In one of the most unexpected outcomes of the year, the Danish side of North walked away from DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018 as champions.
North have long been a team residing in the second tier of Counter Strike, a team with decent play-off potential but one appearing to lack the quality to truly challenge the game’s elite.
However, recently North made a surprising roster change, bringing in niko on loan from Heroic in place of mertz. This created an imbalance in the roles within the team, with North subsequently appearing to lack a primary AWPer (sniper). The burden of AWPing fell on in-game leader MSL, who has been known for years as a player with a brilliant mind for the game but also a clear inability and deficiency in terms of picking up kills on a consistent basis.
Group progress
Entering Stockholm, North had a workable Group A, with an intriguing match-up against the ever-unpredictable TyLoo to begin their campaign. North passed their opening test with flying colours, securing a 16-7 victory to set up a date in the best-of-three winners’ match against the squad universally recognised as the best in the world, Astralis.
Once again North were up to the task, defeating Astralis 2-1 off the back of an overtime win on map three of Mirage.
Dominant success
Due to upsets over in Group B, North ended up squaring up against the second-best team in the world, Natus Vincere, in a difficult play-off opener. This proved to be the most dominant showing of the tournament for North, with a swift 2-0 success in which they held Na’vi to a total of just 12 rounds.
In the semi-finals, North found themselves up against mousesports, another up-and-down squad.
This appeared to be the end of the line for North, as the opening match was one of the most one-sided play-off matches in recent memory. mousesports pulled off the rarely-seen 16-0 scoreline as they completely shut North out on Dust 2.
Yet North were unshaken, picking themselves up to win back-to-back narrow victories on Inferno (16-14) and Mirage (16-12) to reach the final where they would meet a familiar foe.
Repeat victory
Astralis were awaiting North, with a completely different pick ban that saw three different maps from those selected in their group-stage battle.
In a complete reversal of the semi-final, it was North who took a one-sided victory on Dust 2, in this case a still-absurd 16-1, to put themselves firmly in the driver’s seat.
After Astralis took a clean 16-6 victory on Train, it all came down to Overpass where North once again stepped up to the task. With a 16-11 victory propelled by a fluid and solid T (terrorist) side, North claimed victory and shocked the world.
MSL a shock MVP
The tournament MVP, in what was perhaps the performance of the year, was MSL, primarily for his quality play with the AWP.
However, other players within the team made huge contributions.
valde has been the rock for North ever since his addition to the team, with Kjaerbye and aizy finally finding a run of good form. Heavily criticised for his poor play in the past, aizy in particular has progressed immensely in the past few months.
Yet perhaps lost in all of this was the addition of niko, who has brought a second consistent force alongside valde in what is now an eerily-similar set-up to Astralis.
Astralis took off after the addition of Magisk, with his consistency on the CT (counter-terrorist) side being a huge boon. niko’s addition could be the catalyst for a similar run from North, with a massive test upcoming with the Major in London.
Now for consistency
It’s not yet the time to dub North a tier-one team. That designation still remains with Astralis, Na’vi and others and seems likely to do so for the foreseeable future.
However, should North show this consistency over the course of the next few tournaments, their standing will undoubtedly change.
They are currently sixth favourites for next month’s Major, Dafabet offering 10.320. Despite their Stockholm final loss, Astralis remain at the head of the market at 2.580.
