This is my Buy and Sell Edition pre-Major. Imagine for a moment that each team was a stock. I am the stock broker trying to make money so I have to buy low and sell high. In other words I need to buy teams whose stocks I think are low so that the return is better whereas I need to sell stocks of teams I think have hit their maximum potential. To make it interesting, I’ve considered only the top 20 teams from HLTV’s rankings and their LAN results.

Buy:

North

Roster:

Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen

Philip “aizy” Aistrup

Valdemar “valde’ Bjorn

Markus “Kjaerbye Kjaerbye

Nikolaj “niko” Kristensen (loan)

Recent Results:

N/A with this lineup

Outside of Astralis, the Danish scene has been falling down. The 2016-2017 iterations of North never lived up to the expectations they set with their EPICENTER win as Dignitas. Heroic had flashes of brilliance, but turned out to be mediocre and have slowly become weaker over time as their best players have gone on their way.

However I think the Danish scene is still filled with brilliant players and I think one of them is bound to become an A-class level of team given the roster shuffles. While MSL was unable to fully harness the potential of Emil “Magisk” Reif or Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke, the fact remains that both players did rise to the top under his captaincy. At the same time OpTic have yet to prove anything under Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer.

Given the roster that MSL has had and the relative performance I’ve seen from the various teams, I think he already overachieved with the Daniel “mertz” Mertz lineup. On top of that, North have already experimented with a potential international mix lineup as they used Oscar “mixwell” Cannellas at DreamHack Valencia 2018.

I still consider MSL to be one of the best leaders, despite some of his flaws. Because of that, this team is positioned perfectly to improve in the long run. They can still draw from the young Danish talent coming up and MSL’s record has shown he can mold them into even better players. At the same time, they are more willing to use an international player. Finally, I think the raw structure of the team will be enough to get them into the playoffs of the Major if they get an average bracket.

Gambit

Roster:

Mikhail ‘Dosia’ Stolyarov

Dauren ‘AdreN’ Kystaubayev

Rustem ‘mou’ Telepov

Abay ‘Hobbit’ Khassenov

Nikolay ‘mir’ Bitykov

Recent Results:

13-16th ESL One Colgone

X place at IEM Shanghai

The most important thing that Gambit needed has finally happened. They have hired Andrey ‘B1ad3’ Gorodenskiy as the coach of the squad. B1ad3 is one of the best leaders I’ve seen and his results are great relative to the talent he has had. I think B1ad3 couldn’t have come at a better time as the repeated beatings of reality have likely made Gambit more susceptible to following his instructions.

AdreN was one of the smartest players in CS:GO in 2017 and I don’t think that went away. Rather he was distracted and burdened with having to in-game lead after Daniil ‘Zeus’ Teslneko left the squad. If they can enable him, then Gambit should be able to start winning the CT-side retakes, which was their specialty and was a large part of why they won the Major.

On top of that you have Hobbit who was voted Rookie of the year last year in all of esports. He’s one of the best talents to have come up in recent years, but in-game leading has also ruined him. However when we consider B1ad3’s specialty, he has consistently been able to raise up young talents, polish them, and make them better than what they were. Hobbit has already reached the top once so there is already a blueprint to figure out how to use him.

With Gambit at an all-time low, I think this is the best time to buy them. I have faith in what B1ad3 brings to this team and I know what AdreN and Hobbit can do under a good in-game leader. On the plus side, I don’t think this team can go any lower as they are now anyway.

G2

Roster:

Richard ‘shox’ Papillon

Alexandre ‘bodyy’ Pianaro

Kenny ‘kennyS’ Schrub

Edouard ‘SmithZz’ Dubourdeaux

Kevin ‘Ex6TenZ’ Droolans

Recent Results:

5-6th DreamHack Valencia

5-6th ESL One Cologne

5-6th ECS Season 5

I think G2 have all of the makings to be eventually become a solid A-rank team. Shox and kennyS have shown flashes of brilliance in the roster already. Get them both going at the same and I think they could be dangerous for any team they meet. I’ve also seen the evolution of this team from event to event as they add more setups and tactics to their growing map pool.

However the biggest reason I think you need to buy this team now is because it’s right before a Major. I feel like this is a win-win scenario in either outcome. Either G2 do well at the Major and the investment will already pay off as they are currently a lower rated team. If they lose the Major, I think the emotional devastation will create the perfect environment for a potential roster change.

Considering that NBK did a recent interview with Cybersport that he’d put Ex6TenZ in his dream team, I think the time is ripe. While Nel has already reported that a second French team is in the works, I don’t think it’s entirely possible to dream of a world in which one of those players (personally I think NBK or Dan ‘apEX’ Madesclaire fit the best) could join this roster. Because of that there are three possible scenarios that could happen. G2 do well at the Major, so profit. G2 make a shuffle with one of the players from this second French roster, so profit. In the third scenario the second French roster is amazing and they don’t get one of the players, in which case they could get a different French player from the region. Even in the third scenario, G2 will rise up, so I think this is a good investment all around. Buy now.

