NA Shuffle: Part 1 - An overview and analysis

Once again the North American CS:GO scene is going through a "shuffle," a term used to describe a period of time during which top teams drop, sign, and trade certain players with other teams, until a point is reached where the scene looks noticably different in terms of rosters. Many teams were affected by the shuffle this time around, including the top 3 teams in the region: Cloud9, Counter Logic Gaming, and Team Liquid. In this feature, we will be analyzing the moves that each team has made during the shuffle.

Cloud9 has been at the top of North American CS:GO since the organization joined the scene, when they picked up the core of compLexity Gaming in 2014. About a month ago, Sean "[email protected]" Gares, the team's ingame leader, said that he was leaving the team and taking an indefinite break from professional Counter-Strike. For those few months, Cloud9 often used Braxton "swag" Pierce, who would likely be a frontrunner to replace Gares were he not banned from playing at VALVE-sponsored events, along with most large tournaments, due to matchfixing.

On January 11th, Cloud9 announced that they had signed Jake "Stewie2k" Yip, a relatively new player to the scene. Before Cloud9, Yip was a part of the old SPLYCE (formerly Follow eSports) roster, before the team disbanded. This pickup follows a trend that Cloud9 has shown, which is taking risks on less proven players. They did this when the organization first picked up the team, by adding Mike "shroud" Grzesiek to the former compLexity Gaming core, who at the time was not considered to be fit for a top international team by many fans. Cloud9 did this again last summer, when Ryan "fREAKAZOiD" Abadir became the team's entry fragger. He has not played Counter Strike at a high level since Counter-Strike: Source, and most people did not even think that Abadir was anywhere on Cloud9's radar for recruitment. He proved to be good at his job, and while he was not one of the best entry fraggers in the world, he did better than expected.

It is rumored that Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert will be the team's new ingame leader, but the team is also looking for a coach, who will probably be the person who is calling the strategies during and before the rounds. Right now, Cloud9's current team composition is:

Jordan "nothing" Gilbert

Ryan "fREAKAZOiD" Abadir

Mike "shroud"Grzesiek

Jake "Stewie2k" Yip

Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham

Counter Logic Gaming's CS:GO team became well known after qualifying for MLG X Games: Aspen in early 2015 and performing better than anyone expected them to. They were much less affected by the shuffle than some other teams, only losing a single player, Pujan "FNS" Mehta. Mehta was their ingame leader when he left the team, and was considered their weakest player for a while.

On January 20th, CLG signed Jacob "FugLy" Medina, who was replaced by Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostylev on Team Liquid. Stephen "reltuC" Cutler will probably be the team's ingame leader, since he was the shot caller earlier in 2015. CLG's current roster is:

Stephen "reltuC" Cutler

James "Hazed" Cobb

Tarik "tarik" Celik

Josh "jdm64" Marzano

Jacob "FugLy" Medina

Enemy are an up-and-coming North American team who most recently won the MLG North American Minor. They dropped Jared "Anomaly" Simmons, who has been with Enemy ever since they first picked up the Tempo Gaming lineup on June 4th 2015. This change has not proven to be bad for the team, since they won the MLG Minor over teams such as Splyce, OpTic Gaming, and Obey Alliance, who had a surprisingly strong performance, led by Kenneth "koosta" Suen. Their stand in, Richard "Lucky" Vasconcelos, did not look too good in the tournament, despite his team's performance. He is only a temporary stand in therefore there is no true way to predict how the team will perform until we know who the final member is. What we do know, however, is who the lineup currently consists of:

Kenneth "koosta" Suen

Michael "Uber" Stapells

Skyler "Relyks" Weaver

Michael "MAiNLiNE" Jaber

Richard "Lucky" Vasconcelos (temporary stand-in)

Denial eSports won the last season of ESEA's Premier League, which was the gateway to their Professional League for non-professional teams. In any season previous to this, they would have been instantly invited to the ESEA Professional League, but this year there was a new rule that created a relegation match between the top of the Premier League and the bottom of the Pro League. Denial lost this relegation match to Winterfox, which disqualified them for the Pro League, causing them to disband as a roster.

Ed "fruit" Zhu announced his departure, and retirement from competitive CS:GO in the same tweet. Two of their players, Hunter "SicK" Mims and Daniel "vice" Kim, are now on Team SoloMid's new CS:GO squad, after they lost their Danish team, who are now Astralis. Josh "shinobi" Abastado, the disbanded team's captain, is now on the revamped comLexity Gaming lineup. Witmer has not officially retired from competitive play, but he is not on any active teams at the moment. This would be the point where there is a list of the current roster members, but there is no roster, hence no list.

compLexity Gaming is one of the most successful eSports organizations in North American Counter-Strike history. Their original CS:GO team went all the way to the semifinals of the first VALVE-sponsored tournament. They lost that roster to Cloud9 in late 2014, but picked up Maximum Effort's CS:GO team a little more than a year later. This disappointed many fans, since this team seemed to be a big step down from the first lineup that became Cloud9.

The new team lasted a few months, but in November, Soham "valens" Chowdhury announced that he was leaving the team so that he could focus on his job at Google. A month later, Danny "fRoD" Montaner, one of the greatest 1.6 AWPers ever, joined the team, while Tim "autimatic" Ta and Kory "Semphis" Friesen left the team, not announcing where they were going, but ended up joining TSM together. Jason Lake, the founder of compLexity, announced that they would be rebuilding the roster around one of the shining potentials of North America, Daniel "roca" Gustaferri.

On January 19th, it was revealed that Matt "Warden" Dickens was becoming the team's coach, with ex-Denial player Josh "shinobi" Abastado and the British Rory "dephh" Jackson filling up the fourth and fifth spots on compLexity. CompLexity Gaming's latest CS:GO roster is:

Danny "fRoD" Montaner

Daniel "roca" Gustaferri

Joshua "sancz" Ballenger

Josh "shinobi" Abastado

Rory "dephh" Jackson