After two years of sticking together as a team, the reigning kings of Europe G2 Esports, has had their roster split apart. It is widely known and a hot topic that Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen and Alfonso “Mithy” Aguirre Rodriguez went to Team Solomid, however, with Kim “Trick” Gang-yun going to bbq Olivers and the future of Ki “Expect” Dae-han yet to be known, the sole remaining member of the lineup is Luka “Perkz” Perković. Previously G2 had swapped players to acquire Zven and Mithy, as well as replace Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek with Expect, but this is the first time so many players are leaving at once. This of course raises the question; will the G2 dynasty end this year?

G2’s new roster is certainly talented but does present worries in specific areas. They’ve went with long time Splyce member Martin “Wunder” Hansen as their top laner, who’s known for his excellence on bruisers and capability to adapt to the meta. Jungling for the team will be Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski, who’s known as the king of the jungle in Europe and exerts immense early pressure. The bot lane of G2 will be made up of Petter “Hjärnan” Freyschuss and Kim “Wadid” Bae-in, formerly of Roccat, who in the most recent split was the backbone of Roccat and a large reason to why they found even moderate success.

One of the important issues this line up presents, is that none of these players are known to be low economic players who do well as a role-player. Perkz and Wunder both thrive with jungle attention and while Hjarnan and Wadid weren’t necessarily the main beneficiary of jungle pressure in Roccat, they were given the resources to become large threats in the mid game. Keeping this in mind, we also have to consider that Jankos is someone who likes getting his fair share of resources in the early parts of the game, to catapult himself ahead of his opponent and solidifying a stronger position in the 2 on 2 duels. A fair assumption to make is that it may be rocky in the start for G2, as time passes however; it seems likely that Hjarnan and Wadid will be the lane that adapts into a low econstyle, which is interesting since that’ll mean G2 will play a top centric style, as a team that has generally played bot centric. These players are flexible enough to adapt in case the meta requires them to play other styles, but generally speaking it’s fair to assume that their playstyle will be vastly different as Wunder is much more of a star player than Expect was.

Another important aspect to consider is leadership and shot calling. With Mithy leaving, G2 has lost not only a talented support player, but also their captain and the core of their shot calling; now someone needs to fill the slot left open by Mithy. Perkz is in the period where you’d consider him transitioning into a veteran, Wunder never seemed to have a leader presence on Splyce as Trashy was the communicative player in that team; Wadid doesn’t seem like the leader type and has a language barrier to overcome and Hjarnan seem like the kind of player who mostly follows what’s being said and focuses on his own game. With these things in mind, it’s pretty natural to assume that the title of Captain and in-game leader will be Jankos. We’ve seen from several iterations of h2k however, that when the team was put in decisive matches the players tended to choke, with Jankos and Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu being the only two consistent factors on h2k, it’s natural to chalk it down to those two players, which is worrying for G2.

One of the things that they have going for them with this roster however, is the high skill ceiling and the mechanical skill of the players. Perkz is an amazing mid laner who’s shown that he can compete with the best that the world has to offer. Jankos has proven to be a world class jungler as well in his participation of Worlds 2016; Wunder has proven to constantly be one of the best top laners in Europe, and depending on the meta, the absolute best one and while Hjarnan and Wadid may not be the mechanical monster duo of Mithy and Zven; they are more than good enough to stand out within Europe.

In the end, will the G2 dynasty fall? Perhaps, during the off-season basically all the teams in Europe has had some sort of shake up, because of this it’s pretty hard to predict how things will play out. It’s entirely possible that a team like Misfits remains on top despite losing two of their important pieces, but we may also see this G2 roster reign supreme in Europe as some of the top talent from the region is on the roster. I believe the teams with the highest chance of taking the crown from G2 are most likely Schalke 04, Splyce and Fnatic, however, it’s also possible that neither of these teams work out after their changes or rumored changes. If I was betting my life on this however, I’d say that the G2 dynasty will continue.

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Photo Credit: G2 Esports