The inaugural CS:GO Asia Championships will commence on 14th June 2018 in Shanghai, China. The 8-team event will have East meet West, with 3 Asian teams meeting 5 Western teams. Only 3 teams will make the playoffs, as 5 are eliminated in the double-elimination group stage. A US$300,000 prizepool awaits the teams, with half of that going to the victors. Here’s your guide to the 8 teams that are participating in just a few days!

The favourites

Natus Vincere

Danylo ‘Zeus’ Teslenko should be pleased with the last three months with his Russo-Ukranian team. He has finally put together a team composition ‘born to win’. Although Ioann ‘Edward’ Sukhariev has been getting flack as a support, he is definitely giving the necessary info to his teammates and has been able to clutch out rounds. Egor ‘flamie’ Vasilev has been slightly more enigmatic, some rounds serving as support and on other rounds being the third star.

Denis ‘electronic’ Sharipov was finally in his element; as a star. The beginning stint with Na’Vi saw him placed in a full support role – a bizarre decision. But after February, the 19-year-old has been on fire as the second star right behind Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev. The duo have gotten 1.22 and 1.37 ratings, respectively.

The hunt for a 16-team tournament title ended for Na’Vi after 1056 days. Na’Vi had gotten oh-so-close to a trophy at ESL Pro League finals, WESG finals, StarSeries i-League S4, and DreamHack Marseille. At the most recent StarSeries, the team made the playoffs and breezed through to the finalsm beating NRG handily in the final.

If flamie can find his consistency, Na’Vi will be the heavy favourites for the Chinese crown. It is worth mentioning that Edward and Zeus must pick up their slack as well, but in a competition with so little tier 1 competition, it’s not a requirement in any case. With or without their contribution, they are the team to beat, and it seems like the only thing stopping them right now are internal troubles.

Ninjas in Pyjamas

With the addition of Dennis ‘dennis’ Edman, the fallen Swedish giants were anticipated to make a comeback to the top echelon of CS. This hasn’t quite happened, as the team struggle with consistency within their lineup. Yet, they are still one of the favourites for the CAC title, even after a roster change.

Patrik ‘f0rest’ Lindberg was proclaimed as a pistol god in the CS1.6 era, and teamed up with dennis, people expected great things from NiP on the pistol rounds. However, at StarSeries, NiP only won 9 of the 22 pistol rounds they participated in. f0rest was still in form, as he garnered the highest rating on NiP at 1.19. Fredrik ‘REZ’ Sterner has now cemented their status on the team, with REZ not far behind f0rest in terms of impact.

William ‘draken’ Sundin’s AWP was not excellent, as the 22-year-old missed many vital shots that would’ve changed the rounds against AGO and mousesports. Thus, he was dropped from the active lineup, as Jonas ‘Lekr0’ Olofsson joined from fnatic on 5th June. Dennis will likely take the AWP in draken’s stead. Christopher ‘GeT_RiGhT’ Alesund had a subpar tournament. However, it was dennis who was the prime disappointment on NiP this time around, only having two positive games out of 11.

NiP are missing teamwork, co-ordination and the consistent ability to clutch rounds from GeT_RiGhT and dennis. These skills are necessary to beat teams like Astralis, FaZe and, mousesports to move into the top tier of CS. With the addition of Lekr0, the team chemistry is once again shaken up. Roles still haven’t been defined as of yet and it remains to be seen where all the puzzle pieces fit. In this state, NiP don’t look like a cohesive team, yet it would be hard to bet against them being in the playoffs.

TyLoo

The fallen Captain, Ke ‘Mo’ Liu, legendarily lost his balance, injured his pelvis and fractured femur. His comrades are still forging on with Hansel ‘BnTeT’ Ferdinand’s continued stewardship, but results have been choppy in the waters for SS TyLoo. The recent StarSeries ended poorly, only picking up a victory against Na’Vi in the first match.

Yue ‘AE’ Yu has struggled as the stand-in for Mo, pushing Kevin ‘xccurate’ Susanto out of the AWP role, but both players found a below average rating of 0.85. BnTeT had to focus on his IGL duties and lost his star power in the process. Hui ‘DD’ Wu and Haowen ‘somebody’ Xu have not been consistent enough to fulfill the star roles within the team. That is a huge problem when there is no one within the team to push TyLoo forward.

