G2 are a team that recently have been on the minds of a large portion of the Counter Strike Community. Boasting a roster consisting of some of the most illustrious veterans to play the game of Counter Strike, they have recently come into the public spotlight due to their improvement in terms of results. The impetus for this marked improvement in terms of result was the swapping of long standing member Ex6tenz for newcomer Bodyy. This change revitalized this longstanding roster and propelled them to new heights, helping them to achieve the types of results that the previous iteration of the team could only have dreamed of. G2 found themselves a moment or two away from winning the ESL Pro league finals, and this result led many to believe that G2 were back to the top of the scene for good. However as time went on, and as G2 attended more and more events, it became clear that this lineup was one that had no sustainable option for long term success. This G2 team is a team with a ceiling, a ceiling that it can surpass for brief periods of time through superlative levels of play from its star carries, Shox and Scream, but a ceiling that it can never truly escape from.

Stars Reborn

One of the main factors in G2’s resurgence has been the outstanding level of play that its two star carries have been hitting. Shox and Scream have been playing like men reborn, hitting levels that harken back to their world beating days on VeryGames, back when they were an integral part of the world’s best team. Ripping through heads on the server, Shox and Scream have led G2 to fantastic results both offline and online, reaching the finals of ESL Pro League and also qualifying for ECS Finals through spectacular online play.

Despite Shox and Scream’s resurgence in terms of individual play it is clear that the levels they were hitting could not prop up the team on the international stage for an indefinite period of time. When comparing G2 to other teams at the highest level of Counter Strike, a key difference strikes out to the beholder. Looking at the other teams at the elite level in Counter Strike, it becomes clear that a great depth of talent to fall back on is necessary in order to succeed at the highest level. Teams like Astralis, Luminosity, Fnatic, and Na’Vi have a breadth of talent to rely on to bail them out situations where their star players fail them. Instead the situation for G2 is the complete opposite, if Shox and Scream can not hit star levels of performance versus tier one or tier two levels of competition then there is no depth of talent for G2 to rely on.

Examples of this principle in action have already been exhibited at the ESL One Cologne qualifiers, where in the games versus Gambit and Mousesports, Shox and Scream did not show up at their normal star levels and, subsequently, G2 found themselves stranded in the middle of the ocean without a paddle.

Tactical System MIA

Normally teams at the highest level of play have some sort of tactical foundation to fall back on when pure firepower is not doing the job versus their competition. For Luminosity, this foundation manifests itself in the form of Fallen, for Na’Vi it is the mind of starix, even Fnatic have the underlying chemistry between the core of its roster to fall back on in the toughest of situations. On the other hand, for G2, there is no sort of tactical foundation to rely on; that went by the wayside upon the removal of Ex6tenz.

The removal of Ex6tenz was meant to revitalize a lineup that had underachieved compared to the levels of talent that it had; however, his removal also came with the caveat that it evolved G2 into an one dimensional team, a team whose route to success lived and died through firepower. The foundations that the bedrock of G2 rely on is the consistent star levels of output that have been coming out from Scream and Shox for the past month. Be that as it may, despite those high levels emanating from the play of Shox and Scream, there is only so much water a team can tread till the weight tied to their ankle drags them down deep below the water.

Glued to the Bottom

For G2, there exists an inconvenient truth on their roster: the play of SmithZz, their main awper. SmithZz’s play has degraded a long ways when compared to the days he was heralded as a top five awper in the world. On the contrary, nowadays he is viewed as one of the worst individual players on a top ten team in the scene, and one of the main factors that inhibit G2 from progressing to the next level.

The awp is a weapon of poor efficiency -- its cost demands the person wielding it be one of the higher skilled members of the team, as the AWP’s large price can make or break a team’s economy. Be that as it may, a good awper can have an unparalleled impact on the game, creating picks in situations that a normal rifler couldn’t. Sadly, in the case of Smithzz, the tale is completely flipped upside its head; rather than creating picks for his team, Smithzz is adept at getting picked off. Quite regularly, regardless of a win or loss, Smithzz will find himself at the bottom of the scoreboard, and even when he does find himself at the top of the scoreboard, he fails to generate the level of game impact necessary to put G2 over the top.

If one were to compare Gamer2’s roster to other rosters of tier one teams, it becomes clear that Gamer2’s roster pales in comparison. When Shox and Scream fail to hit ridiculous levels of game impact, there are no reliable players like Flusha, Edward, Fnx, or Xyp9x to fall back on to carry the game. Instead, there are only competent role players like RPK and Bodyy, and an anchor in the form of smithzz.

Conclusion

G2 over the last month have been one of the hottest teams within the Counter Strike scene; however, recently they have begun to slow down in terms of results within the scene. A large part of this decrease in the fire of G2’s results revolves around the unsustainable manner in which they were obtaining said results, relying on the same duo to perform in a superlative manner game after game. Subsequently, when said duo slowed down in terms of game impact even slightly, as they always do, G2 had neither an efficient tactical system nor teammates who were capable of shouldering the burden of carrying games to rely on -- as such, G2 have found themselves falling down from the heights that they had reached with such high levels of sacrifice. Moving forward, I do not believe that this current iteration of the G2 lineup has the roster nor foundation necessary to become an elite team on the world stage in a sustainable manner; that will require moves within the French scene that at this point seem unattainable.

Photo Credit: HLTV