Understanding M80 and how they keep winning

When M80 entered the scene in mid-2023, they finally did what every NA fan was hoping an org would come in and do: sign Mario "mabdsMd" Samayoa, sign Michael "Swisher" Schmid, and bring in an EU in-game leader, Marcus "maNkz" Kjeldsen. Around that core of three, the organization signed another NA talent to keep the core based in the Americas, role player Ethan "reck" Serrano, and a strong AWPer with EU experience, Adam "WolfY" Andersson. Time told that WolfY simply wasn't up to the organization's par as they brought in their second import, the German Fritz "slaxz-" Dietrich.

With some of the best domestic talents, an EU IGL and AWPer, and an experienced coach in Rory "dephh" Jackson, M80 put together the dream team. They immediately hit the ground running with the assistance of keeping ATK's core, completing a perfect regular season of ESL Challenger League followed by a flawless playoff run. Immediately they were in the mix for the best domestic team, matching results with the likes of Nouns, Wildcard, and BOSS.

Currently in the limelight due to dual victories over Liquid's ambitious new roster at the PGL Major Copenhagen Americas RMR Closed Qualifer and IEM Chengdu Closed Qualifier, M80 are finally breaking away from the pack, nearly cementing themselves as "best of the rest" only following Complexity's domestic dominance.

So then, who are M80? How do they play? Who are the star fraggers? Let's dive into the specifics, starting with M80's CT-sides.

CT-side

reck is the bona fide support player of the bunch, taking anchor positions on every single map, which is why M80 picked up the player. In an interview with Donald "SyykoNT" Muir, M80's VP of Esports explained, "He's been playing anchor positions and more of a support role but his mechanics are that of a star fragger and that given some time and development he too can become a true star in his role." With a 1.10 rating in some of the toughest positions in the game, reck has been all M80 wanted and more.

You'll see in the list of reck's roles that he anchors the larger bombsite nearly every map, sharing the defense with an active rotator, such as Anubis B-site and Ancient A-site with Swisher or Mirage and Nuke A-site with malbsMd. The solo-defender sites are split amongst all the players: Ancient's A-site for reck, Anubis' A-site for malbsMd, Mirage's B-site for maNkz, and Vertigo's B-site for Swisher.

maNkz, the team's IGL, tends to play in active roles much like other IGls who like to be in the action: Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen, Kamil "siuhy" Szkaradek, and Viktor "sdy" Orudzhev to name a few. This fundamentally changes how roles are distributed. Teams like FaZe, G2, and Complexity put their IGL in anchor positions, meaning they only need one more supportive element to complement two star riflers. With maNkz in active roles and reck in passive positions, the second active role is juggled between malbsMd and swisher, with the other taking the second supportive role for that map.

There is, of course, a downside to putting maNkz in active spots. Whatever gained from a calling point of view must be weighed against putting a weaker fragger in these roles; maNkz only has a 1.01 rating since joining M80. There is, too, a benefit to this. It leaves either malbsMd or Swisher in an anchor position they're heavily overqualified for, meaning when they do hold bombsites alone, they frequently get their one-and-out or multifrag on the site hold.

T-side

On the attacking side, we see maNkz continue his active roles while malbsMd dramatically picks up his aggression. maNkz often roams, which you'd expect from an in-game leader. He's part of the main pack wherever the team goes so he feeds off the most recent information across the map. malbs serves as the team's entry fragger on the attacking side, spearheading bombsites as part of the main pack. It's Swisher and reck on the extremities of maps in the default, ensuring nobody encroaches on the mid pack. As we'll see later in the playstyle section, though, Swisher and reck play these roles differently.

Playstyle

The first thing that jumps out from these graphs is the sheer trade output from M80; nearly all their players are far above the average for traded deaths. M80 is at the very top in terms of trading, with 22.9% of deaths traded in the past three months, second only to Monte. M80's playstyle relies upon pack-based Counter-Strike, rolling into bombsites with strong executes and trading out the entries as opposed to skirmishes and individual duels.

malbsMd, as the entry fragger, has the highest T-side opening duel attempts on the squad by far and a correspondingly low trading kill count. Much like the rest of M80, though, he makes sure his teammates can capitalize off his space taking with exceptional traded death statistics. maNkz is smack dab in the middle of the opening duel chart, showing that while he does take active positions throughout the map pool, he lets his stars carry the show. slaxz- plays like most other AWPers, very few T-side opening duel attempts and an average amount of CT-side openers.

Back to the topic of Swisher and reck, despite both playing extremities on T-sides, the two wingers have different philosophies on taking opening duels. reck, true to his nature, performs his duty as an extremity player to a T, simply stopping any curious CTs looking to gain extra map control. Swisher, though, is given more freedom with his roams. When the team groups up later in the round to execute a site, Swisher is often at the forefront of these assaults, bringing the "lurker" label into question.

Takeaways

With it all said and done, M80 have put together a star-studded lineup of domestic talents flanked by EU experience and know-how. SyykoNT had his eyes on maNkz from the start, eager to "bring in a Danish IGL" who has implemented a trade-heavy system which has dominated the NA circuit. Now all that remains is for M80 to finally bridge the gap between NA's domestic best and Europe's tier-two bloodbath.