Mousesports is playing in the EU Challenger Series Finals, maybe getting a autopromotion to LCS. Not too long ago you would have been laughed at for predicting that or a similar result. Mouz came out of nowhere and competed in this CS split with their own very special strengths, leading to a place in the upcoming finals. This is their story.  

From ashes

This split is not the first one for the organization Mousesports, but it’s the first one for the current team. Mouz competed with a different roster, only the botlane remained between the splits:

The organisation has sponsored league teams before, but their first stint in the new and revamped challenger series was the acquisition of the N!Faculty roster. The roster was recently hurt by the departure of star player Obvious. The new roster ended the split in a disappointing last place with a 2:8 record.

This is where the real story starts. When this Mouz failed and even disbanded, a new roster was already being formed. It all started when Phillip Neubauer was tasked with forming and managing a new CS team for Mouz, and so they made some changes. The first and most important one was the acquisition of praised challenger toplaner Mauno “beansu” Talli, who had high expectations to live up to. As beansu himself stated Mouz “Was pretty much one of the only offers i had.”. With that, 3 players were set in stone -- beansu and the returning Botlane from last split consisting of Tarik “Sedrion” Holz and Patrick “Mountain” Dasberg. Early incarnations of the Mouz lineup consisted of the former jungler “XoYnUzi” together with the rookie midlaner “Jinsh”. Results weren’t as expected and soon enough the team settled on their current lineup, adding former UOL and Pridez jungler Daniel “Dan” Hockley and the german streamer and midlane-main Julian “Xioh” Dumler. The team was coached by Nicholas “Inero” Smith who formerly coached Pridez but was relatively unknown before he joined Mouz. Expectations for the lineup were mediocre, they were thought to have a decent chance at qualifying for CS, but nobody would have predicted them to end up in the finals, or even make top 4. Xioh had a limited champion pool based around long range poke champions like Varus, Kog’maw or Azir and looked rather weak on assassins, which were still played at that time. Sedrion and Mountain didn’t look promising after their disappointing spring split together as a botlane. Dan and beansu were well regarded on the other hand and were generally expected to consistently perform.  

First steps

Mouz’ first success was winning the finals of the “ESL Meisterschaft Spring 2015” against the German team Euronics Gaming. For this tournament they subbed in former N!Faculty jungler Dennis “Obvious” Sorensen, thus showing us a different roster. Except for a second place at a weekly tournament called “League One”, Mousesports didn’t participate in any other tournaments and focused on climbing the ranked 5s ladder. ending in 2nd place with a impressive 80% winrate.

With that, the team looked to qualify for the EUCS summer split. They ended up in Bracket B, which was generally considered the worst bracket since you inevitably had to face Dignitas EU, who looked far ahead of their competition. Mouz won the first Bo3 without any trouble against the unknown EUNE team “Epic Avalanche”.

The Semi-finals were far more challenging. Mouz went up against the dark horse team of the qualifiers “Low Priority”, a team that went under massive roster changes before the tourney and suddenly looked like a dangerous contender. The series was the closest and most exciting in the entire tourney. In game 1 beansu managed to get massively fed as Irelia vs Kektz's Gnar and snowballed from there. Afterwards, Mouz dropped a game due to Taikki’s jungle presence early on and Avenuee snowballing a lead on LeBlanc. Nevertheless, Mouz would be able to close out the series in the next game and advance to the Bracket A finals against Team Dignitas EU.

The Finals didn’t go well for Mouz, with Dignitas being the first team to abuse Xioh’s weak laning, repeatedly ganking his midlane and getting star player Chres ”Sencux” Laursen ahead every game of the series. In the second game Sencux, picked the first competitive Ekko ever and went 11/2/6, ending any hopes for a comeback.

With MYM surrendering their CS spot, another chance opened for Mouz. A 3rd place match was held between Mouz and Ex Nihilo, a newly formed team lead by Matthew “Impaler” Taylor. Mouz brought out Ziggs and midlane Varus during that series and convincingly won 2:0.

