Which CS Series Win Streak Is The Most Overrated?
Comparing the most notable win streaks in CS (GO and 2) history and giving my take on which ones are the most notable.
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Preamble
The current FaZe lineup have been a focal point of modern CS. Ever since their acquisition of ropz in 2022, they have formed an identity under karrigan’s leadership as the kings of comebacks, the post-plant professionals; you’d never count them out until the very last round.
That same roster experienced inexplicable lows after their greatest highs. Losing to BNE to get eliminated from contention at the Rio Major, barely managing to make playoffs at the next - all the while complaining about motivation and burnout. People were ready to write them off as having won everything they could have, and dismissed their complaints as empty excuses of a dead team walking.
And yet, when the transition to CS2 happened, FaZe put their money where their mouth was and went on an incredible win streak, starting after a Bo1 loss to GamerLegion at IEM Sydney and ending at the hands of a newly formed Vitality in the grand final of BLAST Fall Finals, winning two LAN events along the way.
During and after this streak, the comparisons began to flow in. Debates about online competition being included in win streaks, people claiming FaZe were repeating what NiP did in 2012-2013, and so on. This graph from HLTV is what gave me the idea to look into the teams who put up the strongest LAN streaks in CS:GO (and CS2) history and look beyond the numbers to find the truth - or at least, my version of the truth.
The streaks in question are NiP, Liquid, Astralis, LG, NaVi, G2, and FaZe. If you want to keep up with my thoughts or send some vitriol my way, send it to my Twitter!
Important Distinctions - The Value Of A LAN Best Of Three
There’s a few things to get out of the way here. The image linked in the tweet is the statistic of “consecutive LAN series”. This essentially means Bo1s and Bo3s are treated equally - but I’m not about to make the same mistake. I don’t personally believe a Bo1 loss should break a streak, even if it is on LAN - so I’m going to measure the “consecutive LAN Bo3 wins” of each team on this list. This causes some of the numbers to be fuzzy compared to the number you see there.
For instance, Astralis actually found their strongest consecutive Bo3 form in 2019, not in 2018, where their streak of “17” consisted of more Bo1s than the 2019 streak of “14”.
Another thing to note is that I’m considering each streak in a special contextual vacuum which includes the environment during the streak, but not necessarily what happened after. I won’t be giving Astralis the top placing because they were clearly the most dominant team overall, only having streaks broken apart by a few losses here and there. However, I will consider who they beat and how they beat them during the streak in question. The same goes for other teams like G2, FaZe, and Liquid.
One final important note is that it’s really hard to properly contextualise and analyse NiP’s historic streak. The majority of their games do not have stats pages on HLTV; it’s also very hard to determine the magnitude of each event played, the calibre of opposition beyond the obvious names, and so on. Suffice to say I was not present in 2012 watching each match like I am now, and so I can only talk about NiP’s streak in a more general sense (i.e. excluding it from everything but the overall conclusion), though it won’t stop me from having an opinion on it.
Most Dominant Map Pool
As this is a best of three streak, it’s indeed possible for teams to have lost maps and kept their streak; not only this, but the breadth of maps won in the streak is also important in determining the strength of each streak.
In that respect, it should be noted that LG and FaZe were the only teams to have played 7 maps during their streak (though LG’s streak was lesser in most other respects). Obviously, so did NiP, but there were only five maps available back then, so it’s not as relevant.
By my judgment, the best streak here is Liquid.
Most other teams enjoyed the benefit of their map pick and thus had a much more notable skew on their maps played. Not only this, but given the enormous amount of Bo3s in Liquid’s streak (22, second only to NiP’s 27) it’s even more impressive that their worst map is both their most played map and boasts a 70% win rate.
For comparison’s sake, here’s the highest streak from Astralis. Notably, Inferno and Nuke makes up the overwhelming majority of their maps.
A few other interesting points are related to maps, namely the inclusions of best of five series in the streak. The only team to not include a Bo5 in their most winning streak was FaZe this year - every other team has had to play at least one. It’s another knock to look at their map distribution for FaZe in comparison to Liquid.
It’s a seven map pool, for sure, but Nuke is by far their most played map. Not only that, but maps like Overpass and Mirage actually were fairly bad for FaZe during this streak, being the only team to have a sub-50% win rate on two maps in a series streak like this.
At this point it’s also notable to mention teams like NaVi G2, as their streaks involves the most flawless map win rates apart from NiP.
Similar complaints about map pool can be directed here, but on some level you can’t argue with the numbers. If you are a diehard G2 or NaVi fan, you at least can step into the ring and make your case.