Sell:

BIG

Roster:

Fatih ‘gob b’ Dayik

Johannes ‘tabseN’ Wodarz

Johannes ‘nex’ Maget

Tizian ‘tiziaN’ Felbusch

Owen ‘smooya’ Butterfield

Recent Results:

2nd – ESL One Cologne

This one is fairly simple. As the concept is to buy low and sell high, BIG are currently at the highest point at which you can sell them. I don’t think they’ll get better results than a 2nd at ESL One Cologne. In order to do so at this Major, I’d say they need to get a top four here.

That’s an unlikely scenario considering that they showed a lot of what they were working on at ESL One Cologne: their utility usage, Double AWP setups, and tactics. I’ll go ahead and bet that a majority of the top teams watched them and now everyone knows that you must ban Dust2 against this team. In order for this team to make a top four, they’d have to all reach the same level of performance, find another map where they can be just as good on as they were on Dust2, and innovate more nades/tactics.

As I think that is very unlikely, I’ll go ahead and say you should sell off your stock now.

Cloud9

Roster:

Tyler “Skadoodle’ Latham

Timothy ‘Autimatic’ Ta

Will ‘RUSH’ Wierzba

Maikil ‘Golden’ Selim

Stand-ins

Martin ‘STYKO’ Styk

Recent Results:

7-8th ELeague

7-12th ESL One Cologne

This is a contentious pick considering how bad Cloud9 have been doing recently. Am I even allowed to sell when there is nothing to sell left? Luckily Cloud9 stock never complete crashes as they have the largest fanbase in CS:GO.

But on a more serious note, I do think things can get worse. Cloud9 is an organization that seems to love it’s legacy players (at least in CS:GO). As far as I can tell, it’s because the players and coaches make the roster decisions, so they rarely make the harsh cuts when they need them. Jordan ‘n0thing’ Gilbert was only finally removed after Autimatic and Jacky ‘Stewie2K’ Yip willed it so. Shroud could have been still playing on the roster except he decided to step down himself. Skadoodle is still playing despite the rumors of potential retirement.

So given their history I think Skadoodle is staying. When we then look at his form, the best tournament he’s played was at the Major, but beyond that he is very hit or miss depending on the map or the stage of the tournament (he generally has better group stage matches than playoff matches). Not only that, but he has to take a star role on this team rather than a supportive one like he did on the old Cloud9. Finally, Golden hasn’t been a miracle AWP player worker from what little I’ve seen of his time on Fnatic. That time played a default style that relied on the individual skill of the players, but Jesper ‘JW’ Wecksell didn’t do well as an AWPer in that lineup.

Of course JW and Skadoodle are better players and the sample size is small, but the conclusion remains that if I had to fall on one side or another, I’d be that Skadoodle doesn’t become an elite tier star any time soon.

Finally, the biggest reason I’m selling this squad is because Stewie2K left. If you’ve followed the Cloud9 saga, it’s fairly clear that all of the roster moves Cloud9 has done in the last few years were all at the impetus of Stewie2K. Without him, I don’t know if they do start making the right roster choices so I say sell now.

Fnatic

Roster:

Freddy ‘KRIMZ’ Johansson

Jesper ‘JW’ Wecksell

Robin ‘flusha’ Ronnquist

Richard ‘Xizt’ Landstrom

William ‘draken’ Sundin

Recent Results:

5-6 ELeague

5-6 ESL One Cologne

5-6 ECS Season 5

KRIMZ is a top five player in the world and has been for all of 2018. JW has been reinvigorated in his new aggressive role. Flusha has always been a clutch player. Xizt is a decent in-game leader that fits the loose style of Fnatic. Draken is a fast flicky AWPer.

So why am I saying to sell them? Because that’s all of what they are. The essential problem with this team is the style they like to run depends a lot on individual skill. To make that work you need to have far better players than they currently have. When Fnatic did this in the past from 2015-2016, they had some of the best in the world. This version only has one such player in KRIMZ.

While I still think this is a good team and they will likely be the 5th-8th team in the world, realistically that is breaking even. The point of this list is to buy on potential and sell when you’ve hit the ceiling. While I like this team, I don’t think there is a higher level that they can reach to. I’ve already mentioned the skill. Their teamplay is about as good as it’s ever going to get. Their best scenarios for winning games are force buy, scrappy economic situations and you can’t always for that to happen. My bet is that they’ve already close to the maximum potential of this roster and so if you can’t go up, you’re either staying even or going to go down. Finally, I don’t know what kind of roster shuffle they could make to take them to the next level. Because of all those reasons, I think it’s a good time to sell.

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