What will s1mple and Na’Vi do to North American CS?

Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev recently joining Natus Vincere, after an amazing run with North America’s own Team Liquid, sets a tone of what his knowledge of Liquid’s own strategies, positions, and habits, as well as the strategies and positions of other NA teams. 

As I would expect, Liquid would have briefed s1mple on the tendencies of fellow North American teams during the first era, the showing at MLG Columbus 2016 and their top-four run, as well as Liquid’s own tendencies. Notably, Counter Logic Gaming would be who I would expect them to have profound knowledge on as they played a comeback on the first map in a best-of-three against them on Cache (16-13), and then Mirage (16-3).

After advancing to the semifinals, they choked hard against Luminosity, who would go on to win the major.

s1mple went back to Ukraine over visa renewal and ended up being homesick and stayed there, but he later came back to Liquid in the second era for ECS and Cologne 2016.

ECS wasn’t too eventful as s1mple lost to G2, who would go on to winning the event. But, when they got to Cologne after a bootcamp where Hiko had said s1mple came and went and conformed to their strategies and positions, they went on to stomp EnVyUs. Then, they lost to Virtus.Pro, defeated Mousesports in a best-of-three, and beat Na’Vi and Fnatic in another two best-of-three series.

Regardless, the fact is that the insider knowledge of North American teams and the number one team, Liquid, will cause some detriment and will require tacticians like Peacemaker to make new calls and new strategies.

I think this sort of a roster change was explicitly expected or unexpected depending on whom you are and that will forever be the case. I welcome and usher in a new era, and hope we can hold onto our precious “dark horse” and keep going strong, even with s1mple on the other side of the field. I also hope the backstory here backups the opinion that I’ve shared.

And welcome to Liquid, Pimp!

Do you think that s1mple has an inherent advantage over NA teams due to his past experience on Team Liquid? Let us know by commenting below or tweeting us @GAMURScom.

If anyone has any critcism or requests/ideas, you can find me on Reddit under /u/stitchtv, under Twitter @stitchCSGO, or email me at stitchCSGO@gmail.com.