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Renegades are the third team that got hot around the Katowice Major, along with Renegades and ENCE. They had a dominant performance in the first stage of the Katowice Major, and promptly fell off a cliff. They had a mediocre StarSeries, then proceeded to lay a goose egg in front of their home crowd at IEM Sydney.
Renegades have been chugging along this year, participating in 10 LAN events and never placing higher than 3rd. Could the StarSeries Berlin Major be the Aussie’s time to shine?
Last Six Months Stats (on LAN)
Record: 35/43
Team K/D: 0.98
Map Pool:
- Inferno – Played 16 times, 62.5% win rate
- Mirage – Played 22 times, 59.1% win rate
- Dust2 – Played 14 times, 42.9% win rate
- Nuke – Played 6 times, 33.3% win rate
- Train – Played 15 times, 26.7% win rate
- Overpass – Played 1 time, 0% win rate
- Vertigo – Played 2 times, 0% win rate
Player Ratings:
- JKS – Rating 1.17, K/D 1.20
- Jkaem – Rating 1.11, K/D 1.02
- Liazz – Rating 0.97, K/D 0.88
- AZR – Rating 0.94 K/D 0.86
- Gratisfaction – Rating 0.94, K/D 0.89
Renegades might be the most unremarkable team attending the StarSeries Berlin Major. JKS is like, pretty good, but he probably won’t break the top 15 in Berlin. The rest of the team ranges from average to subpar. Honestly, the most notable thing about this team might be how well they illustrate the broken Major format.
While Renegades likely would have made the Major anyway, due to being from the Oceanic region, they pretty obviously shouldn’t be a legends team at the StarSeries Berlin Major.
But, just for fun, how about we figure out Renegades’ path to winning the StarSeries Berlin Major. As a thought exercise, if nothing else.
Perhaps the most important element of a successful tournament from Renegades will be Gratisfaction. He’s gone negative at his last six events, which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. But his last positive tournament was the first stage of the Katowice Major, where he put up a 1.19 Rating. Coincidentally, that was the last time that the Renegades really showed any signs of life. A big three of Gratisfaction, JKS, and jkaem is far from a championship contender, but if all three are playing well it’s at least interesting.
Players
JKS
Renegades have spent the better part of three years trying to put a team around JKS that could contend for titles. He’s played with spunj, Rickeh, yam, nexa, NAF, Nifty, and he still can’t seem to breakthrough. Some in the CS:GO scene have been waiting for him to jump ship and join an international team, but he must really love living down under as he continues to stick with his countrymen.
If JKS’ event history shows us anything, it’s that we can expect him to put up a performance somewhere between 1.10 and 1.25, and to lose in groups.
Jkaem
Somehow a Norwegian cast off is the best help that Renegades could get for their star player. After burning out of FaZe Clan and Team Dignitas, Jkaem found a home with the Aussies on Renegades, and has been contributing rather consistently.
While Jkaem rarely loses Renegades games, he’s an under qualified secondary star. He’d be far better served as a third option behind JKS and someone else.
Gratisfaction
This is where we start getting into candidates for that “someone else” I was talking about. Gratisfaction was added late last year in an attempt to bolster the roster with an all star caliber AWPer. While this looked like a good move for a time, he seems to have fallen flat in recent months.
Not that I would have done anything differently if I were Renegades. There aren’t a ton of opportunities to upgrade your roster when you’re the Renegades, so you have to take every swing you can.
Anyway, there’s still an outside chance these guys can pull it together. It would take a step up from Gratisfaction that would blow my mind, unfortunately.
AZR
There was a time when AZR was the crown jewel of the Australian scene. Not so much anymore, unfortunately. His raw numbers are pretty awful, and he’s barely above replacement level at this point.
Liazz
Liazz is a support player that Renegades got when they added Gratisfaction. He’s dropped off hard after being added to the Renegades roster, which is likely a result of the change in system/personnel.
Map Pool
I am consistently amazed by how poor these map pools are. I keep thinking we’ve seen the worst the scene has to offer until the next one comes along and makes my eyes bulge out of my head. Renegades best winning percentage is in the 60s. Granted, there aren’t any inflated results in this pool due to restricting the data set to just LAN matches, but that’s really not good.
With no signature pick and several maps under 30%, there’s really no situation in which Renegades can come out on top in the pick ban phase.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Cohesion?
These guys have been playing together for a little while at least? That has to count for something, right? Right?
They’ve got nothing
What do Renegades do better than anyone else? Have cool accents, say “shrimp on the barbie”, that’s about it. JKS is far from a prodigious talent, and the remainder of the team is just fine.
All the other Legends teams have championship pedigree, incredible in game leaders, super star talent, whereas Renegades has… well, not much.
TL;DR
Stay away from these guys. I wouldn’t trust them to beat MIBR or Fnatic at this point, in a best of one or a best of three. Honestly, they’re a pretty strong candidate to get upset, especially in their first game. Whoever they play will likely be hot after cruising through the first stage of the StarSeries Berlin Major, and that momentum swing could be huge.
