On Feb. 19th, 2017 Nikola “NiKo” Kovac was bought out from mouz by FaZe. It was a historic move for both organizations. FaZe finally got a superstar level player that could compete with anyone in the world. Mouz got a giant paycheck. While the money was nice, people wondered what the mouz lineup was going to do from there on hence. This was a team that had stuck to a mostly German core ever since recruiting the PENTA players. As it happened the buyout of NiKo also happened to coincide with a radical shift in thinking of the general managership of the team. Soon after, Mouz shifted from a domestic team to an international team, from a team content in tier 2 to one that aspired to more. This was the transformation of Mouz.

To understand the transformation, we have to go back to see what mouz was. Before the selling of NiKo, it seemed like Mouz was perfectly happy just being the best German esports organization. They got NiKo on the rise and then let him play in a German mix alongside the likes of: Faith “Gob b” Dayik, Timo “Spiidi” Richter, Denis “denis” Howell, Johannes “nex” Maget, and one Dutch player in Chris “chrisj” de Jong. They made some shifts in the roster, but for the most part nothing had changed for the team from 2015 to the early half of 2016. As a team they had risen up from tier 3 status into tier 2. They could make it to the group stages of lans and sometimes a playoff spot, did well at smaller events, but not much more. After being stuck at that level for a long period of time, the mouz organization finally decided to start trying to recruit better players.

Mouz made two signing in the last quarter of 2016. They got Tomas “oskar” Statsny, the AWP star of HellRaisers, and Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunovic. Kassad was to be the coach of the squad and in the little time we saw of him at ELeague 2016, it looked like things had changed in the server. Then two things happened. Oskar had personal issues and quickly took himself off of the squad and so mouz got Christian “loWel” Antoran to replace him. LoWel was a good player, but not an incredible one. As for Kassad, mouz decided to go a different direction as they got Sergey “lmbt” Bezhanov, the former coach of HellRaisers. The move ended up working out for mouz.

So when the NiKo to FaZe move happened, it was easy to believe that this was the end of Mouz. When we look at the NiKo roster now the only other reliable piece besides him was ChrisJ. No one could be sure of oskar’s motivation levels. Kassad was replaced with a coach no one could ascertain was a better fit or not. Most importantly, the history of Mouz seemed to speak to a strict adherence to the German core. The community thought this was the end of mouz.

In a sense, they were right and the mouz organization agreed. It was over for that old iteration of Mouz that had Spiidi, nex, denis, and loWel. The team started to aggressively replace the old roster with better parts until it was a completely different beast. The only player that remains from that time is ChrisJ. The first piece they got back was oskar. Oskar got over his personal problems and the NiKo-oskar combination got to play out one time at DreamHack Las Vegas. ChrisJ was benched as he and oskar were both AWPers and it didn’t make sense from their team’s point of view to keep them both on. Either way at DreamHack Vegas the Niko-oskar combo was a potent duo as they beat FaZe, Na`Vi, and gave Virtus.Pro a run for their money.

It was a great debut back for oskar and he’d soon prove himself to be a star AWPer for mouz. Soon after that though, the team started to make changes. The next change they made was to bring back ChrisJ into the roster. He’d soon prove that he could shift roles and this became one of the critical reasons as to why he out survived the rest of the mouz players. He was a much better player than both of them, and unlike either of them ChrisJ was able to change his style of player to fit the team and was able to take on the in-game leadership role. In the previous iteration before Oskar had joined ChrisJ was the AWPer of the team. On the new iteration he has become the secondary AWPer on the Ct-side and an entry fragger on the T-side.

Mouz’s next move was to get Robin “ropz” Kool. This was a player that made waves in FPL and other players thought he was cheating. To prove otherwise he went to the Faceit offices and played from there. Mouz soon picked him up and ropz has grown significantly as a player ever since. Fans were astonished at the success of the mouz squad as everybody had written them off. People were saying that it was as successful as the NiKo roster, but that was blown out of proportion. It any case the team improved with a Top 4 at DreamHack Tours and 5-6th at ESL Proleague Season 5 Finals. Beyond that they were eliminated from the group stages of DreamHack Summer and ESL Cologne. Not astounding results, but they were better than expected.

