The Welterweights - IEM Cologne Major Preview

The Welterweights are so called because nobody expects them to pack enough of a punch to break the jaw of the heavyweights at the top, but they might have enough guile to trip up a mid-tier if things go right.

This is the first of a series of previews we’ll be doing for the IEM Cologne Major, and will be broken up into sections until we get to the real big hitters. This particular one will cover the first six teams - Gaimin Gladiators, Sharks, FlyQuest, tHUNDER DOWN UNDER, Lynn Vision and NRG.

Some of them we don’t have loads of data for, so there isn’t loads to say.

We’ll start with NRG, though, who we’ve seen at a handful of events. We’ll start with the good news - br0 looks half decent in the data. He’s by no means the best player in the world, but he’s a solid second star who isn’t traditionally super ‘played-for’ as it were. He’s just reliable, does his work with minimum fuss and doesn’t make many mistakes.

The problem is that he’s lurking, and lurking when the pack is underperforming is very difficult and essentially a waste of time. There’s also Grim who does quite a bit of lurking, a little less successfully but not disastrously, and Sonic who does some too. Which begs the question; where is the pack?

Which… might be something of an issue.

It’s notable how poor oSee looks in our ratings with a 34 rating, worse than some AWPers who you probably know oSee CAN be better than, and we’d theorise that some of that comes down to not having the ‘protection’ in front of him. He’s forced to be extremely passive in the early-mid round, and that leaves him in the late round situations - but NRG don’t get to all that many advantageous ones.

Grim is the first man in more often than not, and br0 is the chief refragger. Sonic does a bit of everything (‘the data’ doesn’t rate him, but to the eye test he’s alright) and so does nitr0, but nitr0 is one of the weakest players even in the weakest roles, according to duel swing and round swing. His firepower is a bit of an issue.

Their CT sides haven’t been great either. Of the 35 ‘positions’ over the seven maps, NRG are only positive in duel swing on nine of them (technically we have 11/38, but Jeorge is responsible for two of their 11 and three of the 38). That means in three quarters of the positions in the map pool they are losing more gunfights than they ‘should’, while it’s more like two-thirds on the T side.

Their map pool is basically Mirage and a bit of Inferno - nothing else are they scary on. Grim and br0 are good at Ancient, but for the other three it’s among their worst maps.

NRG are alright. They aren’t the worst team in Cologne, and they certainly won’t be the best.

One can come to the same conclusion about Gaimin Gladiators. We don’t have loads of data on them (only one event in the dataset, and that was with felps) but we’ve seen them enough to think they won’t be total whipping boys, nor the boys in charge of the whip.

They’re also, remarkably, the oldest team at the Major, with an average age of over 30. At 28, JOTA is basically kyousuke on this team, with HEN1 and NEKIZ at 30 and Luken at 29. fer, who replaced felps, is 34 years old, which you could probably have guessed.

He’d also played one game since 2022 before joining.

We have no idea what to expect of fer. We know what he used to be, we know what he can be, but the decision to remove felps appears to have been a non-gameplay one and so it was done swiftly. Incidentally, felps was pretty terrible in the one event we have data for, though we’re not sure how representative that really is.

Luken on the other hand was exceptional at Roman Imperium Cup, and so comes off well. In fairness, he’s been very good in pretty much every event this year, and is likely GG’s best hope of getting something done. He’s essentially a hard lurker on T side and quite aggressive on the CT side, with felps (now fer) tasked with being the spacetaker, HEN1 and JOTA as the tradefraggers.

HEN1 has always been, contrary to his flashy style, quite passive and a very good tradefragger. Like broky when he was good, but not that good. He is a bit of a baiter, but he’s very technically gifted and is an ulterior route to a win if Luken isn’t getting it done.

A lot though, will ride on fer. If he fits one-to-one with felps he’ll need to be aggressive (which he’s always been) and find openings (which he USED to be able to do). We have no fear about his style fitting in, just some about his level of play.

Ultimately, Gaimin Gladiators will live and die by the level of play a 34 year old fer, who has played a handful of officials in three and a half years, can bring.

Maybe they will be a bit rubbish.

Probably the team you’re most likely to see break out of this category would be Lynn Vision, and maybe it’s a bit harsh even putting them here.

You see, we have so little data on them at the top level this year that it’s hard to rate them much higher, and when we’ve seen them we’re excited for their future, but maybe not entirely their present.

