North American organization, OpTic Gaming is one of the most prominent teams in the esports industry. Having active rosters in most games at the moment, the brand is amongst the most popular, alongside FNATIC, Liquid and Natus Vincere.

Up there amongst the best, but their roster shuffling history is definitely a talking point.

Some History…

Wanting to climb the CS:GO ladder, they made changes to their NA squad and shifted to European roster. That team produced mixed results. While managing 1st and 2nd in EPL Season 6 and ECS Season 4 respectively, they didn’t convert the same outcome when it came to the LAN tournaments. The team was also plagued with the regional leagues.

Wanting to complete in both amongst the best in the ESL and ECS, they licence could not be transferred from NA to Europe. The team often had to move to North America to compete in ECS and EPL. However in qualifiers, they had to go back to Europe.

Without managing to qualify for the Major, the European roster disbanded in February of this year.

OpTic Gaming is yet again going in another direction with its CS:GO team

Creating a full Danish lineup

OpTic’s new roster:

The team had success in the ESL Pro League Season 7 North America but not much elsewhere. Not managing to qualify for LANs and being favorites to face relegation in ECS Season V, changes were inbound.

The expected changes came about last week. Transfer of the awper and star player ‘JUGi’, and the in-game leader ‘Snappi’ from Heroic to OpTic was completed.

JUGi and Snappi are replacing the North American players. Both received with praise from OpTic fans, but what do we anticipate from this roster?

High Expectations

OpTic lineup:

K0nfig : North’s previous star. k0nfig faced a experienced a slump period last year and decided to leave his team. Going to OpTic, he has shown some top tier individual performances that we were missing.

he has shown some top tier individual performances that we were missing. CajunB : misused during his time with TSM/Astralis. CajunB finally dropped the AWP in OpTic. Now he returns to a role where he shines the most . One of the most reliable players back in North, made a name for himself by being very versatile.

Gade : loaned from North Academy, the young Dane impressed everyone from day 1. While his lack of experience is visible, his raw aim and mechanic skill are insanely high and his skill ceiling still is to be set .

While his lack of experience is visible, his raw aim and mechanic skill are insanely high and his skill ceiling still is to be set JUGi : star from Heroic. It was implied that he was going to be added in North roster back last year. His consistency in having good performances made Heroic still relevant after valde getting benched.

His consistency in having good performances made Heroic still relevant after valde getting benched. Snappi : the 27-year-old Dane never lead a line up with so much talent until now. He is the biggest question here. We know he can maintain consistent decent stats in-game. He also managed to keep Heroic alive when things got bad.

Best ever lineup

Having k0nfig and JUGi automatically throws expectations out of the roof for this team.

However, we still need proof. Gade reamins a mystery. He was rated at 1.06 in EPL Season 7 NA under HLTV. However, the true challenge for will come when he faces the elite teams in May.

Snappi as we said above holds a question mark next to his name. He played with gla1ve, who is the current Astralis in-game leader and has experience in the role.

However, can he fully use this roster to be a top 10 team, or even more? This is the big question yet to be answered.

JUGi makes his way to a premier team for the first time

JUGi started his career with professional CS under the experience Swedish player MODDII in Madjick Gaming. The roster then was purchased by REASON Gaming, and after leaving, he played under various organizations in the low tier Danish scene.

His career finally kickstarted after being transferred to Heroic in February of 2017, replacing Friis. There he was often the second-best player in events, only behind valde.

After valde got benched, JUGi picked up the highlights and consistently maintained ratings above 1.0 according to HLTV system.

More importantly, JUGi proved that he wasn’t a player which only would perform online, or against weaker teams. He was one of the main key factors to the Heroic sudden rise in mid-2017.

Be it against SK, Na’Vi or NiP, JUGi would perform, even if his teammates ‘niko’ and ‘MODDII’ couldn’t.

This is why he was often quoted as a solution to North problems. Removing aizy, moving CajunB to support role and adding JUGi would put that team back on track again. He is a consistent awper who could carry games if his team failed to show up.

