I’ll admit, I was more than a little worried when G2 lost NiKo. He’s one of the very few CS2 players with that unique ability to carry his team to tournament wins single-handedly. Well, we’re a few series into life post-NiKo at G2, and I have to say, I’m pretty impressed.
My main concern was about the pure firepower of the lineup. NiKo’s man-for-man replacement, HeavyGod, is great, but there’s no doubt that he’s not on NiKo’s level. With malbsMd moving into NiKo’s roles, we’ve already seen how he’s able to mitigate that loss somewhat. Other than that, it’s business as usual: m0NESY is a superstar, huNter- is inconsistent, and it’s probably kinder to say nothing about Snax’s fragging output.
G2 are looking strong at BLAST Bounty
As an overall package, though, this new G2 team has shown promising signs in its early stages. Their only matches so far have been at BLAST Bounty Season 1, where, in their openers they overcame tough challenges against B8 and BIG. Two teams you’d expect G2 to beat, of course, but they overcame adversity to get the job done. In their opener in the LAN Finals, they took down BetBoom, who admittedly had two stand-ins for the event.
I’m not going to get too carried away by victories against teams like this, but the nature of the wins does stand out. With TaZ as their coach and Snax as IGL, they’ll very rarely win with tactical superiority. Instead, they’ve been relying on sheer brute force to beat their opponents, playing into their own strengths with massive fraggers like malbsMd, m0NESY, and HeavyGod. The latter in particular has extremely impressed me, already looking to be making a big step up from his mixed Cloud9 stint last year.
I like that even without NiKo, they’ve stayed true to the approach that brought them several trophy wins last year. It has already landed them a top-four (minimum) finish at BLAST Bounty Season 1, and there’s certainly a world where this run ends in silverware to kick off 2025. I won’t be alone in admitting that I was worried G2’s winter roster moves would leave them a typical top-eight CS2 team, where Playoff qualification is the dream rather than the minimum expectation. As remarkable as m0NESY is, I wasn’t sure he could do it as the lone star of this roster.
Consider my concerns pretty much quashed. G2 still have the firepower to make deep tournament runs in 2025, and I’m excited to see what else they can bring us this year.
