G2 Shuffles Once Again

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In June of 2018, Ex6TenZ finally stepped back into the top tier of French CS. He joined shox and kennyS on G2, and they were heralded as the “French Superteam”.  Armed with a solid support player SmithZz and a third fragger bodyy, they looked poised to make waves in the international scene.

Six months later, and the superteam sports a .568 winning percentage and a .91 K/D as a team. KennyS and shox are the only players with a positive rating over the team’s lifetime, and their map pool is not good. Their highest win rate is on Dust2 at 50%, with five maps under a 40% win rate. They have attended 6 LAN tournaments as a team and have never placed higher than fifth. Most recently they exited cs_summit last, losing 2-0 to BIG and 1-2 to CompLexity. Obviously, these results are unsatisfactory, especially for a team of this pedigree.

In come Lucky and JACKZ, from the team 3DMAX, which is the fourth best French team. (I think. It probably goes Vitality, LDLC, G2, then 3DMAX). 3DMAX is 11-5 in EU MDL and have looked pretty good since adding JACKZ in July of this year. They’ve taken maps off of ENCE, Sprout, Kinguin. They seem to be a solid tier 2-3 team, although likely not for much longer.

JACKZ has been a solid hybrid player for 3DMAX and should hopefully pair well with Kenny. Lucky just needs to continue providing firepower, as that’s something G2 is in desperate need of. I’m not terribly hopeful for JACKZ continuing his success as an AWPer, simply because I don’t think G2 will be able to get him the AWP. Shox likes to secondary AWP, and he also likes to buy pretty aggressively. Whether JACKZ gets the AWP in his hand as often as he likes is a question G2 will have to answer moving forward.

Ex6TenZ and SmithZz will likely have a hard time finding a place to land now that they’re off G2. Team Vitality might have need for Ex6TenZ over the long run, especially if Happy decides he doesn’t want to IGL. That might not happen for a while though, and I’m not sure where he can go. It’s possible an NA team takes a flyer on him, hoping he can tame some of the young guns out West? Maybe someone like Envy? Ex6TenZ instead of reltuC might make that team a legitimate force to be reckoned with. As for SmithZz, I don’t have much hope. Maybe analyst work or playing for a tier two French team.

As far as betting on G2, now is the time to put money on them as an underdog. Presumably they are going to start playing a much looser style, which teams aren’t going to be able to prepare for. Shox is going to be unleashed and allowed to play his style. There will likely be a small honeymoon phase after the addition of the new players, and I could see G2 upsetting someone like FaZe or BIG or someone like that. So if you can get them as an underdog, I’d recommend putting some money down.

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