Group A

mousesports

Cloud9

FaZe

Immortals

Season 2 of ELEAGUE kicks off this weekend with Group A which will feature the teams shown above. The group will play out in GSL-style with the top 2 teams moving on to the quarterfinals next month.

When the groups were first drawn many people thought that this group was the most underwhelming with no elite teams in it. This will be a look at each of the teams playing this weekend and how they have looked in the past 2 months.

mousesports

Right now, mouz is in a place where we can’t really know how they will play in this next LAN. Two months ago the team replaced long time mouz player, nex, with oskar, the superstar Czech from Hellraisers. This was great news because now Niko had a teammate who knew what it felt like having to carry a team. Having the firepower of NiKo and oskar meant this team could only improve.

Despite the expected change, the team did not do start off so well with a 3-5 record in the first 2 weeks of EPL. The team then failed to get through the qualifier for ESL New York, losing to FaZe, and had to choose between attending EPICENTER and ELEAGUE in which they chose ELEAGUE. They managed to bounced back getting a string of wins on Pro League before heading off to their first LAN showing at the Gfinity Invitational.

Gfinity wasn’t that great for mouz even if they reached the finals; there were only 4 teams at the event after all. The team barely got past GODSENT in their first match with NiKo being at the top of the leaderboard, unsurprisingly, but at the bottom for the team was oskar, which is surprising. The story was the same in the series against EnVyUs except they lost 3-0 where 2 maps were close. Maybe if oskar didn’t have a rating of .83, his worst rating on LAN in his career of CS:GO, they could have challenged the duo of KennyS and apEX.

A week after Gfinity it was announced that oskar was being benched by mouz due to “personal issues”, later we find out it was due to what sounds like a lack of motivation, and that nex would stand-in for the time being, but because nex was dealing with a hand injury the team had to find another replacement. The team then signed former PENTA Spanish player, loWel. There were doubts as to whether loWel could fit in the shoes of oskar and rightfully so. It was unknown to us whether loWel will be able to compete against more experienced teams at the top events.

After the change mouz went on to go 7-1 for their 8 recent online games in ECS and EPL. The team managed to finish with a record of 18-8 for the 4th season of Pro League and are to attend the finals in São Paulo going in as the third seed for Europe. loWel has been doing well for the most part with a couple bad games, but will he be able to be as good on LAN on this new team? The group isn’t as challenging as it should be, but it will still test what this lineup can do.

Cloud9

Ever since Cloud9 replaced Slemmy with former TSM player, autimatic, they have been improving massively since their slump in the first half of the year. The team has had great results on all fronts, except failing to qualify for ESL New York, when they lost to OpTic.

The lineup started off on fire with a 14-0 record on EPL leading up to their first LAN showing. The domestic tournament, Northern Arena, featured NA teams and mostly second tier teams. Cloud9 was expected to come out on top here considering their recent form, but lost to Immortals in the final after beating Heroic in the semifinals. The two best players for Cloud9 at the event were n0thing and Stewie2k who were in the top 5 for rating, KD- difference, ADR, and opening kills.

Later that week, the improving C9 went to Kiev for Starladder i-League Starseries Season 2 Finals, their first international event since the “off-season”. The Americans were able to top their group, admittedly beating EnVyUs and VG.Cyberzen in BO1s isn’t that impressive, but they did it in a dominant fashion only losing 12 rounds in two maps. Cloud9 got the weakest team from the second seed pool going into the quarterfinals and beat FlipSid3 2-1 to advance to semifinals. The momentum of the Americans was seized by the Swedish Ninjas in Pyjamas who ended up winning the whole tournament. Despite getting top 4 at this tournament it’s still is underwhelming. They didn’t beat any top teams to get there and actually got destroyed when they did face one.

