May 28th, 2018 is a date that may not mean much
to many but for some it is remembered as one of the biggest turning points in
the history of a single Dota 2 squad – OG.
In August of 2015, a Dota 2 team was formed going by the
name (monkey) Business and it featured some amazing players who were yet to
really make their mark on the scene – but in time, that would change. Some of
the players had already played together and been on multiple teams prior, while
others had barely been noticed yet and would get their biggest steppingstone
from this new roster. It took only two months before (monkey) Business was
signed into the organisation that would make history over the next few years as
OG was birthed.
It did not take awfully long for OG to jump into the limelight as they made an epic lower bracket run through The Frankfurt Major and destroyed Team Secret to claim their first title. Almost half a year later, now in 2016, the same OG roster would command the upper bracket at The Manila Major before taking down Team Liquid to claim a second title. But following a poor performance at The International 2016, OG would see a roster change in which three players departed – but a more dominant force joined together.
Once again, with their new roster, OG were quick to show
their skills, taking The Boston Major by storm and adding another trophy to
their collection. And by March 2017, the team had acquired their fourth and
final Major trophy – which is when everything begun to change. The struggle to
claim a foothold at tournaments became apparent as OG sunk into a slump, barely
making it into the upper echelons of events – sometimes not even qualifying.
All of this led to ESL One Birmingham 2018 which saw OG exit in fifth/sixth
place and a few days later was when one of the biggest changes in the OG camp
came.
May 28th, 2018: a post went out on the official OG social media pages which announced that both Tal ‘Fly’ Aizik and Gustav ‘s4’ Magnusson would be leaving the squad and moving to Evil Geniuses. Going two players down at this point in the year meant that OG were forced to withdraw from the China Dota2 Supermajor after losing one of their founding members plus one.
In a Finnish Esports Podcast, Jesse ‘JerAx’ Vaikikka admitted that the departure of the two players completely blindsided OG – even going on to state that he remained annoyed with both Fly and s4 as they never discussed anything with the team.
The roster change sent waves through the Dota 2 community as
everyone begun to learn more about it – but when OG qualified to The
International 2018 via the European Qualifier, the change seemed almost
laughable. Even with a new roster, featuring their coach, the return of Anathan
‘ana’ Pham and a pubstar named Topias ‘Topson’ Taavitsainen, OG would quickly
rise to fame once again, as they pummeled their way through TI8 to claim the
Aegis of Champions.
Although doing this again at TI9 and creating history, TI8 still gave us one of the most chilling moments between Fly and Johan ‘N0tail’ Sundstein – the handshake and look which will certainly be remembered by everyone.
Since then, OG have even had some fun with the image of N0tail’s face from “the look” when they used it as their flag, placing it wherever they felt it would inflict the highest psychological effect on their opponents. This added to their constant voice-line spam, their amazing team structure and strategy is why OG will forever be remembered for their two-time TI winning ways. Even after taking such a massive hit in 2018, OG bounced back and took over the Dota 2 scene, leaving Fly and s4 to contemplate their decisions to leave.
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