Ninjas in Pyjamas’ qualification for FACEIT London, the 13th CS:GO major, comes following a three major drought without an appearance. Strange times for players like GeT_RiGhT and f0rest, hall of fame bound legends of the game and who played in the first five major finals in a row, winning one along the way. This is the story of NiP at the majors and packs more twists and turns than the best Hollywood thriller.

Part one is the tale of how then the greatest team in CS:GO history overcame two initial heartbreaks at the majors to eventually take the title in the most unexpected and unlikely fashion.

Part two picks up with NiP still in the midst of their epic streak of major runs, reaching two more finals and battling LDLC and FNATIC for championships in an era those two had been conducting a private fight over, seemingly.

Part three sees NiP no longer reaching the finals, eventually relegated from even playing at the majors and forced to battle through the wilderness of online Closed Qualifiers for the Minor.

The slump claims a victim

NiP’s inspired run to the ESL One Cologne 2014 title, securing the coveted major title in their third finals appearance, had seen the squad squeezing every epic play they could out of their big names, scraping past smaller names but more in-form teams and having to survive a dreadful -72 and 0.46 Kill Per Round (KPR) performance from fifflaren. The support player had always been the weakest fragger in the team and had finished with worse statistics than the others, but the last few months had seen his performance nosedive further. It was a sign that while NiP had accomplished their greatest single tournament feat, they were far from safe and the lurking danger that their slump prior to the major showed something fundamentally wrong with the team would soon again manifest.

The Ninjas entered their worst run of form to date. In online play they would fail to qualify for offline finals or outright exit the league, in an era where competing in FACEIT, ESEA and fragbite Masters was still a big deal for top teams and the route to determining which tournaments one would appear in the coming months, with CS:GO prize money still far from gigantic. At the second Dreamhack Invitational, again held in NiP’s home country of Sweden, in Stockholm, they were beaten in the group stage by the brand new LDLC and Titan line-ups. At ESWC, on French soil, GeT_RiGhT and company would receive their greatest humiliation to date, not only failing to progress from the group stage but being destroyed 16:1 on dust2 by Titan and even losing to the lowly Platinium, an unknown French side who never went on to accomplish anything of note in this tournament or any future one.

On November 3rd, a day after ESWC as an event finished, it was announced that Fifflaren would leave NiP. With the major at the end of the month speculation swirled as to who NiP would add to complete the line-up. Names like twist and Delpan were raised, but NiP would plump for Maikelele, the aggressive AWPer of the early LGB teams they had faced in late 2013 and whose SK Gaming line-up had been able to take a map from them at Dreamhack Summer 2014. With no tournament leading into the major, NiP were gambling their chance to defend their title on an unproven five man line-up. Many were understandably sceptical.

Warming up as they go – Dreamhack Winter 2014 (2nd)

Returning to the site of their original major heart-break, Dreamhack Winter, NiP began the group stage of the fourth CS:GO major with an easy win over then unknown nex’s Planetkey Dynamics. In the winner’s match they faced the post-shuffle LDLC of shox, NBK and Happy, losing 13:16 on overpass to the same squad who had eliminated them from the Dreamhack Invitational II. In the decider for the final play-off spot from the group NiP faced the Polish ESC and found themselves surprised to be locked into a tense battle to continue in the competition, with the cache game being close late and the Ninjas having to grind out a 16:13 win to continue their play-off appearance streak. An ominous start for the new look line-up of the reigning major champions.

NiP’s first round opponent was HellRaisers, a familiar core of players who dated back to the Virtus.pro who had given NiP their first losses and the later Astana Dragons who had helped keep them off the throne with VeryGames. This was a HellRaisers with a difference, though, as the addition of a barely 16 year phenom called s1mple had added a new level of threat to a CIS squad who in 2014 had no rarely been contenders for big trophies, as had been the case in past years. HellRaisers had already defeated tournament favourites FNATIC and one of the Swedes’ home maps of mirage, with young s1mple top-fragging. In light of NiP’s loss to LDLC and tough battle with ESC, many anticipated NiP’s first ever quarter-finals elimination, including former player Fifflaren, who was making his appearance on the analysis desk.

In fact, NiP faced very little threat from s1mple and company in the series, annihilating their former rivals in a quick and clean 2:0 series, giving up only 11 rounds total over both maps. The primary factor of this dominant decimation had been f0rest and GeT_RiGhT going a combined +50 and f0rest even dropping 30 on the decisive inferno. s1mple was the future, but f0rest was still the present and the message was sent and received.

