Counter Strike has recently found itself stuck in uncharted territory, territory that has come to be known as the parity era. The professional scene now exists in a bubble where their is no true clear favorite, rather there are simply a numerous amount of teams battling each other in an attempt to reach the top.

One of those teams attempting to reach the top is known to the community as OpTic Gaming, and they happen to be the most recent insertion into the battlefield that is professional CS GO. Optic Gaming over a two tournament period, seemingly out of nowhere, went from being not even considered the best North American team to being one of the favorites to do heavy damage at this upcoming major. However while their rise up the ranks has seemingly come out nowhere if one takes a look at the inner mechanisms of the Optic Gaming machine then it becomes clear that the fundamentals qualities that one needs to become a top team were always present within Optic Gaming.

High Powered Engine

An important part of the foundations that prop up Optic Gaming is the strength of their roster in terms of pure gun skill. If one were to express it in car terms well then Optic Gaming has a V8 engine underneath that hood. Optic is blessed with the star talents of players like Rush, Mixwell, and Tarik, and has proceeded to accentuate their skill set by bringing in skilled players like Stanislaw and Naf-fly to function as role players.

The most important part of the engine is undoubtedly Rush, his success is the difference maker for Optic. Without Rush’s high powered entry fragging Optic Gaming would have never been able to produce the results that they have so far. With Rush it feels like Optic Gaming’s success depends on his play at an inordinate level, when he fails to hit a high level in the server then Optic Gaming tend to find themselves at the wrong end of the matchup.

Luckily for Optic while Rush is an important piece of the engine he has a lot of failsafe mechanisms that are built into support him and the team. Those failsafe mechanisms exist in the form of Tarik and Mixwell, the complementary star players on this roster. Tarik brings to the engine a secondary aggressive component, a player who is willing to follow Rush’s entry fragging for better or worse (usually for the better).

Mixwell brings a completely different type of star power into the roster, he brings a strong and consistent hybrid presence on the team. Mixwell functions not only as the star Awper on the team, make no mistake he is the star awp regardless of who ends up awping in the server, but also as a consistent rifler who can be relied upon in any situation to close out the round. Furthermore the engine is finished off with the additions of Naf-fly and Stanislaw, players who in their own right are capable of carrying Optic Gaming to the win. When a team has a roster like that it comes the success that they have achieved at the international arena should come as no surprise.

Strong Fundamentals

While a strong roster can contribute to success at the highest level it is not the only factor that Optic Gaming has going for it. The players on Optic Gaming also have a master like comprehension of the fundamentals of proper Counter Strike play, and that has helped them succeed at the international stage. The fundamental of Counter Strike that they have mastered to the furthest extend is without a doubt the task of trading kills.

Trading is a seemingly simple task, after all, all one has to do is to go out and make sure that no kill by the enemy goes unanswered for. Problem is that this task is much more complex than its simple definition can make you believe. Proper trading requires not only a great understanding of your own position relative to enemies, but also an understanding of your teammates positions relative to your enemies. In a chaotic situation, as a large portion of executes find themselves becoming, proper trading is extremely hard to carry out effectively and usually requires the players to possess an almost instinctual ability to understand where to place themselves in order to carry out this trades.

It seems that the players on Optic Gaming, thanks to a mixture of natural synergy and proper understanding of what their tactics require, have achieved that high level of trading. Their ability to properly trade is one of the main factors that has propelled Optic Gaming to the high level they are currently exhibiting. Furthermore, another important factor that Optic Gaming currently have going for them is the simplicity of their tactics. While some believe that a hugely complex tactical base is necessary in order for a team to reach the pinnacle of the professional scene the fact of the matter is that an effectively run simplistic strategy will trump any sort of shoddily executed complex strategy.

Optic Gaming have followed that principle of success to a tee and have thoroughly intertwined their set of strategies with the abstraction that is known as simplicity. By utilizing a tactic book filled with simplistic strategies that play to their natural strengths, namely chaos and high paced situations, Optic Gaming have managed to utilize simplicity at its finest en route to the top of the scene.

Where to go now

The only question that remains now is how far will this system that Optic Gaming have built up take them. Now a whole new task stares the players on Optic face to face. Now that Optic Gaming have established themselves as a legitimate international threat teams will study up on them, and it remains to be seen whether or not their system is capable of standing up to that sort of prodding. At the qualifiers for the Eleague major the system definitely did not stand up to the task versus Faze, as it seemed like Optic’s tendencies were completely utilized in order to obliterate them.

Be that as it may, the Eleague major is coming up, and it stands as the true test to the longevity of Optic’s system. If Optic Gaming can continue their string of success, especially after such a long break where teams could study up on them, it will undoubtedly signal that Optic Gaming are here to stay. However if Optic were to stumble and fall here then it could also serve as a sort of herald, one that will enlighten the professional scene about the brittleness of this system. All that remains to be seen is the mettle of the engine that currently powers this Optic Gaming team.