In game 1 of this series, Dan showed off his Sejuani jungle and Mouz played a teamfighting composition around it, something that would become a continuous trend.

With that, Mouz qualified for the CS summer split. They didn’t defy any expectation since at this point everyone expected them to have a high chance of qualifying; the real story begins during their CS split.

The brawlers

“Our scrim record is really bad since we usually don't win with mechanics alone.”

- beansu

In contrast to other CS teams, Mouz had a clear identity and they played arround it. Mouz was a teamfighting team, often going for AOE champions like Maokai, Gnar, Sejuani, Ashe or Azir in the first few CS weeks. Mouz found success in the first 2 weeks, only dropping 1 out of 4 games, in which one they had to sub in coach Nicholas “Inero” Smith as ADC. The team experienced the first 0:2 defeat against heavy favorites Dignitas EU, who denied a lot of Mouz’ usual picks in the draft for game 2, forcing them onto new picks like Ryze top, Ezreal mid and Renekton jungle. The game ended in a very one-sided stomp for team Dignitas and it revealed Mouz' weakness, one dimensional play. Mouz’ macro play wasn’t on the level of other teams in the CS -- if they couldn’t teamfight, they seemed clueless and lost.

Another problem the team had was the lack of laning presence and mechanical skill in some positions. This is an issue in a league where a lot of games are simply won by individual skill alone.

As a result, a lot of credit has to be given to the coaching staff of mousesports. As soon as the team got abused for their playstyle, they rapidly improved. Every single game you could see the team improve in terms of wave control, early game pressure, and strategic play.The team seemed to take some time to adapt, dropping two games against Denial in the last week.

Outside of the challenger scene, Mouz had a decent finish as 3rd at the Esportsfestival in Belgium, losing in the semifinals against fellow CS team Denial.

Coming into form

“Ineros strong points are pick/ban, gameplan and overall telling us how to manage waves.”   

- beansu  

Mouz went into playoffs as the 4th and last seed and were considered the weakest team in the bracket. Their playoff run was supposedly ending in the semifinals against Gamers2, who looked very strong in the last week.

But Mouz had other plans, Mouz wanted to win.

The team set up a bootcamp in Germany, flying every teammate and coach Inero in to train as efficiently as possible. This is where the team changed drastically. According to toplaner beansu: “Our calls and communication is probably one of our strong points” and this showed. Everyone was used to Mouz’ strong target focus in teamfights and decisive engages, but Mouz showed more against Gamers2.

The team got incredibly disciplined and pulled off a great 1-3-1 splitpush in game 1, as well as impressing the viewers with incredible wave control and macro play in game 2, completely outplaying Gamer2 and making it look easy. Mouz decided the series 2:0 for themselves and the games didn’t even look close.

During the bootcamp with coach Inero, the team evolved to the next level of teamplay -- instead of being good at teamfighting the team is strong at all-around teamplay. They have a game plan, pick towards it, know how to execute it, and do so in a disciplined manner. That’s more than most other CS teams can claim to accomplish. Now Mouz is set to face Team Dignitas EU in the finals on the 12th of August in the LCS studio.

The story of Mouz is a peculiar one because it defied the general mindset of EU Challenger Series itself. The EUCS  has always been heavily focused on individual talent; people wanted to see 10 solo queue superstars battling it out. They wanted to see the best individual talent the region has to offer. and Mouz blows that expectation out of the water. Nobody would call players like Mountain or Xioh outstanding talents, but here they are in the CS finals. Mouz has proven that even at this level of play, brains can beat brawn. Mouz’ development and their run in the playoffs might seem insignificant to some, but it’s a storyline of historical importance for the Challenger Scene, and it hasn’t even concluded yet.

“We mostly improved as a team, i wouldn’t say someone improved a huge amount  individually”

-beansu

- - -  Thanks to @stresslesswolf for proof-reading and to beansu for his help.

If you enjoyed this content, feel free to follow the author for more at @DanEsports. All images courtesy of mousesports, Riot Games, and other respective owners.