Astralis is a legendary organization best known for their Counter Strike lineup, a lineup that will go down as the best team in CSGO history. A Danish organization that not only represents the nation within our little bubble of esports, but is also a household name in the country. Any esport that gets the attention of this org is sure to have potential. So when the Astralis Group announced their acquisition of both Disrupt Gaming and its roster, there were high expectations for both parties. After all, greatness is the bare minimum when the red star is involved. Considering the team they were getting, Astralis had reason to expect as much out of the new acquisition too. Disrupt were a middle of the pack team that had seen consistent growth through smart roster changes and a good mix of new blood and old talent in 2020. There was clear potential to rise up and break into the top 4 of NA as shown by Stage 1 of 2021, and despite the slump in Stage 2 things were still looking promising. However this hasn’t been the case, as the team had a disappointing Stage 3 of the NAL and flunked out of the both Six Invitational qualifiers early to a pug team. Since then personnel changes have been announced in the past weeks. While the early struggles of the roster can be attributed to a bad roster change and its ramifications going into Stage 2. These more recent struggles are underperformances to an embarrassing degree. For a team that was one of the hottest prospects of the NAL going into the year, what the hell happened?
A Promising Start: Early 2021
Going into Stage 1 of the 2021 NAL season Disrupt Gaming seemed like a solid team to bet on to be top 4 in the region. Nothing to scoff at when the competition was SSG, the SI20 champions, DZ and OXG, consistent international competitors, and TSM, a team that looked exceptionally strong in late 2020 and early 2021. By winning the NSGxDZ Pro-Am tournament DG made a statement going into Stage 1, though with the caveat that their best map of the tournament was Theme Park, a map that was removed from professional rotation going into Stage 1. However, DG followed that tournament win up with a top 4 finish in Stage 1. During this period of time the team as a whole seemed to be firing on all cylinders. Shuttle was in form, Retro was finding impact, and the young guns of J90 and iconic were on point with MarktheShark filling the gaps. The team still clearly had room to grow but their home pick Consulate was deadly and the map pool would surely expand given time. Yet come Stage 2 the good times crashed to a halt.
Numbers are everything…Right?
The team added easilly as coach and replaced MarktheShark with DPFire, a clear upgrade in firepower given the role, but the absence of Mark had a huge impact on DG. The team slipped from a top 4 placing Stage 1 to a 5th place finish Stage 2, which doesn’t sound like a significant drop until the record of the team is brought into the picture. DG had a record of 4 wins, 3 losses, and 1 OT loss in Stage 1. Of those four losses only one was a blowout in a 7-2 loss to Mirage at the end of the season. The others were a 7-5 loss to the Soniqs, a surprising new top competitor of the NAL Stage 1, a 7-4 loss to SSG, a team that had a strong start to the season despite a substitute, and a max overtime loss to BeastCoast. In every match DG managed to be in the game, and never lost without a fight. Their wins were just as impressive, beating OXG, the best team of the Stage, 7-2, as well as DarkZero and TSM 7-5 each. In contrast, Stage 2 Disrupt had a record of 3 wins, 3 losses, 1 OT win, and 1 OT loss. Those 3 wins were against XSet, BeastCoast, and Mirage, with the overtime win coming against a slumping Oxygen. Put simply, DG only won the games against the other bottom 4 teams in the NAL and barely eeked out a win against an underperforming top 4 competitor. The team lost against the other top 4 teams and lost a max OT game against DarkZero on Villa. These losses weren’t close either, 7-2 vs TSM, 7-3 vs SSG (no sub), and 7-4 vs the Soniqs on Consulate. Gone is the team that was always in a match, now they couldn’t even play their home map, let alone win it!
On top of that, the two veteran players Shuttle and Retro had a dip in form starting from Stage 2. Shuttle was the closer of this team, winning out the late round once iconic and J90 had found their impact. Having him stop performing as the third star of the team was already limiting the win conditions, but to have him go from one of the best in the league to one of the worst crippled the squad. Similarly, Retro was never a star player, but was consistent in his impact on the scoreboard and objective play. He’s historically never been a shotcaller but fills out an important role both on and off the killfeed. For the two most experienced players on the roster to have gone missing in Stages 2 and 3 was deadly to the team. DPFire’s impact and skill was never in question, but the fact that it came at the cost of two veterans underperforming raises questions about the man he replaced.
Blood in the Water
MarktheShark clearly had intangibles that helped this team out tremendously. It’s pretty obvious that he filled some sort of IGL role within the team, either intentionally or not, and removing him placed those burdens on Shuttle and Retro, the latter of which is notorious for being on the quiet side. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and IGLs aren’t expected to put up big numbers because of this. If Mark truly was in a shotcalling position within the team it makes sense that their performance would drop in the short term given his absence. Players who have never IGL’d before need time to learn. However losing a player that fills such an important role only gives a certain amount of time to adjust to the new team dynamics. For the problems to persist and even get worse is simply unacceptable.