However, I think the answer is clear here. Liquid in 2019 boasted 22 Bo3s in a row. My selection criteria actually extended their streak past where their series streak ends for most people, as they did lose some Bo1s before their Bo3 loss to Astralis in the Berlin Major playoffs, but I think it’s a missed point of analysis to not talk about it this way (isn’t it more poetic to end the streak like that?).
Having such an impressive win rate on every map, and having such a wide map pool, are both features which other teams can only tackle one at a time. No other team can argue for both simultaneously, which is why I think Liquid’s streak is the most impressive when considering maps.
Quality of Opposition
They always tell you the number of series that each team won, they never tell you how good the teams they beat actually were. So here’s a little representation for you!
I’ve included both median and average, and excluded an outrageous C9 team that was ranked #301 which would twist an average out of proportion.
Simply put, this means that FaZe’s win streak was up against the “strongest” opposition. I’ll explain why it’s in quotation marks later, but for the time being, it stands. I would personally also place NaVi’s run up there as the strongest due to the dominance of their map wins in combination with their low median (and note that their average was skewed when they fought Renegades - without that, it becomes ~7).
I also wouldn’t take too much stock against Liquid because of their worse average/median here. It comes with the territory when you have the largest streak that some of the games have to be against worse opposition, just by the nature of formats in tournaments.
A quick word on uniqueness is also worth a glance. The proportion of unique teams played as a percentage of the total series in the streak can tell you whether a team was playing more of the same opposition, or going up against a variety of different teams. This is part of why G2 and FaZe’s streaks aren’t as impressive despite having strongly ranked opposition, at least to me - if your streak is against more of the same teams, there’s an element of knowing your opposition and being tested against a variety of styles that is more present in streaks like Astralis.
Ranking The Streaks - Which Is The Best?
So now that I’ve looked at the streaks from multiple angles, let me make my ranking from bottom to top. For clarity, I’ve included the raw series streak numbers so that you can look at it in context. But first, a word about NiP.
Ninjas in Pyjamas - the best…?
It is blatantly obvious that NiP have the highest streak, and when the big 87-0 becomes a part of the conversation, it’s impossible to escape them.
I can abstract and segment their streak by only considering Bo3s and use contextual framing to turn their streak into a story of a star team beating people competing in CS:GO as a hobby during a period of time where serious competition and investment wasn’t anywhere near the later stages of the esport; the sheer number, at the end of the day, is tough to beat. That’s why I will take the easy way out and avoid ranking them - it would have been easy to manufacture an artificial take, but I genuinely don’t think they fit in with the rest, and I don’t have the ancient expertise to dissect them sufficiently in any case.
Last Place (#6) - Luminosity Gaming (2016)
This one is fairly simple - they just didn’t have a very long Bo3 streak compared to the others on this list. I could have even opted to ignore them in favour of Vitality, who won more than 9 Bo3s in a row during their 2023 trophy lifts.
They did win a Bo5 (3-2, but a win is a win) and in the broader scope of CS their team was strong, but you can’t place anywhere but last with the worst average ranking of opposition and the lowest streak.
#5 - FaZe Clan (2023)
Recency bias would be the strongest thing fighting against this placement. The actual strongest thing, besides that, would be the fact they fought against top teams more frequently than most, and kept coming out on top. So what makes me place them so low?
It’s a combination of playing field and dominance within victories. They were anything but dominant across the board on maps when you compare them to teams like Astralis, Liquid, and G2 - and when you look closely, they were playing against quite a few teams that were either missing players or were just starting to get strong in CS2 amidst the transition.
If they had kept up the same performance for more than 12 Bo3s on LAN, those points would have been rendered obsolete by the sheer sample size, but as it is right now they stand on equal or lesser footing with the teams ahead of them in this list without the dominance or map pool to match. It’s also important to note they are the only team to not compete in a best of five - and as Astralis might tell you, a Bo5 can easily end a streak (especially at IEM Sydney).
#4 - G2 (2022-2023)
This one is mostly focused on dominance, but is limited by the context surrounding it. G2 essentially went flawless in maps during their series streak, which is an impressive feat by itself. They also won Katowice as part of their wins, which is part of what makes this run better than FaZe’s.
However, G2’s streak is limited not only by the number of events won, but by the uniqueness of their run. G2’s run was the least unique run. Playing against FaZe twice, NaVi thrice, Liquid twice; while these were good teams, I am more impressed when a team shows it can win against a variety of teams, which not only plays into the in-game factors of style but the external factors of confidence (i.e. G2 knows they can beat the same teams repeatedly!).
This is what makes me place G2’s streak below the likes of Astralis, Liquid, and NaVi. All of those teams either won more events or played a larger variety of teams or both - being flawless on all maps isn’t enough to overtake those factors for me.
