North at DreamHack Open Leipzig: Return of MSL

What is DreamHack Open Leipzig?

DreamHack Open Leipzig is the first event of 2020, and will see eight teams descend on the German city for a prize pool of $100,000. Part of the ESL Pro Tour, the event is placed into the Challenger tier.

The tournament is formatted in the standard GSL-style group stage, with the top two teams heading to a single elimination bracket to decide the winner. The triumphant team will head home with $50,000 and a spot at DreamHack Masters Jönköping in June.

DreamHack Open Leipzig odds

The odds below represent the opening matches for DreamHack Open Leipzig. For a complete list of odds for DreamHack Open Leipzig, head over to our CS:GO section.

Group B: North face Sprout, Heroic and MAD Lions

North’s first game in their group will be against Sprout. The German roster had a promising start to 2019, placing runners-up in events behind Vitality and forZe, but fell off over the following months with a number of roster stability problems. Despite that, they secured a finals placing at DreamHack Open Atlanta in November before securing qualification to Leipzig through the German ESL Meisterschaft.

Since then, they’ve replaced two players and departed from an entirely German roster. In is Czech AWP’er Tomáš “oskar” Šťastný and Polish rifler Paweł “dycha” Dycha. The Pole has joined from ARCY, and holds a very strong 1.14 rating on LAN over the past year. oskar comes in to Sprout after an extended period out of the game, having been removed from HellRasiers after the StarLadder Berlin Major.

MSL dragged himself to his DreamHack Masters Stockholm MVP medal through an AWPing masterclass. MSL took home a 1.13 Impact rating.

So far in the Czech’s career on his new team, in two online matches, he’s lost out in duels against the opposing team’s AWPers. In the IEM Katowice qualifier, where Sprout were eliminated by Apeks, oskar took down the opposition AWPer once, and was downed four times by him. In an online league game against BIG, which Sprout won, oskar was similarly down against Florian “syrsoN” Rische, taking three AWP kills before being knocked down twelve times by the German.

For the opening match North are favourites to win, with the Danish team being given Money Line odds of 1.671* compared to Sprout’s 2.220*.

The other two potential group opponents for North will be fellow Danish teams Heroic or MAD Lions. Heroic feature former North AWPer Casper “cadiaN” Møller, who has seen a marked improvement in his game since moving on, holding a 1.13 rating since joining in September 2019, up from a 0.98 rating during his time in North. North have only faced Heroic once since cadiaN joined, in an online qualifier in October. There, Heroic bested them in a strong 2-0 win.

MAD Lions are a Danish team that had a mostly unnoticed rise to the HLTV.org top 20. Originally plying their trade under Tricked until the middle of December, they combined the experienced leading of Nicolai “HUNDEN” Petersen with unproven youngsters like Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen and Frederik “acoR” Gyldstrand.

North and the Lions have met a number of times in the past months. In December, they faced off in the DreamHack Open Sevilla semi-final, where North came out as 2-1 winners after coming back from an Overpass defeat and halting a MAD Lions comeback on Dust2. Their most recent match was in the IEM Katowice qualifier, just before MSL re-joined North, where the HUNDEN-led team won in an extremely comfortable 2-0 fashion.

During their IEM Katowice qualifying run, MAD Lions defeated Heroic 2-0, and took a map off G2 in a 2-1 loss before beating ENCE 2-0 in the lower bracket final. These results, alongside a near-flawless DreamHack Leipzig qualifying campaign sees the team be marked as favourites, being 4.350* to win the event.

What MSL brings to North

MSL’s addition sees North return to having an experienced IGL for the first time since he left. He was the teams’ captain at North’s last S-Tier event win, at DreamHack Stockholm in 2018. There, he also picked up an MVP medal after taking down Astralis in the final, before being eliminated in the first stage of the following Major - after which North removed him from the roster.

In the past year away from North, he was a member at Rogue and OpTic. His spell on those teams had a lot in common, in that they were mostly uneventful and eventually ill-fated. His spell on Rogue lasted five months before it collapsed, having been picked off by a number of other organisations. Their most notable result was just as they started getting into their stride, qualifying for StarSeries i-League Season 7, an event they eventually pulled out of.

North and the Lions have met a number of times in the past months. In December, they faced off in the DreamHack Open Sevilla semi-final, where North came out as 2-1 winners.

His time on OpTic faced a similar fate. Only three months after joining the Greenwall, the organisation was taken over by Immortals and their shelf life heavily reduced due to them also owning MIBR. It’s telling that when the team’s fate was effectively sealed, a number of players had left, and no new contracts were signed, that they hit their highest point – a win at DreamHack Open Summer and qualifying for ESL One New York and DreamHack Malmö.

In 2019, outgoing AWPer Jakob “JUGi” Hansen and MSL played a similar amount of, 155 and 121 respectively. With both players’ role being an AWPer the majority of the time, they are perfect candidates to compare. While on the whole MSL’s rating is lower than JUGi’s, it’s not much of a difference at 1.04 to 0.99.

MSL dragged himself to his Stockholm MVP medal through an AWPing masterclass. He wasn’t the highest rated player on his team, let alone the event, but his performances in key games helped force his team through. During that event MSL took home a 1.13 Impact rating, a metric that counts multi-kills, opening kills and clutches.

Outside of survival statistics, where JUGi excelled by quite a margin, MSL constantly rated higher with a 0.66 KPR, a 0.94 Impact rating (round wins based on multikills, opening kills or clutches) and 0.15 Opening Kills per round. In the vast majority of statistically analysable areas, MSL is a marked improvement over his predecessor. But his addition brings more than that.

MSL is a veteran IGL, having held the role for the Danish scene since just after the start of the CS:GO era. Throughout his career he’s been part of teams with well-known Danish players, starting with Astralis’ Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander in 2013 and Emil “Magisk” Reif in 2016, to MAD Lions’ HUNDEN at various points between 2012 and 2015. He’s helped develop a number of IGLs in Denmark, including the two listed above.

His return to North sees him re-join three teammates he’s played with a number of times in the past, including Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye, René “cajunb” Borg and Philip “aizy” Aistrup, as well as finally lining up alongside Nicklas “gade” Gade, who had replaced him in 2018. With the team finally having an IGL dedicated to the role, and not just someone picking it up because there was no other option, North can finally look to re-ignite their performances through new tactics.

DreamHack Open Leipzig will start on January 24 and last until January 26. North will play their opening match in the $100,000 tournament at 12:30 CET on January 24 against Sprout. All the action can be found on DreamHack’s Twitch channel.

* Odds subject to change