Hi guys.
We have lately received a lot of questions from the community about our current lineup and what will happen to the team in the future. In this blog I will try to wrap up what has happened during the first months of 2012 in our ranks. I will be sharing my thoughts about the events we have attended and our current lineup situation. I would also like to give some information about how the future will look like for the team.

The search for a fifth player
It is no secret that since we lost Friis to fnatic last summer, we have been struggling to find the suitable substitution that could fit perfectly in our team and after a long Christmas break we started in January with yet another try to find the right person. We started by trying to look back at the players we tested during last year, to try to find out why it didn’t worked 100 % with them. The conclusion was that we believed that the individual level of all the players we tested were excellent but the main problem seemed to be that the players lacked of tactical skills and weren't able to adapt to our tactics. With that in mind we started this year with a search for a player that had a good knowledge of our team and players. As no surprise for you now the choice was to try SFM out. SFM had played with some of our players before on previous teams and is a good friend of the team. He didn’t had the experience like the rest of the team but we believed that his individual skill was good and that he would fit well for our tactics, so in late January we slowly started our practice for IEM World Finals.

IEM World Finals
The practice for the IEM World Finals didn’t went well for us. We couldn’t practice as many days as we wanted to because of work and school commitments and when we practiced we played quite bad most of the time. We didn’t hit our shots and the tactics were not done correctly. Fortunately for us we had planned a 3 days of Bootcamp before we should leave for Germany, so we had some time to get things right. At the bootcamp we got through a bunch of tactics and finally at the last day it seemed like that things started to get a little bit better for us. We left to Germany with a feeling of that if we hit our toplevel we could maybe surprise some teams and sneak us through the group stage but of course we knew that it would be extremely difficult.
There is no doubt that the event was a disaster for us. When we look back at the event, our biggest concern was not the fact that we lost 5 out of 5 matches although it is really bad itself. I mean, we knew that this could happen in the extremely hard group we were in. The real concern was the way we played as a team and individually in those matches. We made so many mistakes in nearly every part of the game. Our tactics were done wrong, we constantly made stupid decisions in the clutch rounds, our communication were not good enough and our aims were way off our targets. In many of our matches we actually had chances to win important rounds and gain money control, especially in the first 2 games, but somehow we managed to fail the rounds every time even though we got the first kills and were supernumerary in the clutch rounds.
When we got home from IEM World Finals we got a lot of critics from the community, especially about our choice of SFM. To be honest I think it was quite unfair. It was oblivious that SFM didn’t had his best event but none of us played a good event. Also SFM had maybe the most difficult task in the team. In many tactics he was the first man to enter the sites and if you add that to the fact that it was his first international tournament, I don’t think he can be blamed for anything. We think he did what we could expect from him at this point.

Danish Esport League
Next up was the Danish Esport Leauge. The online season started in the beginning of February with LAN finals in the middle of March. We were the favorites to win the tournament and that was also our own expectation. The online stage started pretty smooth for us, there was not much resistance in the first rounds. When we finally met resistance in teams like Xapso and aceBy, just a week before World Finals, we lost big in both matches. We lost yet another match to Xapso but later got our revenge against aceBy. We qualified to the LAN finals as 2nd in the online stage and came into the finals with a feeling of that now it was time to show that we were much better than our latest results had shown.
Unfortunately the DEL lan finals was not the place where our bad roll stopped. First we won 2-1 against Sharkgaming. Although it was a win and we qualified for the grand final, it was a big disappoint to lose a map. In the final against Xapso we threw away a good lead on Tuscan and lost that map 16-14. On the last map we simply didn’t had a chance against them. When we returned home we took a week off. We felt that we had hit the bottom of our level and I can’t think back at a time where we have played so bad as we did in February and March. It was definitely the hardest time we have ever had in the team. I think at that time we all considered to abandon the team.

