BLAST looks to be one of the better events in the calendar year for CS:GO. It is set in Copenhagen, Denmark which has become the most important CS country in the world. As a region they have produced more CS talent than any other single country in CS:GO and two such teams will be in attendance with Astralis and North. But the biggest story at this LAN will be the battle between the four leaders I consider the best in the world: Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, Finn “karrigan” Andersen, Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander, and Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen.

The concept of how to rate a leader is subjective. We can see the tactics, but there is no universal way to grade them against each other. There are too many other factors that come into play like what players are on the team, the individual form of the day, the internal communications. For instance, I believe that both Fatih “gob b” Dayik and Kevin “Ex6TenZ” Droolans could be among the best leaders in the world, if they had the players. Because of that, I used a baseline of the top 10 teams in the world and these four stood out amongst the rest.

SK - FalleN

FalleN’s leadership style is unique and is informed by his own experiences from raising up the Brazilian scene. When there were no more leaders, he became one. When there was no one left to teach CS to the next generation, he founded Games Academy. This becomes a critical point later on in his career as his team first tasted international success as KaBuM.TD (later on known as Keyd Stars and Luminosity). He started out as a tactical and structured in-game leader and Lumonsity became a strong upset team, but couldn’t get much deeper.

At Faceit Stage 3 finals, the team made a roster shuffle and with no time to prepare they had to play loose. It worked out as the team made it to their first grand finals on a large international event. This was a revelation for FalleN as he realized he could trust his team to do the right moves relative to their roles so long as they learned how he understood CS. His team learned the basics from him and each understood their own strengths and how to focus those strengths into the overall team identity. This is why explaining whether or not SK have a loose/structured style is a conundrum. Every individual player on the team is making their own decisions, but they are all decisions informed by the way FalleN believes the game should be played.

The ideas of space creation, powerplay, small man scenarios, running down the clock, and map position are all ideas that every player in the team agrees on and understands on a micro level of their own position and a macro level of how their role affects the rest of the map. FalleN is a professor of the highest order who blurs the lines between what it means to be a structured team and a loose team.

FaZe - Karrigan

The most important virtue that any competitive player can have is greed. To want more, to be more, to be willing to do what it takes to get to the next level. And this has been Karrigan’s guiding light as a leader. He wants it all. He wants the authority, the map pool, the players, and both loose/structure styles of play. When he was on Astralis in 2016, he didn’t just want the team to stick to the structured style, but he also wanted them to play more explosively so that they could change the pace at the drop of a hat. This clashed with what the rest of the team wanted and they were forced to split apart.

He was then picked up on FaZe and immediately showed his strength of understanding of both CS and players. FaZe had been a team full of skilled players since day one, but no one had ever been able to make them a cohesive whole. In CS, there had never been a mixed team where every player on the lineup was from a different country and background, but that was the challenge that FaZe gave Karrigan. It was a puzzle, one that no leader had ever bothered to try. But every challenge has a reward, in this case Karrigan could say he was the first leader to ever do this and thus he joined the FaZe roster.

He solved the puzzle in 3 days. After joining the roster with no time to practice, he got the team into workable condition and despite a horrendous travel schedule, he constantly fixed and improved the team as time went on. FaZe were a strong team, but they needed more. An international mix will always suffer in terms of teamplay and comms because of the basic cultural understandings between players and so the natural answer was to get more skill.

Karrigan then got Nikola “NiKo” Kovac and again he had no time to figure out how the roster would work. Again he figured it out in days as they got to the finals of their first event. FaZe became one of the top three teams in the world and though they lost at the Major they were still among the top teams and there was no reason to make a switch.

But Karrigan wanted more and he got both Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs and Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer to join FaZe. Since then they have looked to be the team to beat in the CS:GO scene and Karrigan looks to expand the map pool even further and to introduce structure into the team to get his vision of CS to it’s highest potential.

As for style, I think Karrigan is the best at calling a mid-round adaption. Watching him call can sometimes give whiplash as it looks like every player is in position to crunch a site, but he gets info that it’s stack or the other side is clear and he immediately calls for the team to switch. Decisive and explosive are Karrigan’s calling cards as a leader.

Astralis - gla1ve

When we talk about classic in-game leaders, the X’s and O’s guy, the one who will make a critical call at a critical moment that will lead a team to victory, gla1ve is the first one that comes to mind. He was involved early on in the scene and looked to be a prime talent, but wasn’t as much into it. It was understandable as there wasn’t as career potential in it back then as there is now.

But the itch got to him and as the scene started to grow, he wanted to find a way back. He slowly built himself up as a player, specifically pointing to Nicolai “HUNDEN” Petersen as one of the players he learned from a lot. So when the time came for Astralis to make a change in leadership, he was called up and immediately got things rolling for the team upon his arrival.

As a leader it’s clear that he has a set structure and role that he wants everyone in his team to play. If every team works their role well, he will create and setup a tactic or execute that will net them the win regardless of who is on the other side of the server. Because of this and the inherent core teamplay of Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, Peter “dupreeh” Rothmann, and Andreas “xyp9x” Hojsleth they have become the most tactical team in the world that relies on smarts, teamplay, strategy and tactics to win. It’s no surprise that this team wants the extra month to prepare for a large event and that even though as a team their firepower is lacking compared to the likes of SK or FaZe, they have the caliber to beat anyone.

North - MSL

Among all of the CS:GO leaders in the world, MSL’s style speaks to a bold, almost reckless confidence. But when you look at his career as a leader, it’s justified. He was in the farming purgatory of CS:GO leaders. A state of being in which you are the second or third best team in a particular region and right as you are about to ascend to the next level your star player is farmed out.

This happened twice for MSL as he lost Philip “aizy” Aistrup to G2 (what we now know as FaZe) and Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjaerbye to Astralis. But both instances and lineups show MSL’s incredible ability to raise skilled talents into world players. He has consistently found a way to implement his structured style of play and get his team a strong map pool.

His biggest quirk and the one that shows his level of confidence is his map pick-ban philosophy. Even though his team has a wide map pool that they can play on, if given the choice he will always pick his team’s best map even if it is also the opponent’s best map. In this way he differs from many of the other top leaders in that he believes his team will win in a strength vs. strength matchup. It’s bold and makes it harder to win through this method, but it shows a level of confidence in his team. This style of leadership means that his teams will always take the harder road to beat the better teams in the world, but at the same time it denies the chance of surprise as no enemy leader will deny their own best pick to deny MSL’s best pick.

But when you look at the individual games on the T-side of MSL teams, you can’t deny that he is one of, if not the best at running his T-sides where leaders have the most impact in the game.

At BLAST we will see all four in-game leaders in action. FalleN’s vision of the game is reflected into each of his teammates. Karrigan constructed his team to be filled with all-stars and players that are as greedy as he is with the ambition to take it all. Gla1ve’s tactical mastery and teamwork is a well honed machine that shows their incredible grasp of CS theory. MSL’s confidence and bold T-sides is reflected in his own team. Each leader’s ideas about CS has refracted into the teams they lead and now the four best in-game leaders in the world will do battle at BLAST.