A look at the teams for ESL One Cologne: Part 8 – Team EnVyUs.

A look at the teams for ESL One Cologne: Part 8 – Team EnVyUs.

Part 1 – Cloud9
Part 2 – Immunity
Part 3 – mousesports
Part 4 – Virtus.pro
Part 5 – FlipSid3 Tactics
Part 6 – Kinguin
Part 7 – Luminosity Gaming

To finish of group B there is the Legend team, EnVyUs. While it is only 3 of the 5 players, who are the same from ESL One Katowice 2015, as Titan and EnVyUs ended up swapping players due to internal differences. The teams previous results up and until ECWC 2015 speaks for themselves, and there is little point in looking at these results, aside from noticing that they was a damn good team back then, and the primary focus will be on their first display at IEM Season X- gamescom.

IEM Season X – gamescom was a very interesting tournament since it would be first time we would be able to see the new EnVyUs lineup in action, and while the competition varied from SK Gaming to Team SoloMid plus the format was quite different from other tournaments due to the teams having four lives at the start of the tournament as well as having the community pick the maps.
First they met Team SoloMid who they won against 16:11 (Cobblestone), however, TSM is well-known for not playing cobblestone, so while it was a win against a tough opponent it wasn’t as impressive due to the map. In their next match they played mousesports, a team who also is on the rise, and they beat the Germans 16:13 (Inferno), and while it was a fun match to watch it was by no means an impressive victory as the sole map that mousesports always bans is: Inferno.
Counter Logic Gaming was the next in line, who also lost to the French 16:13 (Inferno), and aside from CLG putting on a good display as CTs constantly changing their defensive setups, and jdm64 playing very well with the AWP then it must be said that Inferno is also one of CLG’s weakest maps.
Their next three Bo1s was against mousesports which EnVyUs won two of 16:8 (Dust2), 19:17 (Cache), and lost 16:11 (Train).
This meant that when there only was two teams left in the tournament it was Team SoloMid and EnVyUs with both 3 lives, and it should have been a close matchup, but it ended up being a domination display from EnVyUs taking Team SoloMid’s three lives in three games 16:3 (Cache), 16:9 (Cobblestone), 16:12 (Inferno), and while EnVyUs performed quite well it was a TSM who was underperforming, and in addition due to the map picks being community decided the first two maps favored EnVyUs. It was still an impressive display from the team, and while it was evident that they had not had enough time to synchronize and adapt to each other they showed, as they were able to before that they can win on rawr skill alone.

Thoughts
I’ve only looked at IEM as it in this case where the only unknown is “How well will the team play together, and how will their setups be as CT”, as every single player is of a caliber who can carry his team to victory singlehandedly and not only against lesser teams, but can do so against the very best as kennyS displayed again and again in Titan, and as every other player has done in several games. If we were to look at which team has the highest combined skilled lineup I would previously have argued that Team SoloMid was ahead of EnVyUs, however, with the addition of apEX and kennyS they have surpassed Team SoloMid, and I sat this as a Danish fanboy.
One of the things I look very much forward to see is if the team adopts the more ‘In your face with aimduels’ approach as they were using at the last couple of events with the old lineup, or if go with a mix of heavily set-executes as the smoke A-long on Inferno and the run-and-gun, both can be highly entertaining to watch, but they can make both work the question is “Can they make it work on most of the maps before Cologne?” if they can I think they are one of the absolute top contenders for winning the event, and even if they do not manage to do so they should end top #4.
To give an example of the skill level in EnVyUs, the top20 players of HLTV.org contains every single one of them NBK, apEX, kioShiMa, Happy and kennyS and while it was for 2014 and a lot have changed since then they are all players to be feared.
In terms of maps their strongest maps would from my point of view be: Cache, Dust2, Inferno and being decent on Mirage, Cobblestone. Overpass and Train was maps that both Titan and EnVyUs previously was not very strong on, and while it initially can be an issue it can just as well be their joker if they have had time to practice, and become good, on one of the maps.

With FNATIC, Team SoloMid and Virtus.pro all have been having off-tournaments and not looking like the dominating forces they were months ago it is not an impossible task for the EnVyUs lineup to win ESL One Cologne 2015.

Links taken from HLTV.org and Liquipedia.