Going into Stage 3 of the NAL the announcement that Disrupt Gaming was acquired by the Astralis organization was made public, with the team now operating under the Astralis name. For many, this was big news given the infamy of the organization’s CSGO team. There was some cause for concern regarding the team they picked up, but when you looked at the other bottom 4 teams that could’ve been acquired…yeah. Even so, this was a relatively good acquisition for the Astralis org on paper. The team could still turn things around results wise, and out of game Disrupt had been building itself up as more than just an esports org, but also a lifestyle brand. Plenty of the players’ socials were filled with just as many lifestyle posts as gameplay, with the organization even running a limited time clothing drop a la 100 Thieves. Astralis getting a team with this sort of clout and identity is certainly a smart one. 100 Thieves has proven you don’t have to be a successful esports competitor to be a successful esports organization. With the players on DG trending towards the influencer style of social media presence, it looked like Astralis was making a safe investment no matter what. Getting money either through prize pools or hoodies. Obviously the ideal outcome was that the team would turn things around and Astralis would get the best of both worlds.
The one problem is that everything works out on paper. On paper Evil Geniuses wins at least one tournament they’re in the finals of, G2 and Empire be damned! Reality is messy, and Astralis got a bad hand. Results didn’t turn around in Stage 3. The team slipped from 5th at the end of Stage 2 to 7th, in contention for relegation until the twilight of the Stage. With a 3 win and 5 loss record it was almost impressive that both BeastCoast and XSet managed to play worse than them. The only teams Astralis beat were XSet, bC, and a very stressed DarkZero who were competing for a spot at the Sweden Major. On top of that it’s not as if the team looked as if it was improving as time went on. Much like the rest of the bottom 4 teams, it seemed as if Astralis was stuck in a time loop, never upping the quality of their game. This culminated in the recent 2022 Six Invitational Open Qualifiers, which one would think a professional team would excel in. Given how these professional players get paid to perfect their gameplay full time, while the competition has to balance Siege with jobs and school. One would be wrong, as Astralis fell to a pug team during the Ro16, losing to FPL Queens. FPL Queens was a team made up of players like Drip and Slashug, who have been out of the professional scene for a significant amount of time, but clearly had some life left in them. Of the pug teams to lose to, this was the most likely to cause upset, to be fair. But OK, pug team or not there were some good players in FPL Queens, it was an 8-7, and anything can happen in Best of 1s. It’s not like Astralis would lose a rematch against a team that never scrimmed…right?
Fate is a funny thing isn’t it? Half the time narratives in esports write themselves if you actually look. Lo and behold take a look at who Astralis played in the first round of play of the second Open Qualifier. With FPL Queens standing between Astralis and the Six Invitational you would think things would be different this time, vods would be reviewed, and the team would work tirelessly to win, to get to the stage of the biggest Rainbow Six Event of the Calendar. Things were certainly different, for instance the score this time wasn’t an 8-7, it was a 7-4. For FPL Queens that is.
The Aftermath
While the matches played out on Interro’s stream, as is SI quals tradition, many of the pros in the call noted that the Astralis players tends to spend more time on activities outside the game than others. Something that isn’t inherently bad alone, it helps build the brand of the players, and is good for relaxing. But it should be looked at with some cynicism given the team’s performance this past year. I’m not here to say how much time players should spend on their craft, I’m not a pro and I doubt I ever will be. However, no one great got to the top from slacking on their craft, and more often than not, a player’s drop in performance can be directly correlated to less time in game. This isn’t a theory, it’s something that’s observable through games like CS, where player’s hours are relatively public. Brehze’s performance is down this month? What a shocker that he’s only played 20 hours instead of the usual 40. It isn’t bad that the Astralis players are going for more of that Nadeshot Influencer lifestyle with a capital I, but it means jack all if you get fired from your job. This is of course overlooking the implication that anyone playing competitive Siege is there to compete first and foremost. Otherwise there’s plenty of hungry Challenger League players chomping at the bit to replace you.
Since then it’s been announced that Callout is replacing easilly as coach. This seems like a good pickup, Callout has improved a ton since his first run at Pro League in Season 11. Being able to apply that experience and knowledge for a team as young as Astralis should yield something better than this past year. But even with a new coach, Retro has been dropped and the new 5th hasn’t been announced, that raises a big question mark about who the team could even pick up. It’s got to be a banger of a player too, even XSet is making moves to (try to) be competitive. For Astralis to have any presence in Rainbow 6, this team must perform in the Stage 1 of 2022. Astralis isn’t 100 Thieves, the org’s branding still focuses on excellence first, and might consider a clothing drop later. They certainly aren’t happy about the results that the team has gotten since the acquisition and will be even less so if they continue after changes. It’ll be both a poor return on investment and damages the org’s brand as a top competitor. Astralis doesn’t want to be known as an organization only good in Counter Strike, they want to be known for being the best in everything they compete in, and the R6 team isn’t helping that image at the moment. Coming into the 2022 NAL, a lot of eyes are going to be on the Astralis players to turn things around, otherwise they got signed to the wrong org trying to be like Courage when they should’ve been aiming for dev1ce.