esports
Being an in-game leader is no easy task, so we spoke to CS:GO pro players to get their verdict on who is currently best suited for the job.
James T Kirk, Horatio Nelson, Charlize Theron’s Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road: the world has had its fair share of excellent leaders. These strong voices of leadership – both real or otherwise – have guided others through seemingly insurmountable challenges and towards fantastic victories that won’t be soon forgotten.
While it would be a disservice to ignore each individual’s contribution towards a team’s success, there’s a lot of pressure on a captain to command their squad. Being that single voice that sets the strategy, barks the orders and peps everyone back up when things are looking down is no easy task. That can certainly be said when you’re the skipper of a team in CS:GO too.
So, who do the pros think are the best in-game leaders at the moment? We took some time to put this question to a handful of the shooter’s top stars, and the answers you can find in the video below.
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There’s one name that a number of players bring up immediately in our chat: Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo. The Brazilian veteran with a storied career currently calls SK Gaming his home and it's also where he had a phenomenal 2017. No doubt in part due to his excellent leadership.
“Playing against him, I can really tell that he has a really good understanding of the game,” says Cloud9’s Will 'RUSH' Wierzba. “He knows how to outplay the opponents in mid-game really well. I think that's a hard suit to gain, mid-gaming, because obviously it's easier to call strats at the start of the round, but when someone can effectively mid-game, they can win the game at any moment.”
His comments are echoed by Dauren 'AdreN' Kystaubayev from Gambit Esports, who says: “The best in-game leader right now I think is FalleN, for sure, because their teamplay is always unpredictable and it's hard to predict or read them or how they play.”
A captain can also impact their team’s mentality in other factors outside of gameplay too, something that Kenny 'kennyS' Schrub of G2 Esports thinks is what makes FalleN such a great leader too. “I would say FalleN because he has a huge impact on the game and, according to what I heard, he has also a huge impact outside the game.”
Another player who gets a few mentions is Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen, the IGL for FaZe Clan. Nathan 'NBK-' Schmitt of G2 goes into quite some detail as to why he thinks he should be considered top dog.
“I'd say the best in-game leader right now is probably karrigan. The way he exploits his players and a lot of decisions he makes mid-round, on some very specific maps, for instance Overpass, are pretty impressive. And so I think, although he has a lot of fraggers in his team, I think he's responsible for a lot of success in FaZe.”
Other fellow pros, such as Timothy 'autimatic' Ta, can’t nail down a single commander. Instead, he looks at the positives of both mentioned so far. “I think karrigan's very good at utilising the players that he has, and I think FalleN is really good at placing structure within his team and making sure everyone's on the same page,” he says.
Then, we have a few outside choices to wrap it up. Dan 'apEX' Madesclaire felt it was important to highlight Lukas ‘gla1ve’ Rossander from Astralis – a team that have had a strong start to 2018. “I feel like gla1ve gave a lot of things to Astralis when he came in the team. They've won a Major; they've won like three tournaments; something they never did – almost never did – in the past. So I feel like he gave them a lot of things and it looks like it's really structured and everything is smooth when he's the in-game leader, so I'm gonna go for him.”
Meanwhile, Valdemar 'valde' Bjørn picks Chris ‘chrisJ’ de Jong as a leader who is making things happen over at mousesports. “Actually, the one who surprised me the most maybe has to be chrisJ from mousesports since they've been having so good results, I guess he must be doing something right. I don't know much about him as an in-game leader, but, yeah, he has to get a lot of credit for the results they've been getting lately.”
That’s the power of having an in-game leader who can truly gel with the players on their team. They can make the most of each player’s individual skills by guiding them on a singular goal to make something that can often be more than the sum of their parts.
