CSGO Blog

9 Best CSGO Teams in Esports History

It is impossible to name best of the best players in any sports. In case of esports things go even worse: you can’t pay attention only to statistics and the number of wins when choosing best teams. Sometimes, the level of synergy inside the team, the level of competition, the quality and confidence of victories matter much more than all stats together. I’ve tried to mention achievements of best CS:GO teams in history as fully as I could. I hope this list to be unbiased. Still, it’s all about your opinion.

Ninjas in Pyjamas (GeT_RiGhT, f0rest, Xizt, friberg, Fifflaren) August 2012 – November 2014

This was the legendary Swedish crew. People thought they were undefeatable during first years of competitive CS:GO playing. “NiP” was among first teams to believe in a new Valve discipline and began practicing it actively. In 2012 and 2013, they won 87 maps on LAN-events in a row. No other team could get even close to this result.

Success reasons: an early switch to the new CS version, the duet of GeT_RiGhT and f0rest, and the qualified leader.

Main achievements: ESL One Cologne victory, 87 victorious maps on LAN-events in a row.

VeryGames (shox, ScreaM, NBK, Ex6TenZ, SmithZz) May 2013 – April 2014

VeryGames is another star team of first CS:GO years. The previous French crew having RpK and kennyS instead of shox and ScreaM was one of the best teams in the world. VeryGames could deal with any competitor… except NiP. kennyS’s team suffered four complete final losses from Swedish players.

But after shox appeared, the game of VeryGames changed. Ruled by Ex6TenZ, the team broke their lose streak against NiP and got two additional victories. VeryGames entered Top-4 rankings of LAN tournaments seven times in a row. This crew can be rightfully called one of the best CS:GO teams in history.

Success reasons: many skilled players being on top of their possibilities and a careful and qualified captain who was able to use strengths of all four shooters.

Main achievements: StarSeries Season 7 victory, RaidCall EMS One Fall 2013 Finals victory.

Luminosity/SK Gaming (FalleN, fer, fnx, coldzera, TACO) November 2015 – December 2016

The Brazilian crew of Luminosity ruled by Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo maintained its underdog status throughout almost the whole year of 2015. Despite entering “legends” of all three majors of the year, the team could outplay only middle-class opponents. They couldn’t stand against top-rank crews.

Things changed during the DreamHack Winter 2015 tournament. Before the championship, Ricardo “boltz” Prass and Lucas “steel” Lopes left the team and were replaced by two Games Academy players – Lincoln “fnd” Lau and Epitazio “TACO” De Melo. After suffering a total 16:0 defeat from Fnatic, the new crew shocked everyone after they reached the final of the tournament. Luminosity left such teams as NiP, Team Envyus and TSM behind. In the final game, they fought against Fnatic once more and lost a close battle.

This tournament was the beginning of the unbelievable Brazilian dominance during the whole year of 2016. They won two majors, the ESL Pro League Season 3 and the DreamHack Austin tournament. Despite FalleN’s team continued successful playing after fnx left the crew, they were undisputed leaders of CS scene exactly with him.

Success reasons: the excellent synergy between players combined with the great skill of FalleN and coldzera and the crazy desire for victories.

Main achievements: MLG Columbus and ESL One Cologne 2016 victories.

Natus Vincere (Zeus, Edward, seized, Guardian, flamie) March 2015 – July 2016

This crew of Natus Vincere had every player on his place. As a result, Na’Vi became one of the most stable teams in CS:GO history. There was no tournament Na’Vi could fail totally without a fight. Despite many lost finals of 2016, they were among CS leaders with their original and beautiful playstile.

Success reasons: world class players. Slow attack style many top teams felt uncomfortable to play against.

Main achievements: IEM San Jose, ESWC 2015 and StarSeries Season 13 victories.

Fnatic (JW, flusha, pronax, KRiMZ, olofmeister) June 2014 – November 2015

Many old school Counter-Strike fans treat the tag of Fnatic team as a synonym for the word “domination”. Since the late 2013, crews of this organization stay among the best. The year 2015 became the most significant: they won eight tournaments including two major events. This team got so used to victories that disband happened after the first unlucky competition: DreamHack Cluj-Napoca, where Fnatic were defeated by Team Envyus in semi-finals. Then, the refreshed team won six tournaments in a row at the beginning of 2016, but never could repeat successes of a legendary roadster and disbanded in summer of the same year.

Success reasons: the combination of qualified tactical rounds and aggressive plays.

Main achievements: ESL One Katowice 2015 and ESL One Cologne 2015 victories.

LDLC/TeamEnvyus (shox, Happy, kioShiMa, SmithZz, NBK) September 2014 – July 2015

In 2015 Fnatic really were unstoppable, but there was an equal competitor for them in 2014. After the reshuffle, the French LDLC team got the first place of the 11 th SLTV Star Series Season and reached ESWC 2014 and Fragbite Masters Season 3 finals.