Epic battles ensue

The semi-finals drew a familiar opponent, as NiP found themselves opposite the very same Virtus.pro line-up that had crushed them in Katowice. Katowice was long gone for the Ninjas, though, and memories of defeating the Poles in Bo3 series after that, at Copenhagen Games and StarSeries IX, made a revenge story-line for the Swedes less pressing. VP had not lived up to the potential hinted at in Katowice, never truly capturing the top spot, but had settled in as one of the world’s elite sides and a difficult team to get past in a Bo3 series. Routine top four finishes ensured no team looked past the Poles in a bracket stage. At Dreamhack they had been in blistering form, going 32:4 in rounds to easily escape their group, which had contained Na`Vi, and giving PENTA, who had qualified in part due to Titan being disqualified from their group prior to the tournament, a 16:9 and 16:5 beat-down. Fifflaren again went with form and picked against NiP to make it to the next stage of the tournament.

That pick looked dead on the money in the opening map, NiP’s pick of nuke. Virtus.pro were up 15:7 on the T side and many were looking ahead and speculating as to whether or not they would close out the series on cache next. NiP had more to say still, though, and it would be friberg, chief conjurer of “NiP magic” who showed his fighting spirit as he summoned a titanic 46 kills and +22 performance on the map overall to steal away an over-time victory from NEO’s squad. VP corrected for their error in that game with a convincing 16:9 win on cache, their pick and a map they had shown mastery on over the last few months, and it was off to the deciding inferno.

The decider was NiP’s first chance in the series to take control and they were rarely threatened, running the game up to 16:8 and reaching their fourth straight major final. The hero for the series was the aforementioned friberg, whose +19 was more incredible that it might appear on paper due to his entry fragging role and it accompanying 80 frags for the series, with two maps being relatively quick to balance out the epic nuke over-time war. New man Maikelele had been fairly quiet throughout the tournament, but his streaky AWPing style had given NiP a new dynamic to play around and then the established mainstays had done the heavy-lifting to once again grant the squad a chance at major glory.

In the final of the tournament NiP faced a rematch of their group stage loss, seeing Happy’s LDLC sitting opposite them on the stage. The French shuffle had sent out every member but Happy of the line-up NiP had narrowly denied a finals spot at ESL One Cologne, with this new look LDLC instead having a history of victories over the Ninjas and having surpassed them as a squad. LDLC had been forced to play second fiddle to FNATIC, including three second places behind the Swedes, but were clearly locked in as the second best team in Counter-Strike and following the controversial but enthralling quarter-final series against said FNATIC, ending with the infamous olofboost and FNATIC’s forfeiture, LDLC were clear favourites for the title now.

Photo finish

The series began on dust2, LDLC’s pick and a map they had won four of their last five games on, including a win over FNATIC and with the sole loss being at the hands of FNATIC, Counter-Strike’s dominant force. A strong 9:6 T half for NiP would have been enough to set them up for a win against most teams, but the skill-stacked French side put on a clinic of aggressive T side play, racking up the requisite 10 T rounds to take the map in only 11 rounds played on the offensive side. Now the series would move over to inferno, NiP’s pick.

Having defeated HellRaisers and Virtus.pro with ease, the new NiP line-up had decided this was their new home map. The Swedes’ threat level should have been at its highest, though, as LDLC were monsters on the map, having won 15 of their 17 games on it offline with their line-up, even having beaten FNATIC on it, considered the world’s best inferno team. What should have been a classic, as the French fought to close the series and the major and f0rest and company battled to extend to a third map, instead became NiP’s most dominant display of the play-off thusfar. On the back of a high impact performance from Maikelele, NiP brutalised LDLC 16:4 and stormed into the decider.

The series and the major victor would be determined on overpass, the map the two teams had played in the group stage and which had gone to LDLC 16:13. The randomiser had done NiP no favours selecting the map, as the Ninjas had not embraced the new map, which had only been introduced at ESL One Cologne, along with the infamous original version of cbblestone. With Fifflaren they had only gone 1:1, winning and losing against HellRaisers. With Maikelele, they had crushed PkD and lost narrowly to LDLC. Then again, LDLC could hardly be bursting with confidence in the map as a source of comfort, themselves being only 4:4, albeit with their losses being to strong teams on the map like Na`Vi and Virtus.pro.

Much as with NiP’s Cologne run deciders on cbblestone, the series would be determined by which team could adapt on the fly and hold their nerve, with neither team too comfortable on the map itself. At this time, overpass, which had yet to be reworked, was heavily CT sided, making grinding out T rounds a difficulty for all levels of teams. NiP showed as much with a lock-down 11:4 CT half. Early in the second half, the Ninjas had the game at 13:7 and chances looked strong to take the trophy, needing only three of the next 10 rounds. The problem was that LDLC, just like FNATIC, were capable of running up big CT halves, being so loaded with talent. The French side would not break and began clawing back rounds.

