Missing MSL
As CS2 charts its own course, currently dominated by skill and aggressive star players, I mourn the lack of an MSL style leader and line-up to contest those juggernauts!
In an age of enormous T sides, star riflers running over everyone and skill-heavy stacked rosters lifting seemingly all the trophies I find myself missing the teams of Mathias "MSL" Lauridsen. Tight execution, maximised usage of more limited star power and a playbook that works against the majority of teams. Doesn't that sound like a rare antidote to the power Counter-Strike style rampaging across the top 10 of today?
The 29 year old IGL (in-game leader) never sniffed a major and would be characterised as a "poor man's gla1ve" by the less charitable and to celebrate and defend his career is massively on brand for me but here was a figure whose style of leadership produced teams that could routinely challenge the kinds of super squads that now dominate the CS landscape.
It mattered less how well the opposing stars played and sometimes even some of his own pieces and more whether they executed his call from the playbook. Thus the tactical game became more a known quantity for both sides and reading the defense, the art of team-play and communication ended up the factors determining victory or defeat.
Not too loose
MSL is one of the best playbook IGLs CS:GO ever saw but his gift became a curse as the consensus meta of the game moved towards more freedom for stars and more mid-round calling from IGLs, the former thanks to initiative-taking super-stars like shox and NiKo and the latter a result of the success of names like karrigan and pronax. By CS:GO had ended the likes of karrigan, siuhy and apEX were at the top thanks to their looser stylez defined by great mid-round moves.
The mistake often made is imagining those contrasting styles to be binary options, where they are much more on a spectrum, and assuming one is objectively better or proven more successful than the other. For my money the style of calling a leader employs is rooted in his own strengths. How effective it will be with his men then relies on both how much buy in that leader can negotiate from his players, especially the star names, and if the personnel he is working with are capable of taking agency and reliably applying it to a degree above the calls of the leader.
The success of MSL, right through to winning a big tournament like Dreamhack Stockholm 2018 in the era of Astralis, shows that counter-intuitively the approach of the former Western Wolves player can be an answer to the looser styles of teams like FaZe and MOUZ back then. That's because of the personnel MSL was working with instead.
Five fingers in one hand
MSL never had the luxury of multiple top 10 level talents, with the closest he came being that late 2016 run with Dignitas where Magisk and k0nfig began to showcase consistent star power and could contend for MVPs. Even so, that was not the same developed Magisk of 2018 and k0nfig's out-of-game issues soon bottlenecked how much he could continue to offer his IGL.
No, an MSL line-up was typically defined by working with veterans who couldn't get into Denmark's best team, such as cajunb or RUBINO, and up and coming talents who blossomed into stars under MSL and then often moved on to bigger opportunities, with names like aizy; Kjaerbye; Magisk and k0nfig all fitting that billing.
Put those players directly against a FaZe super-team or high powered Na'Vi featuring s1mple and electronic and you will lose almost every time since their best pieces will outshine yours and suddenly your punching power will seem a nice idea that never made it into the server. The beauty of MSL's approach is that it ensures everyone is on the same page, of the playbook in this case.
The old adage in 5v5 team games goes that five players following even a bad plan is better than players following different plans even if they might be better. In a game like Counter-Strike, where execution is king and closing out gives you the points not simply nice openings, that wisdom seems even more apt and efficacious.
This approach was didactic by design as by training his players where to go, what to do and triggering when they made their next moves MSL could ensure his reads and smarts for CS were at play where those lesser talents or more inexperienced names would have been a dice roll as to whether they would make the right read or not individually.
Instead, MSL made the game simple, even when the tactic called up perhaps wasn't, and at their best his teams could execute to a degree they could beat prime Astralis or match up with a FaZe super-team everyone else trembled before. It's no coincidence MSL produced a few deep runs in big tournaments year after year and long beyond the period typically associated with the playbook style.
I'll tell you who you are
An under-rated quality of MSL's is less the notion he taught his players how to play, at least individually, and more that he often helped his stars find their ideal role that would define them as a true star and be their calling card for the rest of their careers. His system again and again forged such stars and could even replace them.
When MSL got aizy he was best known as a reject from the Dignitas line-up that featured the future Astralis core. Under MSL he played arguably the best CS of his career and got bought by G2. Kjaerbye had been a passenger at times in the aizy era but took up the vacated star aggressive rifler role left by him and soon became one of the game's best prospects, eventually winning himself a call up to Astralis and later a major MVP.
Much like Kjaerbye in the time of aizy, k0nfig was there during Kjaerbye's star days in another role and would get to rotate into Kjaerbye's shoes once the youngster went to Astralis. This change up both announced k0nfig to the world as a star and put Dignitas up high in the rankings and they were winning tier one tournaments over the best teams in the world and besting squads featuring the likes of s1mple and Snax!
All of those stars benefitted directly from both being the tip of the spear in MSL's playbook-heavy system and having their leader right next to them in the server. MSL famously made a name individually as an IGL who went in first routinely, scouted out information for his team, made space for his star riflers and ensured he was the spark on the fuse of his timing attacks. The Kjaerbye gla1ve inherited was ready to go and gla1ve simply had to put himself into the MSL spots to make the dynamic work and would win a major doing so.
Two of gla1ve's three major MVP winners made their names under MSL and he can boast a small part to play in their later success as they represented some of MSL's Counter-Strike heritage.
The last of the jedi
In late CS:GO there were still in-game leaders sticking to a structured approach and compromising here and there with their stars but making sure to lean into the advantages execution can bring in contrast to teams full of star aimers who are making their own unique and not always coordinated decisions and moves.
You had Snappi in ENCE, another IGL who is seemingly never allowed more than two stars and even then often they are yet-to-hit their peak play; Aleksib in Na'Vi, notoriously critiqued for wanting to micromanage his troops and cadiaN in Heroic, who was massively focused on mid-rounding, in contrast to MSL, but appeared to run every decision through himself and was obeyed constantly and instantly, it seemed.
In CS2 the only one of the three in any kind of good shape right now is Aleksib and his lone trophy lift is cited as a fluke by some, including your not-so-humble author. No, MSL has been and gone and his approach seems to have been abandonded by everyone for now. When Spirit's stars are a brick wall on defense there isn't the aimiable underdog MSL line-up to see how far timing and great reading can take some lesser-but-still-capable talents.
As ZywOo and m0NESY dominate matches with eye-popping numbers there's no AWP-limited rifle-heavy squad, typical of MSL line-ups, to find a way to upset as a team with five players who cannot match up individually with the best player in the world. Even remarking on the somewhat exaggerated death of the AWP, which is clearly much more limited and less dominant at the top end, makes me wistful for how MSL would approach CS2, as he was famously working without an elite AWPer and often even ran five rifle T sides on certain maps.
MSL is gone but his legacy remains.