Their best performance happened on the major DreamHack Winter 2014 tournament where they took the 1 st place despite the scandalous technical defeat in the match with Fnatic. They switched the tag to Team Envyus in early 2015 and then won the MLG X Games Aspen Invitational, SLTV StarSeries XII and Gfinity Spring Masters. Despite some unlucky tournaments within their last months as a team, their statistics still look phenomenal: 17 top-4 entries in 19 tournaments played.

Success reasons: synergized and stable job from every player, a skilled captain and excellent pistol plays.

Main achievements: DreamHack Winter 2014 and MLG X-Games Aspen victories.

Universal Soldiers/Virtus.pro (TaZ, NEO, pashaBiceps, byali, Snax) October 2014 – January 2018

“We don’t change players, we change roles” – this phrase by Polish pro gamers perfectly describes their successes. 17 finals and 34 top-4 entries can’t be called the greatest result ever, but VP made top comebacks every time it seemed they reached a dead end and need a reshuffle. That is why they deserve their place in this list.

Even in late 2017 when such fresh teams as SK, Astralis, and Faze Clan were leaders of Counter-Strike competitive events, Virtus.pro were able to reach the Epicenter final and prove that individual skills are not the most important for the team in our times.

Success reasons: no reshuffles, hard work with the same crew, huge experience of elder players and mastery of younger ones.

Main achievements: EMS One Katowice 2014, ELEAGUE Season 1 and DreamHack Masters Las Vegas victories.

Faze Clan (karrigan, rain, NiKo, Guardian, olofmeister) August 2017 – Present Day

Rumors about this roadster actually confused the community. Is it possible to gather the crew where four players are used to be main stars? After their first tournament (DreamHack Masters Malmo 2017) where Faze Clan failed to pass through the group stage, confusion only got stronger.

Nevertheless, two weeks later Faze Clan won ESL One New York. They lost only 39 rounds during 7 maps (average 6 rounds per map). Even despite lost finals in further months, the European crew was incredibly stable as for the team having totally aggressive shooters. Even the loss of olofmeister for 2 months couldn’t prevent Faze Clan from winning the IEM Sydney where they defeated Astralis (3:0) in the final game.

Success reasons: Guardian, olofmeister, NiKo… should I continue?

Main achievements: ELEAGUE Premier 2017, ESL One New York 2017 and ECS Season 4 victories.

Astralis (device, gla1ve, dupreeh, Xyp9x, Magisk) February 2018 – Present Day

When Kjaerbye left Astralis in early 2018, many people predicted them to fall out from top rankings, shame on upcoming events and many other pleasant things. After Magisk joined the team, skeptics got a bit more silent but the device’s illness and no titles still made fans doubt.

But as a result, Astralis rolled over their competitors on DreamHack Masters Marseille and ESL Pro League Season 5. During the IEM Sydney they showed a high-quality performance despite the defeat in the final. Huge numbers of arguable reshuffles from other pro teams make the “age of Astralis” even more possible to come. We only can wait for upcoming majors of 2019 for now.

Success reasons: perfect role distribution, deep map pool and five skilled players ready to explode at the most suitable moment.

Main achievements: DreamHack Masters Marseille and ESL Pro League Season 7 victories.

Counter Strike: the Story of the Most Popular Shooter Game Ever

Today, Counter Strike: Global Offensive is one of the most popular video games in the world. It takes highest rankings in the Steam gaming service popularity ratings, and probably every young person knows about its existence.

Still, 18 years ago when the first version of this game just appeared nobody could predict such a huge success.

Counter Strike: What is it?

Counter Strike is the multiplayer online first person shooter video game. Its point being the fight between two teams: terrorists and counter-terrorists (Special Forces). Both teams have certain goals for each game round: they can get the point by achieving goals or just eliminating the enemy team.

After winning a certain number of rounds, a team wins a match. The most popular game map scenery is the demolition: terrorists need to plant the bomb in the certain point of the map and let it explode, while counter-terrorists need to avoid their enemies from planting and exploding a charge.

Precursors and Origins of Counter Strike

The idea of a videogame about the fight of terrorists and Special Forces appeared in late 90’s, which means before the 9/11 attack and before the show-up of a world terrorism threat. Its creator was Minh «Gooseman» Le, the Canadian citizen of a Vietnamese origin. He aimed to create not a commercial product touching the actual and urgent social problem, but a modification – a mod – for the other game, putting it into the concept and the topic which were interesting for him.