The next weekend the Americans attended DreamHack ZOWIE Open Bucharest where again they topped their group by beating out FlipSid3 and the more impressive FaZe, only dropping 12 rounds in two maps. Cloud9 faced EnVyUs in the semifinals and this time it was a closer affair with the French where they clinched the series 2-1. None of the 3 maps were close themselves though. In the final, Cloud9 faced VP who had just come in last place at the Starladder event and again, under a top team, the Americans crumbled and lost 2-0 against the Poles.

Cloud9 finished in first place for NA Pro League with a 25-1 record and at the moment have a 6-0 record on ECS Season 2. Needless to say that Cloud9 has problems with the top teams of the world on LAN, but the good news for them is that there are no real top teams in their group and they have been consistently beat equal or lesser competition, aside from the loss to Immortals at Northern Arena. It’s safe to say that Cloud9 will make it out of the group, but they do have to face a dangerous FaZe, Immortals, and NiKo.

FaZe

In the process of writing this there was a “spoiler” in a periscope by ELEAGUE for their media day where you can see Karrigan with the FaZe team. Astralis then announced the release of Karrigan to FaZe, I assume he will be the new in-game-leader; that with a better awper in allu can be good news. No one had a doubt in their mind that fox has been underwhelming as a sniper. I mostly am going to be looking at the past lineup leading up and mention Karrigan only a bit since we can’t really know what will happen.

The first event that FaZe went to since the switch was SLTV Starseries Finals where they came 9-12th place after losing to FlipSid3 in the decider BO3 series. The team didn’t manage to get through the groups which is a repeated story for this core. jkaem was the best player at this event and aizy didn’t do so bad when he completely destroyed FlipSid3 in the opening match. Having a player be the best in a series and still losing is a sign of lack of teamwork. This team lacks having any kind of synergy since they don’t have a good leader at the moment. Everyone thought having RobbaN would help the team, but results say otherwise.

Their next LAN event was DreamHack Bucharest where, again, they failed to make it out of groups, however at least lost to a better team this time. FaZe got destroyed in the decider match against dignitas only picking up a total of 13 rounds in 2 maps. As a whole the team looked horrible with only getting more than 8 rounds in the opening match against dignitas where they won. With them having results like these and managing to go 18-8 on Pro League tells you where they do well and where they don’t. Online versus on LAN.

The addition of Karrigan makes things better for the FaZe team though. They already have the skill, but everyone has been stressing that what this team needs is a good leader. They needed a tactician who can use each player to their full potential in a more systematic way. There’s not much to do, but speculate about how this team will do now. There could be a lack of practice going to this event, however beyond ELEAGUE this team should start to improve.

Immortals

Immortals has only been to one LAN event, which they won, in the past two months, but it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know. Sure beating Cloud9, considering their current form, to win the tournament was impressive, but Immortals has always thrived against NA competition, even when they had SHOOWTiME. Looking at this team though they should have better chances than before.

Immortals wasn’t a bad team when they had SHOOWTiME, but they were very inconsistent. For instance, everyone thought that they would make the major in Cologne, but failed to get through the qualifier. Then the next week they won DreamHack Summer beating NiP in the final. It was hard to predict the team and if I was to point a finger at someone, it would’ve been SHOOWTiME. He was pretty bad on Immortals, but at least the is improving on Luminosity. Then comes in zews.

If I were to compare zews and SHOOWTiME based on stats then I would say that they’re no different, but in reality zews brings more to the table. Having been the coach for the best team in the world has it’s weight since zews was strategically involved with SK Gaming, despite Fallen being IGL. Since he has that experience, it is possible for him to take on the role of being IGL instead of boltz. Taking that burden off boltz can let him frag and be the consistent player this team needs him to be. With SHOOWTiME on the lineup it really was just a matter of time before he was replaced. He didn’t bring anything tactical to the table and was a less of an impact player. Not much LAN has been seen from this team in a while, but they’re definitely not a team you just disregard. Immortals is capable of topping the group and I would be far from surprised if they did.

The group will be played out this weekend from October 21st – 22nd.