NEO is without a doubt a Polish legend and 1.6 superstar. Although he hasn’t played to the same star level in CS:GO as he had in 1.6, NEO is still contention for the best Counter-Strike player (regardless of game) ever. Actually, NEO ‘failing’ to play at his 1.6 star level is not a failure in the typical sense of a failed star--a player who gets the resources to be a star but doesn’t deliver as he should or once could. No, NEO has transformed from a movement and aim extraordinair in CS 1.6 to a support player and in-game leader in CS:GO. For the past 13 years, NEO has been innovating his playstyle and how the game of Counter-Strike is played.

This article will celebrate every year he has played through the ten Major finals he played in as well as three frag movies as NEO is one of the most entertaining players to watch. The matches will go in chronological order with descriptions providing context. The fragmovies will be at the end. Please note that due to the timeframe NEO played in, not all VODs for the matches exist, nor do they all exist in English. HLTV demo pages will be provided where VODs do not exist.

WCG 2006 - W

NEO began his playing career in 2004, and right from the get-go, he was playing with TaZ — now the oldest, baldest Counter-Strike player. Back in 2004, both NEO and TaZ were young — 17 and 18 respectively. It took them two years to gather their Golden Five line-up of NEO, TaZ, Loord, LUq, and kuben, but when they did, they had immediate success. They won WSVG 2006: London, and eight days later, they were at the Major.

The Major was WCG 2006, and it was a tournament quite different from those that we have today. There were 48 teams, eight groups, and a playoffs that began with a round of 16. Pentagram, NEO’s team, were on the weaker side of the bracket, playing sYnck, Hacker.PK, and NoA before playing NiP in the finals. Pentagram’s performance in the finals versus the best team at the time in the Ninjas of Pyjamas all but made up for their performance in the previous rounds of the tournament. After losing closely on the first map, Nuke, Pentagram took Inferno in the same fashion that Nuke was taken from them. For the third map, Train, Pentagram powered through NiP like NiP was expected to do to Pentagram. In short, this was a big moment for NEO and his compatriots.

ESWC 2007 - W

The stage for NEO’s second Major victory was substantially different to that of his first stab at a Major title. Going into ESWC 2007, NEO was coming off the back of three finals placings with one win out of the spread. That one win was Intel Extreme Masters I, which some people now consider to be a Major because of how stacked the event was. The reason why I choose not to count this as a Major final for NEO is because there isn’t a common consensus on whether or not it was a Major. In any case, it put the Poles in the position that their past opponents, NiP, were in at WCG 2006.

At the Major, Pentagram made it out of the groups, albeit narrowly as two of their games were won in overtime. In the first round of the playoffs, Pentagram met the Ninjas in Pyjamas. After 2-0’ing the Ninjas, they managed to beat Fnatic 2-1. After having battled through the tougher side of the bracket, they encountered NoA in the finals. It’s quite curious that they met this up-and-coming team in the finals as NoA at the time was vaguely reminiscent of Pentagram at WCG 2006, the upstarts who made it to the finals by getting the weaker side of the bracket. NEO and Pentagram were spared a cruel reversal of fate this day and instead were a part of an entertaining series in the finals with Map 2 going to overtime.

ESWC 2008 - W

https://www.hltv.org/matches/741046/frag-executors-vs-wemade-fox-eswc-2008

NEO hadn’t played in many big events in the months leading up to ESWC 2008. They finished out 2007 pretty poorly, and only went to one tier 1 event before the Major. This event was Dreamhack Summer 2008, which they won.

Again, tournaments in 1.6 were run a little bit differently than those in CS:GO. ESWC had two group stages. In the first stage, MYM took second to Virtus.pro (a Russian team in 1.6 not to be confused with NEO’s current team). After that, they took second again, but this time they had a better excuse because mTw was considered the favorite to win this tournament and was the best team of the year. In the quarterfinals versus emuLate, MYM lost one-sidedly on the first map, won closely on the second, and won one-sidedly on the last map. In the semi-finals, MYM 16-0’ed mousesports on the first map, and took the second map almost as easily. This is saying a lot about MYM since mousesports getting this far in the tournament was no fluke and were actually a good team unlike today’s mousesports. In the final, they 2-1’ed Estro in a very close series which had two 29 round games and one 30 round game. Estro was a promising Korean team that did well on their side of the bracket but was in no way favored to win the tournament.

