NAVI are fantastic – but can you call it an "era" just yet?

What a display of resilience that was. In terms of pure grit, this NAVI team is clearly up there with the greats, and they are clearly the best team in the world right now. If they can recuperate somehow before the Major, they will be the favorites there, too. But are we approaching “era” territory?

What does it take to have a Counter-Strike era?

We’ve had three teams – or, rather, three cores – in Global Offensive who were widely accepted to have had an “era.” First, it was Fnatic, with the JW/KRiMZ/olofmeister/flusha core. While the capstone of their achievements was the six straight tournament wins between late 2015 and early 2016, which ended with their quarterfinal elimination at the MLG Columbus Major, it’s easy to forget how many wins that core rattled off before. Go back all the way to August 2014’s StarLadder StarSeries X, and you’ll find a solid streak of gold on their Liquipedia page, including their title win at the 2015 Cologne Major.

The team kept on making it to the business end of tournaments for a few more months after Columbus, with a quarterfinal finish at that year’s Cologne event and a runner-up spot in ELEAGUE Season 11 to mark the tail end of their momentous run. Personally, I’m always happy to give their run a little bit of extra oomph, considering no other core in the conversation has survived replacing their IGL without losing their essence.

So perhaps that’s a good starting point for the “era” discussion. Have a sustained period of flawless victories in CS2 events, preferably preceded by other wins and strong showings before, and brownie points if you were able to maintain some presence even after you lost your legendary luster.

Next, we have the Luminosity/SK core of Fallen/fer/coldzera/TACO, and I suppose this is where I will risk a controversial statement. Where’s their era? There just isn’t a clean delineation to work with. What, the whopping three S-Tier events between the two Majors, with the necessary exclusion of DreamHack Malmö 2016, where they bombed out in 9-12th? After lifting the title in Cologne in July 2016, their next S-Tier event win came in May 2017 at IEM Sydney, and while two more followed, they fell quite short at the upset-ridden Kraków Major.

Still, back-to-back Major wins are tough to argue with, and worth adding to the criteria, even though they were somewhat less impressive in the period where we had three such events each year, requiring fewer player breaks and meta changes to survive. (This is why I haven’t given credence to Fnatic’s back-to-back victories, either.)

Then there’s Astralis, and really, what else is there to say? The gla1ve/Xyp9x/dev1ce/dupreeh/Magisk quintet conquered the world and then some, returning for an extra bite of the cherry late in 2019 before our whole world changed as we know it. They weren’t flawless, either – the shocking lack of a Cologne title shows that by itself – but if you ever want to look for the dictionary definition of “sustained period of flawless victories,” you’ll find the picture of 2018-2019 Astralis right there. The discussion doesn't even include the core's first Major win in Atlanta: they were just so damn good.

You can’t really get past this quoted criteria when it comes to eras. This is why no one has ever really argued that karrigan’s FaZe was an era-defining team, either in 2018 or in 2023, or why the Intel Grand Slam-winning Liquid team or the five-month part-online-part-offline dominating of s1mple’s NAVI really qualifies. For FaZe, there were simply too many stumbles - as we all know, the CS community is very unforgiving when it comes to Silvers – and not enough Majors to show for their efforts, either. For their fellow Intel Grand Slam winners, the sustained part was missing. So, by the same token, surely this NAVI squad isn’t ready to enter the era conversation just yet, either.

But man, their run since Copenhagen has been so impressive.

Singing the praises of NAVI

Seeing NAVI’s Copenhagen Major win as a fluke was completely justifiable. The team hasn’t won a single tournament in 2023 and only made the grand final of ESL Pro League Season 18 in October – the final Global Offensive event – where MOUZ trounced them 3-0. None of the squad’s early CS2 results were impressive, either, and they did follow up their Major victory with early exits at Pro League and IEM Dallas.

Then, it seems like something clicked.

It’s not just the strong showings that are so impressive, but also the back-to-back-to-back nature of their triumphs and deep runs in what is one of the most jam-packed calendars in recent CS history, with the partnered leagues sunsetting. While they had a slow start after the player break, they were able to reach new heights from then on, playing their best Counter-Strike to date, also being able to dig deep when they are clearly sapped and running out of energy after this string of events.

It all feels more stable, more deeply rooted, than FaZe’s admittedly awesome comebacks. The playbook also seems so deep that its expiration time is nowhere near on the horizon, to butcher three metaphors at once. And in terms of future-proofing, seeing how well the team has worked its way through the unexpected departure of s1mple (and there’s a good argument to be made that it has even bettered them), it’s quite likely that the B1ade-Aleksib big-brain combo could help the squad survive yet another overhaul over the long run.

For my money? Give me a grand final appearance at the BLAST World Final and another Major win, and maybe the conversation can begin. But I could easily understand if the post-Copenhagen blues and the unimpressive 2023 would make you think that even more is necessary.

Either way, not bad from a team so many have thought to have fluked the Major – and from an experienced IGL whose pedigree was so often called into question since the ENCE years. There’s little reason to dislike either the org or the players. Long may their ascent continue.

Header image by Helena Kristiansson / ESL