Article written by: John "JAYEL"
Welcome to the fourth, and likely final Counter Nature Advanced Awards. It has been a fun run of doing these at the end of each season, but Season 38 will likely be the final time you will see the Counter Nature Advanced Awards. Hopefully, the four iterations of these awards have been exciting and joyful for both readers and winners alike.
Season 38 saw the Brazilian grip tighten further on the NA CS with a dominating championship run by the professional organization GODSENT. The competition was a little bit tougher on the Brazilians with the South African organization ATK coming across the pond--but even they were out of their league playing against the talented Brazilians.
Despite the top-heavy teams, the field played out pretty competitively this season, with some surprises and new faces coming to light.
The upcoming Season 39 will see Brazilian excellence return to the Advanced division, this time, in the form of the historic MiBR (Made in Brazil). As soon as first realization came out on Twitter, there were groans, moans and complaints all around. I would like to make a statement about this: Stop complaining and playing the victim. You either want to improve in the competitive scene of CS:GO or you don't--both are completely fine, but both prove those who complain about this are hypocrite self-victimizers. There's a third part to this as well, which claims the NA CS scene is dying. What a better injection to the NA scene than these powerful Latin American organizations, who are helping prop the region up on the world stage? These teams are coming north to play in the Land of Opportunity--literally and virtually. We should be welcoming them to Advanced and be happy to have a future when we can reflect on, "Remember when we played MIBR in Advanced in Season 39?".
This brings me to my final comment before getting into the awards: The scene in general needs to really man-up a bit and stop playing the victim in every negative situation. If you were cut from a team or are cutting someone from your team, how about you have an honest conversation with the involved persons to come clean about things? Stop running away from conflict and look yourself in the mirror--it will help you down the road in life, instead of running away and hiding from honesty. Keeping things behind closed-doors and avoiding collaboration is what hurts the scene, country, region, and world. Help yourself by helping others and grow up. Think about the person you want to be and be perceived as, and start taking the actions to be that person--hopefully it is someone who helps humanity (as humanity will continue to evolve and grow in this metaverse).
These awards are given for the regular season of Advanced; We only really take into account the post-season for Most Surprising Team and Coach of the Season. This season’s winners were decided in the same manner that last season’s winners were--via our survey that we sent to specially selected community members. We combined the community’s votes with our own thoughts and feelings to decide the below winners. Thank you to those of you who shared your feedback with us and took the time to think and provide relevant insight.
You can view previous seasons' Counter Nature Advanced Awards below:
- Season 37: https://www.counternature.net/posts/s37-adv-awards
- Season 36: https://www.counternature.net/posts/s36-adv-awards
- Season 34: https://www.counternature.net/posts/s34-adv-mid-awards
🏆 Comeback Player of the Season: aris from X13
Previous winner: Millz from Team Verum (Season 37)
The Comeback Player award is reserved for a player who has left the game for an extended period of time, and then returned to playing in the Advanced division with a vengeance. After a brief departure from CS:GO for a try at Valorant, aris certainly returned to the division with a vengeance.
Season 36 was his last full season in Advanced, where he posted a 73.79 ADR in league play. After a season hiatus in Valorant, he returned for Season 38 and posted an 88 ADR during the regular season, which led the X13 team.
Make sure to reach out to aris for some tips on the turn-around; Is a Valorant break the key to unlocking the next-level? Personally, COD always brought out the beast in me when playing CS:GO.
🏆 Coach of the Season: ioRascal from DETONATE
Previous winner: Anythingpos from Pryde (Season 36)
This award goes the best coach of the Advanced season. Taylor "ioRascal" Hays has been putting in a crazy amount of effort towards CS:GO analysis, theory, and team mechanics over the past few seasons. When I first met Taylor, he was working with different teams in ESEA Main. He always had a really unique perspective to the game that I hadn't really noticed in any other people I've talked with or listened to. His military background has brought him a special edge to the game, that a lot of people could benefit from. Not only is it the military discipline to detail that helps strengthen his resolve, but it is the humbleness to take the time to learn, grow and understand that apprenticeship is needed to climb to the top.
After being a Coach and Analyst through Main and Advanced, he went all-in as an Analyst and linked up with the European Coach, LATJ. From there, he was able to find his own voice and techniques while working at the top-level of MDL/Premier.
This season, the hard work paid off, as he got his first full season as the Coach of a prominent Advanced team. Season 38 was the perfect opportunity to prove his credibility as a top NA Coach, and he did just that with the talented DETONATE squad.
