What do you think of when you think about Ninjas in Pyjamas?
Beyond the obvious thoughts you have when you first hear that ridiculous phrase, CS:GO fans probably
think about an eternally underachieving team from Sweden.
"There will be no Major in 2017 for NiP."
"Aren't going to be attending the Minor, they've been eliminated."
"NiP not making it the Minor once again."
The team once cursed by a Bay Area witch to only win tournaments in Oakland.
But once upon a time, NiP were the best CS:GO team in the world.
Once upon a time, NiP won 87 maps in a row.
87 LAN maps in a row is one of the most impressive esports records of all time.
And no team in CS:GO has really matched it since.
"It was just very cool and surprising to see that you can actually be so dominant in a game and also that
you were one of the best player in the same time."
"That's probably my biggest success."
It actually just seems impossible.
Who could possibly win 87 LAN maps without dropping a single one.
For comparison, Cloud9, the Boston Major champions, played 16 maps that tournament.
And they dropped four of them. Most teams, that win tournaments drop a few maps here and there,
When was the last time you saw a CS:GO team win a tournament without dropping a map?
Now imagine winning ten.
Between August 2012, when they won SteelSeries GO, and April 2013, when they placed second
at StarLadder StarSeries V. NiP played 10 LAN tournaments, and didn't drop a single map.
That means that NiP dominated the earliest era of competitive CS:GO.
The game came out in August 2012, the same week NiP won their first tournament.
NiP were the first legendary CS:GO team.
According to esports journalist Duncan “Thorin” Shields,
NiP had a lot going for them at the time that made that streak possible.
For one, some of the best Counter-Strike 1.6 teams in the world had yet to transition to CS:GO.
"Part of the reason as to why these teams didn't change lineups and why they came over so late to CS:GO"
"is 'cause 1.6 didn't actually die when NiP had begun playing CS:GO."
"When they won that first tournament in CS:GO in August of 2012, there was still a number of months and number
of 1.6 big sized tournaments with higher prize purses at times for first place than CS:GO."
CS:GO had a messy launch.
Part of it was that the game was still, unbalanced and unrefined.
But another part of it was that dedicated CS 1.6 players had poured thousands of hours into their game
CS:GO just wasn’t 1.6.
So, for a while, a bunch of pro teams just… kept playing 1.6.
There were concurrent competitive communities for both CS:GO and 1.6
and that meant some of the best Counter-Strike players in the world just weren’t at CS:GO tournaments.
ESC didn’t enter CS:GO until September 2012, and were slow to make roster
changes that they would need to become the dominant force they would be known as as Virtus.pro.
Fnatic and Na'Vi took longer to enter CS:GO, but they wouldn't pose a serious threat for months.
NiP on the other hand, was going to tournaments from day one.
They were there at the beginning. They had more time with the game and more time on the maps.
And that’s an advantage that can only be mitigated by time.
But that number, 87-0, kind of defies all explanation.
Some team had to have put in the effort to beat NiP on just one map.
Some team had to have found the crack in their armor.
But they didn't.
The only team that actually held a candle to NiP was VeryGames, the French troster that
went on to become Titan.
Unfortunately back then, CS:GO had a limited map pool and that made it even harder to beat NiP.
VeryGames chose to focus on four maps. But NiP were the best at all five maps.
(Casting)
NiP’s reign finally came to an end at StarLadder Star Series V, where they lost to Virtus.Pro.
That was an all-CIS roster featuring the likes of ANGE1 and Dosia,
(Casting)
"That felt quite sad when it happened, but it was like, it was still such an amazing run I mean I could never
believe that anything like that would happen."
It was a sign that other teams had begun to figure out CS:GO, or at the very least, figure out NiP.
(Casting)
The record stands as one of the most impressive in esports history.
And while NiP doesn’t really live up to it these days, you have to respect a team built on the foundation
of the once-undisputed CS:GO best team in the world.