IEM III - L

https://www.hltv.org/matches/935195/fnatic-vs-frag-executors-extreme-masters-iii-global-finals

Meet Your Makers hadn’t won a tournament after ESWC 2008. It wouldn’t be their lowest low as they were still making it to the playoffs of tournaments, but if we are still let down when NEO’s team gets relegated from EPL or doesn’t make it out of the groups of a tournament, then you can imagine how fans reacted to MYM’s middling results between ESWC 2008 and IEM III.

After closely making it out of the group in third, MYM loses to mTw in a best of one in the first round of the playoffs. NEO had another shot at the final because of the lower-bracket. In the first round of the lower-bracket, MYM beat SK in a best of one. After mTw loses to Fnatic in the upper-bracket, a line-up with similar form to the Fnatic many CS:GO fans fondly remember, MYM gets a rematch with mTw, and this time they win it in an incredibly close fashion. As the underdogs of the final, MYM lost closely in a best of one to Fnatic making it NEO’s first silver medal at a Major.

WCG 2009 - W

Among the Poles’ sponsor problems, they join an organization called Wicked eSports. That didn’t last long and they were then forced to play on their own where they used the name AGAiN. This would be a name that NEO’s teams would unfortunately have to use again in the future due to poor sponsorship. To make things worse, NEO hadn’t made it to the final of a tier 1 tournament between the two Majors. They were truly in rough shape, but they kept on fighting.

In the group stage of WCG 2009, they go out second even though they had a fairly weak group. On their road to the finals, they did not shape up and go into god mode, but rather, they 2-1’ed all of their opponents with each game coming fairly close. Though they narrowly avoided death a few times in getting to the finals, they managed to win 2-0 Fnatic who were big favorites for the tournament. Like the axiom goes, AGAiN plays to the level of their opponents, which is quite evident in the 28-26 overtime first map that AGAiN barely won.

IEM V - L

The Poles’ sponsorship problems weren’t fixed overnight, but by IEM V, they were playing under Frag eXecutors. They were actually playing under FX a year before they won a Major. They had a mix of hopelessly disappointing results, a few acceptable playoff runs, and a single tournament victory in 2010. NEO was also playing with a new teammate, pasha. This roster change is attributed to their poor form in 2010. IEM V was only the second event they had played in 2011, and two months previously, they took third at the IEM V European Championship.

Similar to past Majors, FX took second to the Danes of mTw in the group stage. In the quarterfinals, NEO’s team 2-0’ed Fnatic, a much weaker version than that of previous years. The team more closely resembling the Fnatic of years past was SK Gaming, and they were Frag eXecutor’s second opponent in the playoffs. The semi-finals ended narrowly with a 2-1 in favor of the Poles. In the finals of this tournament, Frag eXecutors began a rivalry that would last until the end of CS 1.6. Na’Vi, the most dominant team of 2010 and the only team to win four Majors in a row, began a battle to with NEO’s team to win the most Majors in 1.6. Soon after IEM V, this battle was intensified as a race when CS:GO was announced and CS 1.6’s scene started to fall in on itself. Although FX got 2-0’ed by Na’Vi, they kept the match competitive and the rivalry competitive with the promise of vengeance.

WCG 2011 - W

Frag eXecutors continued to sponsor the Polish team up until October, and after a few tournaments without sponsorship, they were picked up by ESC who would support them from the end of 2011 to the early days of CS:GO in 2013. In 2011, the Poles met a fair amount of success outside of the Majors with three victories at good sized tournaments. Besides contextualizing the results of NEO’s teams in this section, I think it is also important to add another piece of context to put WCG 2011 and NEO’s victory there into perspective. Na’Vi’s failure at WCG Ukraine precluded them from going to the main WCG tournament. There was also some confusion about Na’Vi applying to attend anyways. Obviously, Na’Vi’s absence in a Major during the Polish-Ukrainian race for Majors is a big deal and should be considered when assessing NEO’s result at the event.