As the match seemed to be slipping from NiP, the Swedes finally broke through and found crucial round wins. Suddenly they had reached championship point with two rounds to be played. One more successful T side push and the title would be theirs, completing the miracle run and debut of Maikelele, who was delivering a strong performance on the map, to match his previous effort on inferno. LDLC held strong and the game was pushed into over-time. Over-time saw NiP win one T round of the three played, leaving them needing a perfect 3:0 CT hold to take the crown. The French side were not to be denied, though, and secured the necessary two T rounds to snatch away the title in a game in which they had reached match point only one round before winning outright. Notable was the performance of entry player kioShiMa for the French, picking up vital kills on the T side pushes.

Playing in their fourth straight major final, NiP found themselves denied victory for a third time. This time was the cruelest of all in the context of the match, as NiP had reached championship point only to fail to close the match. Then again, they had delivered enough heartache in similar fashion to opponents in the play-offs of ESL One Cologne, including FNATIC in the final, and this had been another final in which they had not entered as the preliminary favourite.

Hi and bye

As crushing as the outcome of the major final had been, NiP had been playing their first tournament debuting their new line-up and had performed above and beyond expectations. Leading into the tournament, the scene was dominated by the FNATIC-LDLC rivalry, with those the only teams winning tournaments and with FNATIC taking all of them to that point in time. With FNATIC both failing to win the major and NiP showing great form in the play-offs, the world had the hope of NiP joining those two in a trio of title threats. All three would again be present in the field at the MLG X Games Invitational Aspen, held in Colorade at the Winter X Games. NiP faced their fellow Swedes in what has since become a legendary Bo3, narrowly emerging victorious from the tightly fought and back-and-forth semi-final. Having beaten the world’s best team, NiP had earned a chance at revenge as they moved into the final to face LDLC again. Again, the series would go to three maps and, with this tournament utilising a randomiser too, end on one of the new maps. This time it was cbblestone and LDLC would win another decider and another title.

NiP attended Assembly Winter, in Finland, where top teams like Virtus.pro and the KQLY-less Titan were in attendance. A win there put a trophy in NiP’s cabinet again, but without FNATIC and LDLC on site it could do little to elevate their status. At IOS Pantamera, on Swedish soil, all of the top teams were in attendance, with all the top four ranked teams there and also Titan, ranked seventh in the world, and LGB, the Norwegian team. NiP would shockingly flounder, managing to beat only the aforementioned lowly LGB and losing every other game.

The outcome of the tournament apparently shocked the Ninjas even more than the viewing public, as the team decided to bench Maikelele and recruit Finnish player allu, formerly of mousesports. To this day, no detailed explanation has ever been given as to why Maikelele was removed, despite such strong results at big international tournaments, with insiders merely suggesting a personality clash within the team. NiP’s first offline tournament with their new line-up, still featuring the original four members, would be ESL One Katowice, the next major and another major they would enter without a warm-up.

Twisted fate – ESL One Katowice 2015 (2nd)

NiP secured their first easy major group stage run in three majors, rolling over FalleN’s Keyd Stars 16:9 on inferno and North American’s CLG, making their debut at a major, 16:7 on mirage. Quarter-finals opponents would be Team SoloMid (TSM), the core formerly known as Dignitas. While Dignitas were famous for never having reached an international final and losing to NiP in big series, the latter perception had begun to be altered with their Gfinity series win over the Ninjas nine months earlier. On the back of a +16 performance from GeT_RiGhT, including a famous AWP shot through a box at the A site on the last round of the first half, NiP took dust2, the opener, 16:8.

TSM struck back with a statement, winning 16:4 on inferno, the map which had brought NiP so much success at the previous major. The randomiser threw up nuke as the deciding map, a perfect battle ground for both teams, with the cores being famously strong at racking up monster CT sides on this heavily CT sided map, which so many other teams despised.

NiP managed a decent 9:6 CT half, but the door had been left open for a classic lock-down half from the Danes to potentially decide the series. As TSM won the pistol round, such fears might have seemed to be manifesting, but NiP fought back and turned the game, pushing the score up to 12:7 in their favour. Eventually, the onslaught broke and TSM came roaring back into the game, putting defensive rounds on the board as anticipated. With the game at 12:12, NiP faced the difficult task of being expected to win four of the last six rounds, playing from the weaker half on one of the game’s most one-sided maps. The old narrative of TSM’s players choking under pressure and NiP rising to form in the darkest hour both made their return, as NiP would take all the remaining rounds and leave the Danes dazed and confused. GeT_RiGhT again had been essential, again posting a +16 differential. The Danes had fought well, with cajunb’s +22 for the series ultimately wasted by their third map collapse from a strong position. NiP at the majors continued to be a difficult kind of animal.