Maybe that’s a bit mean.

They’re super young and clearly still learning, and it’s clear the hands are there. They can shoot - all five of them look alright on the (albeit limited) duel swing data we have, and the eye test backs this up.

This limited data leads to some pretty wild playstyle bars in our graphics - Starry is somehow classed as a spacetaker and a HARD refragger, which is basically nigh-on impossible. westmelon is also aggro, and EmiliaQAQ more aggro than normal for a support player. This means z4KR comes off as the most passive player imaginable, but you’d probably have to be if you had three guys absolutely sending it down mid.

Though there isn’t loads to go off, it’s clear this team is set up for Starry. He’s given resources, roles, players to trade and probably a massage mid game if he asks for it. He and z4KR are the two on this team set up to really succeed, while the other three have to make do.

Lynn Vision are hard to place because in theory they could be very good, but usually they flatter to deceive. We are always intrigued by and excited to watch them, but we’re not expecting much. Maybe a Round 2 exit.

Speaking of performing well on a small sample size…

FlyQuest seemingly do a LOT of refragging, which speaks well to their spacing against, let’s face it, inferior opposition. The reason you don’t see it against good teams is that good teams will abuse your tight-knit pack with utility and constrict the space behind you, so it will be interesting to see if they can keep up a deathball against better teams.

Some positive news is that jks still looks like he might have it, and we know that at his peak he would have been one of the best players at this stage of the event. Again, incredibly small sample size, but he’s clearly way too good at lurking to be playing against some of the teams FlyQuest need to be playing against. INS has always been a very good player (he should not be a Hard Support, in our humble opinion), and the other two Aussies are good domestically with flashes of competence in international competition.

Not to be too mean or anything, but come on.

story was pretty horrendous at the event we have data for, but we know he’s not normally this bad. He’s not brilliant, but we don’t think this is his normal level either. He is very passive, but if they are going to pack up heavily that’s probably fine.

We’re not expecting any more than the status quo from FlyQuest. Brief moments of hope followed by crippling despair for an entire Oceanic fanbase. As is tradition.

Similarly, we’re expecting very little out of THUNDER dOWN UNDER. Cool name, but this is ugly.

Yes, yes, caveat of small sample size, but this is against domestic teams and dexter is quite literally the worst rated player we’ve ever had in the data. If he’s going to be this bad he should at least be throwing more util.

They were all terrible (bar liazz) so we’re not going to rag on them too hard, it could have been an off-event - but you’re up against some of the best teams in the world, so unless you level up insanely hard it’s not going to matter.

We will be putting them 0-3.

asap and TjP will be the aggro pieces, liazz the passive rifler and aliStair also a refragging AWPer. aliStair is a known prospect at this point, and he’s never been great. Our hopes are not high.

That just leaves Sharks, who might be the least known of the teams here in some ways. All of their five players are complete newbies to the Major cycle, and to tier one in general, which we would argue makes them a hell of a lot more exciting than THUNDER dOWN UNDER or FlyQuest.

They’re relatively old-school in that they have an IGL who looks to be quite aggressive on the T side (at least from what we’ve seen) in gafolo, and doc as the ‘main’ aggressor in the early round. rdnzao was pretty poor last time we saw him, but generally isn’t this bad and we’d expect something of an uptick next time around. He’s supposed to be a bit of a trade fragger, but his refragging numbers look low because… well, he didn’t actually win his fights.

koala (great name by the way) on the other hand as the primary lurker found himself lots of trade frags on both sides of the map, and was excellent. We’d probably expect some regression to the mean the other way here, too - but for now, it’s satisfying to see five different colours on the ratings part of the team report.

Mind you, koala’s ratings have generally been good in the last three months, and our early data on him is exciting. He’s probably a player to watch at this event.

Sharks play a lot of Nuke and have an excellent win rate on Anubis, and Nuke is rarely banned first rotation so we might see them go 1-0 up in some of these series if nothing else. We’re certainly looking forward to seeing what they can do.

We’re not expecting fireworks out of any of the teams here, but we have been occasionally wrong before and we’d love to be again. Maybe fer still has it. Maybe jks still has it. Maybe Lynn Vision have always had it somewhere.

The Major is a time to write new stories, and maybe one of these teams has brought their own pen.