thus far.

LGB Esports

The best farm team of all time is LGB Esports. LGB Esports is now a defunct organization, but when they were running they had numerous future stars running through their teams. Their original Swedish lineup made the playoffs of two Majors. They got to the ro8 at DreamHack Winter 2013 and the semifinals of ESL ONE Katowice. Among the players in these lineups, the most notable were: Freddy “KRiMZ” Johansson, Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer, Dennis “dennis” Edman, and Simon “twist” Eliasson.

KRiMZ and olofmeister moved on to Fnatic and were pivotal in creating the greatest lineup in CS:GO history. Both were incredible players and their partnership is the stuff made of legends. KRiMZ only got into Fnatic because olofmeister told the rest of the team that KRiMZ was the best team player he had ever played with. Both have since split up with KRiMZ becoming the superstar player of Fnatic and olofmeister becoming a member of the all-star team in FaZe.

Dennis is another incredible player and someone famed for his skill, his pistols, and playing in loose free-flowing teams. He joined the international mix of G2, then rejoined KRiMZ and olofmeister in Fnatic where they won six consecutive LAN events. He was eventually lost in the ensuing Swedish shuffle of 2017 as he went to GODsent, but showed incredible games when he stood-in for Astralis at BLAST. He has since joined NiP where he was their in-game leader for a brief time. While he isn’t as good as he was before, he still continues to play a role for the squad.

Twist is the most frustrating of the bunch. He has incredible talent, but has refused to play in the top teams. His best achievement was a top four at ELeague Atlanta when he joined Fnatic. He has recently returned to playing on Fnatic, but given his career, it’s hard to imagine he’ll stay for long.

The final two players to have come out of LGB esports are the Norwegian players: Joakim “jkaem” Myrbostad, Ruben “RUBINO” Villarroel, and Havard “rain” Nygaard. Putting Jkaem on this list is arguable as his peak was his performance with the international lineup of G2 at DreamHack Cluj-Napoca Major. He has been incredibly inconsistent throughout his career and no team has been able to figure out how to use him as a star player.

RUBINO turned out to be an incredible teamplayer. Not someone who can carry the game, but someone who can fill out the roles and bring impact to a squad. He has a great mindset for enabling his team and his stars. His best result was on Dignitas where he helped the team win EPICENTER. Dignitas/North have never looked like a better team than when they had RUBINO on that lineup.

The final piece to come out of LGB was Rain. Rain was a player who floated around without an in-game leader for a long period of time so he was never able to find his actual niche. This changed in the latest iteration of FaZe where he shifted to an entry-fragger role and was enable to shown incredible skill as he broke open sites. He was one of the best players in the world in 2017 and playing one of the hardest roles in CS:GO.

Afterword:

Looking at the great farm teams of the past gives us a sense of what it means to move up in the CS:GO competitive world. It shows us the different ways that players and teams are formed. When we look to OpTic, we see how the NA scene had spread the talent too far apart and once that team imploded, it condensed into even stronger top teams as the separate pieces were assimilated into stronger lineups. Under Dignitas/North, multiple young Danish talents flourished and became global stars. As for LGB we see how that team still has reverberations to this day as the players from that team still compete for top international titles.

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