Copenhagen Games
A week after DEL, we had a meeting to decide what we were going to do now. Should we just stop and abandon the team or should we go all in and give it a final shoot at Copenhagen Games. It was quickly clear that we all wanted to go to Copenhagen Games. SFM told us that he was going away in May to travel around in Asia for 3 months. Snappi also confirmed that he would properly retire after Copenhagen Games. Now that we knew that this was the last tournament for this lineup, it really motivated us a lot to do it well this time. We agreed to play as much as possible before the event and get in shape for the last time together. The last weeks before the event we practiced like 3 times a week and played as much individual as possible. It was not the best preparation but our personal schedules didn’t fit together for more practice than that.
We started out the event with playing the CS:GO tournament. There is not much to say about that tournament. We tried to play to win the game but it didn’t worked out very well. The next day we had a good practice day together at Copenhagen Games and the following day the group stage started. Because of our latest result we were placed in the mid seed and the draw didn’t turned out lucky for us. In the group stage we were set up against Lemondogs which recently placed 3rd at IEM World Finals. The match started on Tuscan and we won 13-2 on the CT side. Unfortunately we couldn’t keep it up and lost the map 16-14. It was a big disappointment that we once again threw away a map which we had done so many times before against the top teams. The next map was mirage, we showed some really good moral and this time we were able to close the map. Although we later lost the third map, this match against Lemondogs seemed like a turning point for us. Our game was much better than it had been the last couple of months and we were actually able to play even against a team like Lemondogs.



With the loss against Lemondogs, we ended up 2nd in the group and once again we were a bit unlucky with the playoff draw as we ended up with NaVi in the first round. We lost the match 2-0(16-14,16-12) but in my opinion we played a really good match. On both maps we were even with them during the whole map until the last couple of rounds where the map should get decided but once again we were not able to close the map. This is something that has happened way too much for us in the past and seems to be a constant problem for us. Although we felt that we were on the road with our game again, the final result of our efforts on Friday was that we had to start from lower bracket the next day.



The next day we arrived at the venue with fresh heads and our optimism was back. We started our lower bracket journey against the Brazilian team semXorah. We knew that they had taken away a map from SharkGaming but we didn’t had much problems against them. Next up was the Swedish team IMBA. We did’nt knew much about them and once again it was a quite easy win for now. Next up was the match against ESC. A match that we have been looking forward to since we saw the lower bracket draw. We started out as T on Tuscan. Although we lost the pistolround, we still managed to get a 10-5 lead. I think it was one of our best T sides with this team. On the CT side we lost the pistolround again and the ESC slowly started their way back in the game. They tied to game up at 14-14 and it started to look like many of the other games where we were not able to close the game and end up losing it 16-14 or something like that. This time we finally managed to keep cool and closed the match with a 16-14 win. It was such a relief to finally win one of these close matches and it was even better that we did it against ESC that just had won the World Finals. To be honest I think we really deserved this one, since we had played some really good matches previously in the tournament and this match we were playing even better and although we lost both pistolrounds, we still won the match.
Next up was Lemondogs. This time we were looking for a revenge and we were really confident going into the match. We ended up playing Tuscan again and started out as CT, but this time we were far from the CT game that we showed against them last time. We got a bad start and were down 10-3 but we got the last two rounds and knew that there were still hope for a comeback. We lost the pistolround as T, but then won the second round and then more rounds followed our way. Suddenly we were on the road for comeback and were just behind 11-9. Unfortunately one of their players came out huge and turned around a 2on5 situation which would have forced them to a eco if they had lost that round. After that there was nothing more left in us. We lost the map 16-10 and were out of the tournament with a 7-8th place. Maybe the result doesn’t sound like a big achievement and I agree on that, but for us it was important that we turned around our game and started to play like we did in the past and I think we really did that. We felt that now we are back on track and can put the bad game from February and March behind us and start to move forward again.

Future
Now that it finally seems like we are back on track, it is a bit sad that we can’t continue with the lineup we had for Copenhagen games. Although the lineup change is sad, we are all really motivated to find suitable replacements and this time we will look at some of the few new talented players that we have in Denmark. We need to find two new players for the team and we are already far in the process. At Copenhagen games we had some time to spectate some of the upcoming Danish players and as you maybe already have seen, we have tested a couple of players in the Balkan league and FCL matches. Originally it was the plan that Snappi would retire after Copenhagen Games because he didn’t felt he had the time but after a couple weeks break he had found new motivation and more time so he asked if he could get back on team. At this time zE had considered to step down because he had a lot of sports and work to do, so the end of it has been that zE now will act as a backup player and be removed from the starting five. I hope we can announce the final lineup with our new players very soon.
Our next tournaments will be 3 online leagues, actually they are already running. We are playing Balkan League, ASUS online cup and the Fnatic Play league. We are also hopping that our personal schedules will fit for attending Dreamhack summer in June.

If people want to support our team, it would be really appreciated if you joined our group AnexiseSports on facebook: www.facebook.com/AnexiseSports
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/#!/AnexisEsports
or check out our Youtube channel myANEXIS for interviews and some highlights from our matches www.youtube.com/user/myANEXIS

Best regards to all of you, Nuggi
www.anexis.de