TyLoo’s struggles are expected with a team fielding a stand-in. Yet, the most worrying issue for this team is the manner in which they lost. Bar one map, all of their losses were single-digit scorelines. Post-IEM Sydney, it seemed like more teams were paying attention to the Chinese team’s executes as the team slumbered. Their 3rd place, and group stage win against Na’Vi, made many top 30 teams wary of them.

If all goes to plan, TyLoo will return to favourite status in this tournament, against lower tier teams like MVP.PK, EnVyUs and ViCi. Their most likely placing would be either 3rd or 4th, either barely scraping into the playoffs or missing it by a hair. AE’s form as the stand-in is one determining factor. The other is…

Virtus.pro

…the form of Filip ‘NEO’ Kubski’s ever-present Virtus.pro. Since picking up Michał ‘MICHU’ Müller, the results for VP have not lived up to expectations. In retrospect, the expectations were a little too high. However, having only participated in one offline final (V4 Future Sports Festival in Budapest), it is fair to say the Polish five have underperformed.

Janusz ‘Snax’ Pogorzelski is a far cry from the top 5 player he was in 2015 and 2016. However, his hybrid skill still see him atop the VP hierarchy, with the most kills. He is tied in rating with Jarosław ‘pashaBiceps’ Jarząbkowski and Paweł ‘byali’ Bieliński. Nothing to write home about byali’s performance, though it should be noted he is doing his job to get the necessary trades.

In this iteration of VP, pashaBiceps and MICHU have taken entry-fragger duties. The AWPer, pasha, has found more success with an opening kill ratio of 1.20, compared to MICHU’s 0.93. However, Snax and byali more than make up for MICHU’s flaws. The problem has been, and will likely continue to be, NEO’s inability to frag.

Although his calls have been decent (proved by the other four’s ability to frag), NEO himself has been troubled to find even one frag a round. Of 2701 rounds in the last three months, he has only been able to find kills in 1111 (41.1%) rounds. That’s very troubling, and the kill/death ratio backs it up. -389 to the four players’ 96 is a tremendous amount of NEO deaths that the team must overcome.

Even so, Virtus.pro still look possible to make it into the playoffs. NEO is possibly the deciding factor, but if he shows up, the worry is that other players will sink as a result. It’s a symptom that has sunk many promising teams such as Gambit and EnVyUs. North has pulled out of it for the most part, but NEO will make it his priority to keep everyone’s heads cooled and primed for a good run.

The challengers

Heroic



With the recent departures of Marco ‘Snappi’ Pfeifer and Jakob ‘JUGi’ Hansen, Heroic are in a state of rebuilding. Ruben ‘RUBINO’ Villaroel has been out of the lineup due to medical reasons, but will be making his return in Shanghai.

The new arrangement with Andreas ‘MODDII’ Fridh as player-coach has given the Scandinavian squad some leadership depth. The team achieved surprising results with Norwegian rifler, Jorgen ‘cromen’ Robertsen as stand-in, placing just outside the playoffs at ESL Pro League finals and semi-finals at DreamHack Austin.

Patrick ‘es3tag’ Hansen and Nikolaj ‘niko’ Kristensen are the two Danes who remain, as time away for es3tag didn’t seem to hinder his rifling skills. Niko has been the headline act for this team thus far, with the highest rating at 1.07. Former NiP point man, Adam ‘friberg’ Friberg, has not been a mad fragger for Heroic, but likely contributes with calls owing to his experience in top-level CS.

The absence of JUGi has lowered firepower for Heroic, but the team is still expected to contend for a top-4 spot. The team appear to have good strategy and teamwork, but the raw aim is a stumbling block for them. Niko’s prowess with the Deagle will be crucial in force-buy outcomes. With the shaky form of TyLoo and Virtus.pro, Heroic are best placed to fight for the playoffs, ahead of all the other challengers below.

MVP.PK

MVP.PK tried to build some hype for their Korean faithful, but in recent times the cheers have died down. The stagnation of MVP became apparent after a last place finish at ESL Pro League finals, following a 9-12th placing at IEM Sydney.

Like Team EnVyUs, the ability to breeze through important qualifiers has deserted them. The team failed to qualify for StarSeries I-League S5 and ESL One Cologne. Min-seok ‘zeff’ Park and co. were unable to participate in the Asia Minor this time around, as the open qualifiers were held as MVP were still in Dallas, losing to Japanese minnows Ignis with 200 ping.