ESC was able to make it to the finals without too much trouble by topping their group and 2-0’ing all of their opponents. In the final, they met SK Gaming, which was a team that could be regarded as a third of the power trio of ESC, Na’Vi, and themselves in the latter days of 1.6. It was quite fitting that ESC and SK played in the final because they were by far the best teams at the tournament with Na’Vi out of the equation. In a fairly close series on Dust 2, Train, and Tuscan, ESC managed to beat SK Gaming and add another Major trophy to their collection.

IEM VI - W

ESC played in no events between WCG and IEM VI, so there is nothing to report to contextualize their form going into the last Major in 1.6. CS:GO was announced in the previous year, and these were the last tournaments. I often conceptualize the collapse of CS 1.6 as the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was a sudden realization of what was real and what isn’t because governments operate on promises in order to maximize efficiency. As people begin to realize that there is only a finite amount of resources, they then scramble for everything in sight. The Russian Oligarchy formed as a result. The Russian oligarch in this example is ESC as they managed to get the very last Major.

ESC narrowly gets out of their group at IEM VI based on round difference. ESC 2-0’s Moscow Five in the quarterfinals. In the semifinals, they play the winners of their group, which got to skip the quarterfinals, SK Gaming. ESC manages to 2-1 them with all maps going to double digits. In the final, they play Na’Vi. Na’Vi had the opportunity to tie the number of Majors that ESC had, and ESC had the opportunity to firmly plant themselves as the team that won the most Majors in 1.6. This final was the epicenter of all Major competition in the game because it was the final showdown. In this matchup, NEO’s team narrowly 2-0’s Na’Vi putting them as the team with the most Majors.

EMS One: Katowice - W

EMS One: Katowice was the first Major final in CS:GO that NEO had ever played in, and since they transitioned in 2012, it took them a long time in order to make it to that final. The lack of Majors in CS:GO is Valve’s doing, and NEO only had one shot at a Major final before EMS One: Katowice. However, Universal Soldiers did quite poorly at that tournament, Dreamhack Winter 2013. NEO’s team had a fair amount of difficulty transitioning to CS:GO though it wasn’t as troublesome as it was for Na’Vi. Of his teammates, NEO had the worst time transitioning to CS:GO and has never been the same player as he was in 1.6. Before Dreamhack Winter 2013, the Poles also changed their line-up to what is still their current line-up, the longest standing team in CS:GO. Undoubtedly, this change was needed for them to be a contending team in CS:GO since Snax is now regarded as one of the best players in the world. Before EMS One: Katowice, the only tournaments they had won were smaller eastern European tournaments, which admittedly were few in number.

Competing under the banner of Virtus.pro for the first time, NEO’s team tops their group. Playing LDLC in the first round of the bracket stage, VP handedly 2-0’s them. Remaining in plow mode, Virtus.pro loses their only map of the tournament to LGB, which was an overtime game as well. In the finals, they meet NiP, who were in great form at the time. In the final, Virtus.pro 2-0’s the most dominant team in CS:GO at the time showing the world that they’ve still got it.

ELEAGUE Major - L

The ELEAGUE Major and EMS One: Katowice were separated by three years, but Virtus.pro was consistently contesting for a spot in the finals of a Major. The only two tournaments they failed to be in the semifinals of after EMS One: Katowice were at the MLG Major and IEM Cologne. Although they had their weak points throughout the year, VP would always go into gear for the Majors. Despite having an unprecedented slump at the time, VP won just as many tournaments in 2016 as SK. Going into the Major, VP had perhaps a better chance than the other teams there because SK was weakened by playing with fox.

In their first time of playing in a Swiss format at the Major, Virtus.pro wins all of their group stage games. They 2-1 North in the first round with a convincing first map. They 2-0 SK, but both maps were very close. Some could question in previous rounds if VP was sufficiently tested, but no one would doubt the strength of Astralis as their opponent. In a final that could have easily gone the other way, Virtus.pro lose 16-14 on the third map of the series. On Friday June 16, ELEAGUE will be hosting the Clash for Cash, which is a $250,000 rematch of the Major final.

W-7/L-3

Image credit: ESL Flikr - Helena Kristiansson

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