The benches tonight (front row = tonight's featured guests)
Livewire: Welcome to The Benches. Tonight: dynasties. The teams that won for years, the versions of them nobody remembers, and whether anyone can do it again.
Dusty: Finally. An episode about teams that stayed together. I've waited my whole life to be on the right side of a statistic.
The Ledger: You might be. Let me show you the numbers first.
▶ THE TAPE The Polish core: one team, five names
Pentagram won WCG 2006 and ESWC 2007. Then, as Meet Your Makers, ESWC 2008. As AGAiN, WCG 2009. As ESC Gaming, WCG 2011 and IEM Season VI. Throughout, the core was TaZ and NEO (NEO was HLTV's #1 player of 2011).1
Then they played the very first Valve Major as Universal Soldiers (9-12), got picked up by Virtus.pro, and won the next Major, Katowice 2014. The "Golden Five" then played 11 consecutive Majors with the same five players, the longest stable roster in Major history.1
Dusty: I watched all five names. People would ask "who's AGAiN?" and I'd say: it's TaZ and NEO, in a different shirt. It was always TaZ and NEO.
Footnote: That's my whole thesis. In Counter-Strike, the org is the jersey and the core is the team.1
Weekend Warrior: So the team is the people, and the name is... a hat.
Footnote: A very expensive hat.
▶ THE TAPE The forgotten first draft: TSM, 2015
Before Astralis existed, the same Danish core (cajunb, device, dupreeh, Xyp9x) played as TSM under karrigan and won five S-tier titles in six months of 2015. At the three Majors that year they went 5-8, 3-4, 5-8.2
In January 2016 they became Astralis. karrigan was out by October. Astralis won the very next Major without him (Atlanta, 2017), then three more: London 2018, Katowice 2019, Berlin 2019. Four Majors, the org record, coached by zonic.2
Footnote: Nobody credits those five TSM titles to the Astralis players, because they're filed under a North American brand name. The dynasty had a first draft, and it's in the wrong folder.2
The Prosecutor: karrigan again. He's in Episode 1, Episode 2 and now this. At what point does the man need a lawyer on retainer?
Livewire: And the coach?
Footnote: zonic coached all four Astralis titles, then Vitality's in 2023, then Falcons' in 2026. Six Majors, three orgs. The most decorated person in Major history is a coach. The player record is five.3
(The studio audience makes a long "ooh.")
FLIP BOARD · The Ledger presents: The statistic everybody gets wrong
The Ledger: Everyone reads this chart as "keep your roster together and you'll win." That's half right. Unchanged rosters make the playoffs 64% of the time, rebuilds 24%. But good teams don't change, so of course the stable ones do better.4
The Ledger: The fair test: split teams by how they did last time. If you made the playoffs, standing pat clearly beats changing. If you missed them, a real change helps, but only a little. And buying a whole core from another team? Of 31 cases, only two produced an immediate title.4
Dusty: So I was right.
The Ledger: You were half right, with a caveat, in a footnote.
Dusty: I'll take it. I'm framing it.
▶ THE TAPE Two cores that won under two names
The Brazilians (FalleN, fer, coldzera, fnx, TACO) won MLG Columbus 2016 as Luminosity, then moved to SK Gaming as a group and won ESL One Cologne 2016. The only core ever to win back-to-back Majors under two different org names.5
Dusty: Dynasties are just habits that nobody broke. Same five, same spray.
The Ledger: I hate that this is statistically supported.
Still being written: the next dynasty
Vitality has three Majors (Paris 2023, Austin and Budapest 2025) and in August 2026 extended apEX and ZywOo to the end of 2028, but the same five finished 5-8 at Cologne. Spirit won Shanghai 2024 with a 17-year-old donk and reached the Cologne semifinals after a quadruple-overtime quarterfinal that produced CS2's first in-map memorial. Astralis, meanwhile, missed five straight Majors and has spent recent years bringing its own former players home (device, then Magisk).6
HOPES BOARD · for a story that's still being written
Who builds the next dynasty?
Dusty: Anyone, as long as they keep the same five for more than two Majors. Just try it. Please.
The Ledger: Vitality: a fourth Major would put them level with Astralis. I'd like the tie-breaker debate.
Sunshine: Spirit! donk is a baby! A dynasty that starts at 17 could last forever!
The Prosecutor: Astralis: a proper investigation into how the best team of an era became a retirement home. Friendly questions only.
Weekend Warrior: A team that's fun to watch for five years. I don't need it to win. I just need it to stay.
Footnote: Whoever it is, I want to find their first draft before anyone else does.
Line of the night
"You were half right, with a caveat, in a footnote."
— The Ledger (Dusty has asked for a framed copy)
Next time: the Scandals, Skins and Money special. A match-fixing scandal over skin bets, a boost that caused the first forfeit in Major history, 37 coaches banned for a spectator bug, a $5 billion gambling boom, and two lawsuits against Valve filed this year. The Prosecutor has been preparing for this episode since the show began.
Footnote's footnotes (every "ding!" in tonight's episode, sourced)
- The Polish core's titles as Pentagram, Meet Your Makers, AGAiN and ESC Gaming; Universal Soldiers at DreamHack Winter 2013; Virtus.pro's Katowice 2014 title; the Golden Five's 11 consecutive Majors. Liquipedia: Virtus.pro · Liquipedia: EMS One Katowice 2014
- TSM 2015: five S-tier titles (PGL Kick-Off, FACEIT Stage I, Fragbite S4, FACEIT Stage 2, PGL S1); became Astralis Jan 2016; Astralis's four Majors. Liquipedia: TSM · Liquipedia: Astralis
- zonic: coach of Major winners Astralis (x4), Vitality (Paris 2023), Falcons (Cologne 2026). Liquipedia: zonic
- Stazione analysis of all 511 team appearances at 24 Valve Majors (Liquipedia rosters and placements): playoff rates by continuity, the split by previous result, and 31 core moves.
- Luminosity (MLG Columbus 2016) and SK Gaming (ESL One Cologne 2016), same five players. Liquipedia: MLG Columbus 2016 · Liquipedia: ESL One Cologne 2016
- Vitality's three Majors and the Aug 19, 2026 extensions; Spirit's Shanghai 2024 title and Cologne 2026 semifinal (magixx memorial); Astralis's missed Majors (Rio 2022 - Austin 2025). Liquipedia: Team Vitality · Liquipedia: Team Spirit · Liquipedia: Astralis
- Challenge mechanics: the AK-47's fixed spray pattern and the Follow Recoil crosshair setting. Stazione: The spray is a shape
Liquipedia content is used under CC-BY-SA 3.0. The panelists are fictional archetypes; every fact they cite is real and checked.
Worth arguing about: is Counter-Strike still capable of producing a dynasty, or was Astralis the last one?
Argue it out in the discussion thread. That's where this actually gets resolved.
The Benches · season one