Zeff has been crucial to the team as the entry fragger, and his high-impact kills have often turned the round in MVP’s favour. Hyun-pyo ‘XigN’ Lee has also shown himself vital to the Korean scene, as he’s the pointman getting most of the kills. XigN has gotten at least a kill, in nearly half of his LAN rounds played. Min-soo ‘glow’ Kim, the support player, has been struggling to show up against Western teams, with only 2 positive ratings in the last three months.

Hae-Sung ‘HSK’ Kim has been traded off the team in favour of Seon-ho ‘minixeta’ Son from GOSU. In HSK’s absence, Keun-chul ‘solo’ Kang wields the AWP. It is unknown who will continue in the AWP role going forward but a new arrival to the team will hinder MVP’s chances.

Bearing that in mind, MVP may fight for a better group stage placing. They have good chemistry even accounting for minixeta’s arrival and the team chemistry aspect along with XigN’s rifling, puts them at least on par with EnVyUs and VG.Flash. Playoffs look near-impossble, for MVP struggles against western teams.

Team EnVyUs

A team that is in serious trouble, falling out of Esports Championship Series, and ESL Pro League. That is EnVyUs, who currently find themselves without any strengths. Being relegated from these two online leagues shows how much this organization has fallen. That is not the biggest concern at the moment, however.

Rumours have abounded that in-game leader Vincent ‘Happy’ Schopenhauer, along with Cedric ‘RpK’ Guipouy, are no longer on EnVy’s active roster. Currently, there has been no communication from the players and EnVy on the CS:GO Asia Championships, suggesting there may be some truth to this rumour. HLTV.org confirmed with the tournament organizers that EnVyUs will be fielding Alexandre ‘xms’ Forté and Christophe ‘SIXER’ Xia, instead of Happy and RpK.

The lack of results the last two years have been under Happy’s leadership. Even so in 2017, they reached 13th in the rankings due to their prowess online in qualifiers. They qualified for a variety of tournaments in late summer, but so far in 2018, they have been unable to replicate this form. RpK has not come back to form, dying more than getting kills overall,with 1269 kills to 1465 deaths in the last three months.

Ali ‘hAdji’ Haïnouss hasn’t been setting the world on fire, however it appears he has a natural talent for clutches. In the past three months, he won 16 1v1 clutches out of 26, and has not been defeated in 1v2 and 1v3 situations. Adil ‘ScreaM’ Benrlitom’s opening ratio is below average at 0.96, compared to Happy’s 1.38, showing a lack of structure within the team. Fabien ‘KioShiMa’ Fiey has been performing decently with a 1.02 rating recently, but it hasn’t been enough.

With the roster in flux, potentially bringing back xms and SIXER into the fold, do not look for EnVyUs to challenge. Their most likely placing is last, scrapping with VG.Flash to avoid embarrassment. In the potential absence of Happy, there really is no leader in the French squad to guide the team through their darkest times.

VG.Flash

The genesis of the Chinese superteam, VG.Flash, hasn’t gone as expected. Although the team won the WCA 2017 finals, it has been rough tidings ever since. The first LAN tournament abroad ended in disaster as they were knocked out of StarSeries i-League Season 5 with a 0-3 record and last place, albeit against SK, Natus Vincere, and NRG, some of the best teams in their regions.

The team has been hamstrung by their poor decision-making and sub-par strategies. This was best shown in the second map against SK, where they had a 1 round lead going into the last regulation round. The team decided to push the B site without utility to flush the Brazilians out. They lost the crucial round and the overtime rounds that succeeded it.

The entries of Yuanzhang ‘Attacker’ Sheng and Wing Hei ‘Freeman’ Cheung were deadly in StarSeries, and Yulun ‘Summer’ Cai did well as the IGL AWPer. However, Kunhua ‘LOVEYY’ Bai and Weijie ‘zhokiNg’ Zhong were the weak points of the team. LOVEYY’s only positive map came in VG’s only map win against SK and his entry fragging was not up to par, only finding 11 opening kills and instead dying 18 times. zhokiNg was the main reason the team couldn’t achieve more rounds against a shaky Na’Vi, averaging a 0.55 rating across 2 maps.

As such, do not look for VG.Flash to make the playoffs. This team is in a terrible place right now and do not have the mental fortitude to recover from lost rounds. It appears that to have a chance of anything going right, the team will need to have some lucky draws like EnVyUs going their way. A home setting in ViCi’s headquarters of Shanghai will mean little for them, as the team suffers from mindset and co-ordination problems. The last tournament showed that it will be a ways away from China fielding a top-tier CS team, able to beat western teams consistently. This trend looks to continue and will likely be the case for the next couple of years.