Before CS appeared, multiplayer shooters were fast-paced games in fantasy settings having completely unreal physics (like FPS games of Unreal Tournament and Quake franchises). Minh Le used to create modifications for those games as well, and they were quite successful: Navy Seals (a mod for Quake I) and Action Quake 2 (a mod for Quake II created together with a popular A-TEAM modding community).

But there came the time of a fresh Valve masterpiece: Half-Life. It was just a perfect game of that time making all other titles look old and primitive. Half-Life became exactly that game for Minh Le’s modification because its engine gave lots of possibilities for a developer’s imagination. It had a comfortable multiplayer, an up-to-date instrument kit (for the year 1999) and decorations more suitable to bring the Minh’s idea to life.

As the developer himself said later, he worked on the mod for 30 to 40 hours per week during his university studies. He hoped at least some people to play his game, to start with a few players and grow a community later.

But the feedback from players after the release was just stunning. Le was impressed and inspired with a lot of positivity and enthusiasm coming from them, so he decided to continue working on the project. All the feedback was gathered from the website administrated by Jess Cliffe, the other CS developer.  

Le himself told later that the mod development became common because the community of players put a lot of efforts to create it as well. He also added that developers never made a single map for CS on their own. Levels were sent by fans. Minh and Jess only had to choose what to include into the game for a release. So, the game had been created by Le, Cliffe, and their community.

The first CS beta version appeared on June 19, 1999. The work continued, new weapons and maps appeared on purpose. They fixed a lot of “bugs” and the popularity of the game grew. Counter Strike began to become widely known between years 1999 and 2000 when the fifth beta was released.

The original AK-47 considered as the best rifle in the game

Le’s daring towards the creation of a more realistic shooter brought him dividends: in 2000, Valve got interested in his modification. They contacted Minh and offered him a job. As we all know today, this decision was of the best ones ever made by the company.

Comparing with Quake and Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike had a slower gameplay and relied on teamwork more. The first standalone CS version 1.0 (a separate client with its own launcher) was released on the 8th of November, 2000. Previous builds required a Half-Life client installed to launch them.

Valve Age

Under the management from Valve, Counter Strike becomes a hit game. Simple gameplay mechanics and realism make it attractive for gamers and help in cybersports promotions. The “easy to learn, hard to master” principle has always been a priority for Minh Le, and he notes this as the reason for CS to reach its huge success.

At the very beginning, a lot of game modes were presented: hostage rescue, VIP-player escort, escape, jumping and surfing maps not that connected with shooting, etc. Still, the most popular mode was the demolition: terrorists need to plant the bomb and let it explode while counter-terrorists have to eliminate all terrorists or defuse a bomb. Terrorists can just kill the enemy team, too.

An important feature is that if the whole terrorist team is killed but could plant the bomb successfully before dying, they still can win a round if the charge explodes. The bomb explosion only one second before defuse… you know that feeling, don’t you?

On October 11, 2003 the most popular and “long-lasting” version of the game appears: CS 1.6. This was exactly the greatest game of middle 2000’s for school and college students. And this was exactly the game which started conquering the world with its victorious cybersports campaign.

Cybersports and Counter Strike

Prize pools of tournaments and competitions reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Counter Strike joined the hall of titans by becoming an equal with great franchises of Starcraft, Warcraft and Quake 3.

After the 1.6 version, new ones were still released:

• Counter Strike Condition Zero – almost similar to 1.6, but using another engine. Released on March 23, 2004.
• Counter Strike Source – not all gamers liked it and many continued playing the 1.6 version. Released on October 7, 2004

And finally, on the day of August 12, 2011 Valve announced the Counter Strike: Global Offensive game. The same gameplay was packed into top-quality graphics, got a refreshed game engine, trading options and the Steam Workshop service available. One year later, on August 21, 2012, the game was released.

The same AK-47 in Counter Strike Source version

Modern Counter Strike

In this version, CS became the most popular cybersports discipline in the world. Prize pools reaching $1 000 000, huge premier, major and minor tournaments, sponsorship contracts and many other things appear. It becomes cool, prestigious, fashionable and profitable to be a professional CS:GO player.

The future of CS looks unbelievably bright. The number of players grows every year: according to Steam statistics, it was more popular than DotA 2. Overwatch was thought to become a new CS but it does not show results that amazing, and its cybersports components could be much better than they are.

More than $ 3 million were included into CS:GO premier tournament prize pools during only the 1st quarter of 2018. Nearly $ 1 million additionally appeared on major tournaments.  

The skill level of players increases with every year as well. Cybersports federations appear. CS appears on television slowly but surely. Despite the fact that FPS games and video games in general changed a lot since 2000, CS remained almost unchanged but still millions of people play it.

And there will be more of them.

It’s a wonderful story. Just think about it: one usual modification changed the whole video game industry.

And its story is doubtful to be over in the nearest future.