The final move mouz made to complete the roster came after PGL Krakow Major. This time they got rid of two of the last three pieces of the old Mouz squad as they removed both Denis and loWel. Both had been okay players at the end of the mouz lineup and some fans were vehemently against the removal, but realistically they were the pieces that could be upgraded. In their place, the team got Miikka “suNny” Kemppi and Martin “STYKO” Styk. suNny had proven himself as the star player of PENTA while STYKO was a solid role-player from HellRaisers and someone who had worked well with lmbt before.

The move paid off in dividends. Since making these changes, Mouz has gained strength over the last eight months. Their results include: 1st at ESG Tour Mykonos, Top 4 DreamHack Denver, 2nd DreamHack Winter, 2nd ECS Season 4 Finals, top 8 ELeague Boston Major, and won Starladder Kiev 2018.

When you analyze how they did it you start to see the hidden hand behind it all. lmbt is the coach that brings it all together. We don’t know what kind of impact lmbt has, but when we look at the mouz team we can see that they are greater than the sum of their parts with an inexperienced in-game leader and so we have to give some level of credit to him. Every player has been given a role where they can emphasize their strengths as players. Oskar is the main star of the team and his AWP is one of the most wild in the world. He is a player completely fine with running up ladders to shotgun people or running in first with an AWP in a rush. He is allowed to run wild, but the structure has made it so that it can cover his deficiencies. If Oskar isn’t feeling it, there are other star players that can make up the difference and he can fall back into the system and into a role where he can be setup for a pick or be positioned in a post plant scenario to secure the round with his AWP.

In the case of ropz, he has built up his game playing as a primary lurker that can flex into other roles as needed. Ropz like oskar has some amount of autonomy and personal decision making and makes use of it as he sometimes goes off by himself to make a play. He can also be used as part of the main pack and works well as a trade fragger and clutch player. He works best as a third star for now, but has continually improved from month-to-month to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised to see him be the star of the team in a year from now. The third star of the team is suNny. He is similar to ropz, but has his role priorities reverse. He helps take map control with ChrisJ and oskar. When they then execute a split he is the second man in and will use the space created by ChrisJ to trade-frag and break open the site. He can also be used as a lurker or a third prong in the attack depending on the positions.

Finally we have ChrisJ and STYKO. ChrisJ has taken up the leadership role and has changed his role up as a result. He is now the entry-fragger for the squad and his job isn’t to get frags, it’s to create space for the others to do the work. Sometimes he can go completely off as he did in the series against Cloud 9 at Starladder i-League Starseries Season 4 Group Stages. For the most part though, his job isn’t to get frags, it’s just a bonus if he does. As for STYKO he is the support player and has been underrated. He has had some weak performances early on, but that’s a natural result of the loose style of the team, the differing cultures, and the fact that playing the supportive role will always be harder in such a system as you have to account for the instinctive individual plays one of the star will make and have to compensate on the fly. As the team has got more used to the system, we see STYKO performing better and can bring good impact from a supportive role.

The structure behind it all is equally impressive. Someone had to scout these players, figure out how to make use of them, and then bring it all together. They figured out that an international squad like this relies on the individual skill of the players and have made a system that enhances the individuals of the team so that everyone has impact, everyone has a role. There are still flaws in this team, the T-side is too dependent on skill on certain maps and when they hit a wall you can see the limits of the team. But there is just enough skill and structure to compensate for it. The team knows their roles, know that they can rely on each other to win clutches and win unfavorable rounds. The structure is used in their use of timeouts, their fundamental economic theory and map pick. The team consistently gives themselves chances to defeat better teams in bo3 series because of this. Perhaps the best part of this roster is that there is still room to grow. STYKO is 22, suNny is 23, and ropz is 18. They still have more potential to grow and ChrisJ can still grow as a leader as he is still relatively new to the squad. In addition to that, mouz like FaZe will always have a wider pool of talent to recruit from as they have gone completely international.

This was a team that people had written off an year ago. One year later we’ve seen an aggressive change in their general managerial style. They’ve made a radical shift in direction from a domestic team to an international squad and have made smart moves ever since. They have assembled players from all over the world and have made them a cohesive whole. Their coach, lmbt has been able to put it all together and the style of the team maximizes what they can get from their players. In one years time mouz has undergone a transformation. They have gone from a tier two team to Champions of Starladder. They are no longer a team that consistently gets out of groups, they are a team that consistently gets into playoffs and are a threat to anyone in the world.