French Shuffle 3.0: A Dream Team is rising

Every year i'm shufflin'

The french scene is well-known for its numerous talents, and since the CS:GO era began, there has always been at least a french team on top, contesting to win each tournament. It began with VeryGames, the first team to ever contest NiP's supremacy on a regular basis, back in the early days of CSGO. The structure then became Titan after the first french Shuffle, but never quite met the expectations, unlike LDLC who became the first french team to ever win a Major.

After the LDLC lineup switched to EnVyUs, they got stuck in a slump, which led to the second french shuffle : EnVyUs and Titan swapped Shox and SmithZz for kennyS and apEX. It ended up being a very successful change for nV : they finished 2nd a month later at the Cologne major, before claiming the title in the next major in Cluj. G2 (ex-Titan) then overtook nV in 2016, before falling back to a fairly similar level by the end of 2016, the two teams sitting at the 10th and 11th spots in the HLTV rankings.

A dream team about to rise

According to our very serious sources, a third shuffle is ongoing behind the curtains. Many changes are expected to happen in the French scene, but the main change already seems to have secretly been enacted: the players have agreed on a line-up. The roster appears to be final, since all the players are now aware of this change after a long discussion involving everyone took place in Atlanta after both teams qualified for the major.

Those discussions led to a team project announced by Richard "shox" Papillon and Nathan "NBK" Schmitt. The former VeryGames and EnVyUs teammates quickly enrolled Kenny "kennyS" Schrub in their project. Shox and kennyS, often seen as the two best French players will finally get to play together in the same team, for the first time since they both play at high level (2012).

shox & kennyS, finally.

In order to complete the dream team, two important players have been picked, one of them being kennyS’ partner in crime : Dan "apEX" Madesclaire. The entry fragger will be reunited with shox, with whom used to play on CS: Source in the 3DMAX team. Last but not least is the former LDLC.white player: the young and promising Alexandre "bodyy" Pianaro, whose level skyrocketed while playing for G2.

Finally, after playing at the top level for over a decade, Edouard "SmithZz" Dubourdeaux will be stepping down from his player position in order to become this very promising team’s coach.  For the manager spot, Jérôme "NiaK" Sudries was chosen and has accepted the new challenge.

What about the leftover stars and the rest of the scene ?

With this new roster being created, the rest of the scene is quite logically upset, and 4 survivors are on their own : Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom, Vincent "Happy" Cervoni, Cédric "RpK" Guipouy and Christophe "SIXER" Xia. Whereas some of them are interested in creating a new team, others could be tempted by a lucrative international adventure. Taking those 4 players and the rest of the French scene into consideration, we should be seeing 1 or 2 new French teams rise alongside the dream team.

The creation of this dream team should result in deep changes in the top and sub-top French teams, starting with LDLC which should be directly impacted, either adding players or losing players to a second top team. We’ll give more informations about those changes in a near future.

Major is coming...

While awaiting confirmation, EnVyUs and G2 will be playing the ELEAGUE major at the end of the month and a potential DreamHack Las Vegas if they qualify. This dream team would then be created by the end of January/early February after both teams are done with the legal procedures.

The next French top team should then be the following :

Richard "shox" Papillon
Nathan "NBK" Schmitt
Kenny "kennyS" Schrub
Dan "apEX" Madesclaire
Alexandre "bodyy" Pianaro

Edouard "SmithZz" Dubourdeaux (coach)
Jérôme "NiaK" Sudries (manager)

Thanks to Haru for translation