In North case, they would start removing their underperforming player aizy. Then move CajunB who started to perform badly as an awper to a role which he is more comfortable with. To finish, add JUGi, a proper awper. Fortunately for OpTic this didn’t happen.

Snappi finally has a chance to prove himself

As we mentioned, Snappi played with gla1ve, current Astralis IGL. During his time, he gained experience and assumed the role after gla1ve was transferred to Astralis.

While he had his bad games with Heroic, he impressed by keeping his team going without JUGi.

Using es3tag and niko in different ways to cover for the missing star surely wasn’t an easy task. However, it helped Heroic to be a challenger for the place of second-best Danish team. Not only this, but the team avoided relegation in EPL and snapped a second-place medal in Copenhagen Games 2018.

The question is: Can Snappi make this team successful? K0nfig is especially aggressive. He needs to be controlled often si that his confidence doesn’t turn into senseless play.

Also, how to deal with gade? MSL did it the wrong way with aizy. Messing with an entire team for months to find a place for aizy didn’t do any good. Snappi should learn from this, if he doesn’t want to repeat the MSL run.

The good thing coming in for Snappi is that CajunB is just as experienced as himself. Making him a second caller certainly can relieve a bit of the workload. Their coach, ruggah, also should be ready to help as he has experience with Cajun and k0nfig.

OpTic First Challenges

We witnessed OpTic’s first game last week against eUnited at the ECS Season V, however we cannot make judgement from it. Playing with high latency since the players are in Denmark playing in US servers isn’t a fair environment to be reviewed.

We shouldn’t expect much from the team in the remaining games of ECS. They’re favorites to face relegation at this point.

The true challenge starts with ESL Pro League Season 7 Finals starting on May 14th. There, OpTic will be against the likes of Astralis, Mousesports, Na’Vi, Liquid and Cloud9.

OpTic must show that they have what they need to be relevant again there. We are still waiting for the full draw for the EPL but we know all participating teams soon enough. It’s not a long-shot expectation to believe that the can make to the quarter-finals.

If they can’t make to the playoffs, it’s important to show results like they are supposed to do on paper. Especially against the likes of Renegades, MVP PK and even Space Soldiers.

Putting up a fight against FaZe, Cloud9, Liquid will be also be an important task.

Once this tournament is over, OpTic will be getting ready for the ESL One Cologne 2018 qualifiers. Then, the FACEIT Major qualifiers. These two events, especially the Major, will be of the utmost importance and OpTic need to qualify.

Drama inbound

It wouldn’t be a OpTic team without some drama involved. This Friday, Stanislaw who just leave the team released a statement regarding to his short-lived time with OpTic.

Stanislaw criticized the path that the Danish players took. Not speaking in English out of game, creating a toxic environment and having problems with the schedule. Stanislaw made his side of the story visible for everyone. You can read Stanislaw’s the full statement here.

K0nfig and gade hit out on Twitter to retaliate Stan’s story:

Pointing fingers and telling stories doesnt make you win. Upgrading does. — Kristian Wienecke (@k0nfigCS) April 28, 2018

We can’t make any judgements just yet knowing only one side of the story but something isn’t right. Of course, now with a full Danish lineup these problems should be solved. But what if k0nfig and Cajun refuses to follow Snappi’s lead?

OpTic’s Future

It’s hard to see this OpTic lineup performing worse than the previous squads. K0nfig and JUGi are prime examples of the best that Denmark has to offer, gade is a raw diamond and CajunB and Snappi are seasoned players in the scene that can shape up this diamond.

Of course, the questions about gade and snappi remains. Unless both underperform heavily they won’t have problems.

It would be a total surprise if gade starts underperforming now. He was decent, stat-wise, while playing under Stanislaw in an English-speaking team. There’s no reason why he fail in a roster speaking his mother language.

The same goes for Snappi. He has all help he needs. CajunB and ruggah have experience and can help him build chemistry within this roster.

OpTic future looks bright, and while they go up, North should be going down. In some months, we should be looking at OpTic as the “North that did it right”.

Excited to watch OpTic just like we are? Then you can follow our predictions for CS:GO matches here!