A unique mixture of analytical work, understanding of team tactics, and some brash sarcasm--ioRascal takes home Coach of the Season.
If you're not familiar with Taylor and his mindset, check out some of his legendary Counter Nature articles here:
🏆 Rookie of the Season: Neidert from Uncharted Territory
Previous winner: brashi from YeniCherry (Season 37)
Honorable Mention: -supa from Team Volted
The Rookie of the Season award goes to the player who had the best and most impactful season, in their first-ever season of Advanced. This season's winner is a first-time winner of two awards in the same season (see towards end of article for his other award). The 18 year old only played six seasons of ESEA before this season, and only one season of Main (S37 was with the same team in Intermediate).
This AWPer held an impressive 13th best ADR for the regular season of Advanced in S38. His 91.4 regular season ADR is the highest ever ADR for a Counter Nature Rookie of the Season. Funnily enough, the Honorable Mention for Rookie of the Season, -supa, had even a slightly higher ADR for the regular season. And even more funnily, both of these players will be on the SAME TEAM for Season 39 (Team Volted).
If you haven't been on the look-out for this roster during the season, you might want to make sure you are DMing before your matches versus them. These two players have serious talent.
🏆 Most Valuable Player: felpera from GODSENT
Previous winner: Cryptic from Villainous (Season 37)
Honorable Mention: Wilky from Northern Forces
The best player from the best team; The paiN Gaming saffee of Season 38. Joao "felpera" Vasconcellos posted an insane 99.90 ADR during the regular season of Advanced. As crazy of a season-long stat as this is, it still doesn't best saffee's 102 ADR from S36.
felpera doesn't only dominate in Advanced, but he also holds the team's top spot in HLTV Rating, leading with a 1.18.
Wilky gets the Honorable Mention here after doing the job that everyone expected him to do for his Northern Forces squad. After four seasons of Premier and MDL, the expectations were extremely high for Wilky to perform for Northern Forces at the Advanced-level. He did just that by plowing through the regular season with a 95.21 ADR, topping the charts for the impressive squad.
🏆 Most Surprising Team: Synergy Reborn
Previous winner: Cryptic from Villainous (Season 37)
Honorable Mention: Wilky from Northern Forces
The best player from the best
🏆 Best AWPer: Neidert from Uncharted Territory
Previous winner: jackyy from RECTIFY (Season 37)
Neidert claims both the Rookie of the Season award AND the Best AWPer. He claimed it with the most regular season AWP frags with 185.
jackyy from RECTIFY won it last season with 205.
🏆 Headhunter: Tender from Synthetic
Previous winner: TR0JN from YeniCherry (Season 37)
Former Counter Nature (S37) player, Tender had the best Headshot Percentage in Advanced during the regular season, with at least 100 frags. An impressive .283 HSP was the best of the league.
TR0JN won it last season with a .275 HSP.
🏆 Best Clutcher: PLx2 from CarbonX Esports
Previous winner: liam from NEM (Season 37)
PLx2 from CarbonX Esports earned Best Clutcher with 11 clutches during the regular season. He had nine 1v2s and two 1v3s.
liam from NEM won it last seaon with 13.
🏆 Best Caster: BignTallMatt
The first and last ever Best Caster award from Counter Nature goes to BignTallMatt. This guy grinded through the season of Advanced and always brought tons of energy, insight and laughter to whatever stream he was on. It is hard to bring big-hearted energy while also being able to do top-class play-by-play and tactics--BignTallMatt does just that.
Big shout out to him, the Valkyrie organization, and LCABroadcasting. Make sure you hit them up if you need casting for Season 39.
✌️ What's next:
While the Counter Nature Awards will likely be ending, Counter Nature is not. We will still be supporting our talented CS:GO roster and be involved in the Counter-Strike community. You can expect less direct CS:GO content from us, though; We will be focusing directly on our own Counter-Strike team and our new direction of content. We will support the scene as we best see fit.
As a farewell article for the Counter Nature Awards, I would like to give a little bit of thanks: To the friends in Discord who are always giving feedback to things I put out and have been collaborating with me over these past few months--thank you. I really appreciate your ongoing commitment to what we have been doing here and your friendship in the process. You know who you are. Cheers and I'm looking forward to our continued evolution in the space.
Your homie, Counter Nature JAYEL 🪐