There were some highs and some low lows, but all in all I would say it was a success! Were they great? Not really. Were they bad? I'd also say no. What I will say though is that there is promise in the system that Ego & Sword9 have set up. Going from bottoming out in kickoff to the upper half of the league with a ragtag team of what was seen as underwhelming mechanical talent is really good! I hope management keep letting Ego & Sword9 cook with the roster next season, and that they can cultivate a more confident mentality going forward to fully materialize the ideas they come up with. The league is only going to get better & even more competitive as more competent systems are formed, so the fact that they already have a decent structure to build their fundamentals is a great sign. #BuntTheMonk
All Gamers season retrospective
Felt like mental problems were their biggest weakness throughout, with an inability to close out maps and series during split 1, and then tonight losing a 5v2 and a 4v2 back to back which cost them sunset and a potential 3rd map. Sword9 and ego do seem like a strong duo that can cook up ideas and this team definitely exceeded all expectations, but just weren’t quite at the top. Good season overall with lots of positives to take away and build upon
To be fair I think the mental problems were simply confidence; nothing less, nothing more. Bunt and Monk were the only two players on the roster with any form of international or big stage experience. Spitfires was cut from RA, DelB was largely an unknown going into the year due to his quiet performance during the offseason, and Sword9 has mostly been in the backseat throughout the 2023 season. I think if you give this roster time they'll polish themselves into a g2-esque team of fundamentally strong individuals who will cook whenever needed.
RyanCentral compared them to GenG and G2, basically saying they're a fundamentally excellent team with teamplay that stands out in China. I think they're missing an extra bit of firepower and their mental/inexperience is definitely noticeable. Their performance today looked very lackluster due to their inexperience in these high pressure situations. I think the tight schedule in the VCT this year stunted China's growth a bit.
The foundation for them is there, yes; on the contrary, I think the longer offseason will actually help AG quite a bit. They definitely need a period to mentally reset & analyze their year, and it'll allow them to purely focus on brushing up & polishing their ideas. The only thing that could potentially ruin this is a drastic roster change, but with Ego's take on the game I don't think that's likely to happen
Chinese teams have a bad habit of panicking and making sudden roster changes. I swear some of these Chinese players look like they're playing for the jobs every time they go up on the stage and feel the need to drop 30 by any means necessary. TYLOO is a good example of this. Every time you see this team they have 1-2 different roster members.
The fact that they had this roster in the first place is a pretty good indication that this probably won't happen, thankfully. There was a big pool of older players they could've pulled from, or kept the players from their previous roster signed. At the end of the day they chose to add players that were largely unknown quantities on the tier 1 environment.
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