Short and sweet

For a third time in three months, NiP found themselves facing LDLC, albeit under a new organisation in EnVyUs, in a big play-off series. Thanks to their victories at Dreamhack Winter and MLG Aspen the French side had even captured the world number one ranking away from FNATIC, though they had lost it by the major had come around. The reigning major champions picked cache for the opener and the selection looked very strong for them, sitting on four wins in their last five games played on it. NiP had been solid on the map map with their previous line-up, but had yet to play it offline with allu in their ranks. Expectations for a powerful nV opening game were confounded by NiP winning a relatively easy 16:9 game in which Xizt uttered his infamous statement, jokingly on voice communication to this team-mates: “don’t ever pick cache against me, motherfucker!”.

The second map was dust2, the classic home of the French and a map they had been expecting to close out the series on, with cache also being one of their strengths, after NiP had boldly picked it. Happy should have been in the same position as Xizt, but regarding this map. nV came in with a strong win-rate on the map and considered the game’s best dust2 team. Na`Vi had beaten them on in the quarter-finals, but that had been the result of an outstanding 29 kill individual performance from the AWP monster GuardiaN. There would be no decider this time in the series between the two, as NiP secured a 16:10 map win to eliminate the reigning champions, gain revenge for their two finals losses and move into their fifth straight major final.

Xizt finished with a stellar +22 over the series to back up his confident talk. His counter-part Happy, leader of nV and considered its star player, finished a collective -24 for the series with shox, long-time star of the French scene.

Another chapter in the holy wars

The opponent NiP would face in the final was FNATIC, yet again. The very same five man line-up they had denied the ESL One Cologne 2014 title and three of the players who had handed NiP a painful defeat defeat at Dreamhack Winter 2013 loaded into the server. The winner of the match would become the first team to win two majors in CS:GO. World number ones FNATIC had been in dominant form, easily dispatching of Na`Vi in the group stage, rolling over PENTA in the quarter-finals and even refusing to give up a map to Virtus.pro in the semi-finals. The Swedes were heavily favoured to take the title and outsiders might have imagined them pleased to see NiP had eliminated their main rivals for the top spot in the other semi-final.

The first two maps picked would be the same as the nV series, only reversed in order. NiP again selected dust2 and FNATIC responded with a cache pick, showing they believed more in their own long established strength on the map over NiP’s impressive win over nV on it. NiP had won the map narrowly over JW and company at MLG but with Maikelele in their line-up. The opener was a tense battle of big fragging and went the distance to all 30 rounds. The map is often remembered for a controversial moment in which allu seemingly shot a player coming into the A site from short stairs only to have the bullet not register and the player survive. With that non-kill occuring at 14:14, it proved pivotal, as FNATIC took the round and eventually the map to take the series lead.

Swapping over to FNATIC’s pick, NiP were facing a team who had won five of their last six on cache and the lone loss being to NiP in the aforementioned MLG game and 14:16. With wins over the likes of nV and VP on the map, FNATIC had long since proved their powerful form on the battleground. If NiP could not steal away their pick then the major would end here. The Ninjas rose to the occasion yet again, posting seven strong T rounds and then shutting down the game from the CT side, GeT_RiGhT and allu again delivering powerful individual performances, while FNATIC AWPer JW struggled to get into the game.

The decider, again picked by the randomiser, suggested fate was a inadvertently a great script writer as the scene was set for a epic show-down with inferno being the map picked, the very same map which NiP had won on to deny this FNATIC squad the Cologne major, also in the decider. This game would be another thriller, also ending 16:13, and this time it was FNATIC who left with the upper hand. Throughout the tournament, olofmeister had stood as the stand-out performer for both his team and the event as a whole. In this deciding game he was every big the super-star talent, hitting 30 kills and outduelling allu’s valiant 29 kill effort. olof would finish +21 for the series, earn MVP honours and begin his own era of individual dominance as the world’s best player, with kennyS having taken his first dive in form earlier in the competition.

For NiP it was not devastating just to lose their fourth major final, again to FNATIC and in a close deciding map, but again they had seen a special run with a new player fail to hold until they had crossed the finish line. allu and GeT_RiGhT had brought big performances to the final, finishing +21 and +18 respectively, but traditional star f0rest had been lacking with a -12 performance and only 11 kills in the final outing. Still, making it past nV, much as with their epic victory over VP at Dreamhack, had been more than the world expected and NiP had continued to show that no matter their results elsewhere in the circuit, they came to majors in legendary form.

That narrow defeat at the hands of FNATIC would be the last major final NiP would play in, ending their streak of appearances at five, and they would be far from contenders in the coming months and years, but the final chapter of their history at the CS:GO majors is a story for next week.