#3 - Astralis (2019)
Here it comes - the actual controversial take. I want to stress that I am explicitly looking at their highest Bo3 streak on LAN - not their dominance across the year, not their streaks in aggregate. If that were the case then it wouldn’t be an article about which streak was the most overrated, but which team was the best, and we know the answer to that already.
Astralis had the most overrated “peak win streak”, in my opinion. With the above framing, they lack the sample size to stack up to Liquid’s 22 Bo3s. They also, surprisingly, lack the median and average rankings to stack up to NaVi on paper, though the eye test does clarify that it’s not as bad as it may seem.
The issue here is that I believe people conflate the incredible trophies and dominant Major performances that Astralis did indeed win with the actual “streak” that I am looking at. Their greatest performances are often broken up by key losses here and there, some of which are irrelevant (like losing to FaZe at IEM Chicago 2018, then winning the event regardless) and some of which did deny them trophies (like FaZe at IEM Sydney 2018, and NaVi at Cologne 2018). These matches also meant that their streaks are not during any Majors, which is the bulk of what made them so revered.
The fact is that Astralis did not go on their best streaks during multiple S-Tier events. Even if you take their streak as listed on the HLTV graph as mentioned at the beginning of the article, it includes multiple Bo1 wins at a Blast event, which is why I eschewed it in favour of their wins prior to EPL S10. These wins do not include the kinds of trophies that NaVi or Liquid both won during their respective streaks.
At the end of the day, people trying to argue for Astralis can win in almost every other category. They were the best team of all time, they had every player in the top 20 players of 2018 according to HLTV, they have the most Majors, and so on. But I just can’t place their best win streak above NaVi or Liquid.
While that is the case, their streak does definitely beat LG/FaZe’s streak. There’s an argument to be made for G2 here, but the variety of teams that Astralis faced in 2019 was wide enough for me to easily justify placing them here.
#2 - Natus Vincere (2021)
Three tournaments in a row, one of them being a flawless Major run? That’s an impressive set of results, and it nets them a second place spot.
NaVi’s run is perhaps equivalent to that of Liquid when discussing map win rates - incredibly strong on every map. They trounce G2 and Astralis on the name value of the trophies they won, which is what ultimately brought them to the second place spot here, as well as in the strength of the opposition they faced. NaVi were tested against the strongest teams of their era on the path to Cologne (crowdless in 2021, but still a prestige trophy) and PGL Stockholm, and probably fought the hardest for BLAST Fall Finals 2021 even if the trophy was a lesser one.
Being dominant on many maps, winning the best trophies, and doing so for one of the most coveted Major trophies in the return to LAN post-pandemic is no small feat. The opposition they faced was comparable or stronger than that which Astralis faced in their streak (at least, in my opinion) and they even had a fairly balanced map pool.
It’s a close battle when considering the teams ranked below them on this list - you could swap them for Astralis if your preferences were in that direction. But I would have to search a long time to find someone who would make the case that with half the streak that Liquid had, NaVi’s performance matches up with them. This is as far as they go.
#1 - Team Liquid (2019)
Perhaps this was the expected result, but it’s one which I cannot avoid. Team Liquid’s magical 2019 form was something which CS may not see again for a while.
It’s an interesting angle to take, because the commonly taken “series streak” actually ends in Starladder Berlin due to the inclusion of Bo1s - but ignoring them actually means the series ends with Astralis taking them down in the historic quarterfinal.
The only angle of attack against this streak is the strength of opposition, but you can explain that away with the sheer sample size - of course they had to beat some lesser teams along the way! Team Liquid’s map pool was both wide and deep, and their run included multiple trophy lifts (5!) including the highly valued Cologne 2019 - and that isn’t even discussing how they practically double the next in line when it comes to the length of the streak.
Combine that with the fact they didn’t necessarily stoop to the lack of variety that G2 had in their run, and it’s practically impossible to argue against. Perhaps it’s missing the Major trophy, but then again, nobody but NaVi managed that feat, so I still think it’s uncontested for Liquid.
Conclusion
There are too many murky terms used in discussions surrounding win streaks. Do you include online play? Do you exclude best of one victories and losses? Do you still value a streak if it isn’t flawless like NiP’s original streak was?
I tried to intertwine the statistics and my own opinion this time around, so let me know how it feels. Thank you for reading this article all the way to the end! Send me a Tweet or DM if you want to express your displeasure (or enjoyment) of my articles and opinions regarding CS.
I’ll quickly mention my YouTube channel - right now it’s mostly Super Auto Pets, but I do plan on starting a CS podcast once I figure out how to format it.
I don't often see points brought up about map pool and dominance in these conversations about win-streaks. Props