DreamHack Austin presents a unique opportunity for a myriad of primarily tier 2 CS:GO teams that are looking to establish themselves amongst the game’s elite.
Space Soldiers have questions
One of the more intriguing squads is Space Soldiers, who are attempting to shake off their poor LAN play. Space Soldiers have been a solid team in online leagues for quite some time, routinely providing strong competition for and besting the top teams in the world. However, the struggle for the Turkish side is when they attend LAN events, where they routinely fall short of expectations.
A well-rounded squad with both solid tactics and the ability to have multiple players carry them through to victory depending on the map, Space Soldiers are the perfect team for this event and this could have massive implications moving forward as they look to build confidence on foreign soil.
Group A placement should help eUnited
In a similar boat to Space Soldiers are eUnited, who have also found success online. In eUnited’s case this is one of their first LAN events, with a chance to show that their online play has been no fluke. With many familiar faces dating back to their time on Rise Nation, eUnited have added some well-known players in Relyks and dapr in an attempt to up their firepower.
A good start for eUnited was being placed in Group A, considered the easier group of the two given the overall experience and talent sitting in Group B.
Roster moves impact Group B
Having both compLexity Gaming and OpTic Gaming in the same group is incredibly interesting given the recent roster transitions of these teams.
OpTic recently decided to form an all Danish outfit, removing stanislaw and ShahZaM, with former Heroic players JUGi and Snappi joining. This roster has had a decent amount of time to gel now, with hopes that they begin to produce results in tournaments such as these. The star of the show for OpTic is still k0nfig, who has routinely dominated tournaments of this fashion throughout his career.
For compLexity, they were the team that picked up stanislaw and ShahZaM after their removal from OpTic, with hopes of finding an inspired duo. CompLexity have now had a fair amount of time to have stan implement his style of calling, although they have had minimal chance to show their skill up to this point. Should compLexity make any noise here, ShahZaM will need to show flashes of his play from his time in Misfits, when he rose to be one of the best AWPers in North America.
Changes also for Heroic
Heroic enter as a bit of a dark horse after a decent performance in the ESL Pro League Season 7 Finals.
Heroic’s roster construction is incredibly odd, with es3tag coming off the bench with the transfer of JUGi and Snappi to OpTic, with Heroic shortly after also signing friberg for the fifth slot. However, during that time, RUBINO stepped away from competitive CS due to an eye infection, with cromen now standing in. With this line-up, Heroic were able to win a map off Natus Vincere, while also defeating Cloud9 2-0 at their last LAN.
Heroic have historically been a team capable of pulling off an upset or two at the events they attend, yet with Luminosity Gaming and Fragsters in their group alongside eUnited, they could go better and qualify for the Playoffs. The question for Heroic is whether or not they have the type of firepower in order to pull off a stronger run given they lack the stars the likes of Space Soldiers and OpTic possess. However, there are tangible hopes that their fairly new line-up can quickly come together as a cohesive unit.
Conclusion
All eyes will be on Space Soldiers to see if they can step up. The Turks bombed out badly at DreamHack Masters Marseilles in April when Astralis and Gambit crushed them and, at some point, the Turks will need to rethink their line-up if they are unable to evolve further. How they perform here, therefore, is likely to be crucial as to the team’s future direction.
