posted by PookieThePie,
History
Mousesports, or mouz, is indeed an old name in the DotA scene, the first DotA team under this name having featured names like KuroKy, Miracle and Drayich as early as 2007. The team was considered one of the strongest in the scene, but due to some internal conflicts not disclosed to the public, Mousesports withdrew its DotA support and subsequently its support for the team.
Late 2011 is the year when Mousesports decided to jump back and take team EBIN under its wings, which consisted of Visar "twiSta" Zymberi, Antti Sakari "Rexi" Saarenpää, Weh Sing "SingSing" Yuen, Mirsad "DeMeNt" Djokovic and Kalle "Trixi" Saarinen, with twiSta as team captain.
Players such as ComeWithMe, Black^ or 1437 came and went from the team and Mousesports lost its players in October 2012, only to pick up a new, German squad named Zero in November, which featured the return of KuroKy and Black^ under mouz tutelage.
It was February 2013 when KuroKy was traded to Na'Vi and also the moment FATA- joined the team for a shared captain position with Black^. This year brought along plenty of roster changes with it and we witnessed qojqva join in March, as well as syndereN in April, only to have both Black^ and qojqva leave in September for LGD Gaming.int and Team Liquid respectively. Before the two left, however, they competed together at The International 2013, but were eliminated by LGD Gaming.int in the lower bracket matches.
October 2013 brought a new Danish team to Mousesports consisting of syndereN, Ryze, Cr1t-, Ace, and Link, but just two months later, syndereN announced his retirement from the competitive scene, mentioning however, that he remained a part of the Mousesports organization. Along with his departure came Link's as well, and although Unicorn and exist were picked up as replacements, the team went on for one more month until the roster is dropped completely in January 2014.
We all know about the current roster having formerly been Team Dog, a squad of formerly teamless pro players who took the scene by storm and didn't seem to take any of the tournaments too seriously.
The original roster featured Per Anders "Pajkatt" Olsson Lille as captain, Rasmus "MiSeRy" Filipsen and Johan "smulgullig" Gidmark, as well as Ioannis "Fogged" Loucas and Jimmy "DeMoN" Ho. The team went on to settle on its current roster at the beginning of April, shortly before receiving their The International 2014 invite for the European qualifiers.
Roster changes
2014
16th February - The team is formed with the three ex-CLG members Pajkatt, MiSeRy and smulgullig and old Dignitas and EG player Fogged as well as American mercenary DeMoN.
23rd February - The team qualifies for DreamLeague Season 1 and Star Series Season 9 America.
4th March - MSS is seen to be playing in DeMoN's stead in official matches.
20th March - DeMoN confirms that he is not on the team any more.
22nd March - MSS confirms he is now an official part of the team.
4th April - Fogged leaves Team Dog.
11th April - FATA and PaS join Team Dog.
29th April - Team Dog is officially invited to the European qualifiers for The International 2014.
May 13th - Team Dog is picked up by German organization mousesports.
Achievements
28.06.2014 5th ESL One Frankfurt 2014
22.06.2014 1st GIGABYTE Challenge #5
16.06.2014 4th ASUS ROG DreamLeague Season 1
03.06.2014 1st American Dota League Season 2
27.05.2014 1st The International 4 - European Qualifier
19.05.2014 2nd The Summit 2014 EU Qualifier
Gameplay and strategies
We've been able to witness some pretty amazing plays from mouz lately, be it at DreamHack Summer 2014 or ESL One Frankfurt, the latter bringing a great highlight video involving Pajkatt's Axe against team iG, avoiding near-certain death by executing an incredible double kill, then walking away like nothing happened admist the crazy cheering of the crowd present for the moment at the stadium.
With Troll Warlord mid as their signature hero pick, mouz have been known to play aggressively from early on, which is also when their fate is usually decided; either they win early game and go on to win the whole of it, or they lose momentum and fail to use their atypical picks to the fullest. Either way, their strategies have made for some very exciting games and it will definitely be worth keeping an eye on the team at The International 2014.
Players
Pajkatt (Captain)
Per Anders Olsson Lille
Signature Heroes: :d2_axe: :d2_slark: :d2_potm:
Player Position: 1 - Carry
Other than being great at imitating Maelk in his spare time, as demonstrated in the video below, Pajkatt is mouz's carry player and one of the most exciting players aside from Fnatic's BigDaddy to watch during a tournament, as every win means a new reaction from Pajkatt. He definitely knows how to make a crowd cheer.
Pajkatt started playing DotA competitively back in 2009 with a team called Ben's Fuck Buddies, but only being part of it for a few weeks. He continued to jump from team to team as a standin for a while until he seemed to have found his place with Ducky's Dream Team. He ultimately left the team after having played the ECWS with them and ended up in various top teams with big names in the DotA scene even then, such as KuroKy, Puppey or Fear.
When DotA 2 appeared, he transitioned along with his team OK.Nirvana.int and went on to compete in The International 2011, achieving 7th place and a record for Pajkatt of the highest average gold per minute over the whole tournament of all players. After the International, Pajkatt was part of the first EG lineup and was off for two months in China to bootcamp, but soon after returning he left this team as well.
He played with both a Swedish team alongside players such as Loda and Akke, as well as being a long standing member of LGD.international for over a year. His time spent teamless was not long. Leaving LGD in December 2013 lead to him forming Team Dog in just two months and surprising the whole scene with his comeback along with his other four team mates.
FATA-
Adrian Trinks
Signature Heroes: :d2_puck: :d2_invoker: :d2_troll:
Player Position: 2 - Solo Mid
FATA- has already achieved the reputation of being one of the best solo mid players in the DotA 2 scene and it was during his time with Mousesports in 2012-2013 that he became famous with his solo mid Gyrocopter picks. After KuroKy left the team, he assumed the role of captain for a time and tried to guide his team to victory at The International 2013, but failed to place and ultimately left the team.
A large part of FATA-'s competitive time has been spent alongside long time team mate and countryman paS, being part of the same team whether it was Sigma.int, where he was for half a year in 2013-2014, or Mousesports, where they returned in May this year.
MSS
Arif Anwar
Signature Heroes: :d2_cw: :d2_panda: :d2_ds:
Player Position: 3 - Offlane
MSS is one of the newer players on the scene, making his entrance in 2013 when he was a part of the FnaticNA team. He quickly proved to be a skilled player, which earned him a few standin spots for some of the top NA teams, such as EG, Team Liquid or UK team Dignitas. His way of playing either solo mid or offlane quickly lead to him being given a full time spot on team EG, where he played for a minimum of 4 months.
Rumors started once EG went through a hiatus in 2013-2014, all the while MSS frequently playing for team eHug as a standin. People expected an announcement of his joining team eHug, but this announcement never came. Instead, Team Dog's DeMoN seemed to make less and less of an appearance in tournaments, with MSS taking his spot officially in March.
MiSeRy
Rasmus Filipsen
Signature Heroes: :d2_bane: :d2_chen: :d2_enigma:
Player Position: 4 - Jungler / Support
MiSeRy has often been noted to be on the same team as his team mate, Pajkatt. This Danish player has been active in competitive gaming starting with 2008 as a semi-carry, but has switched roles throughout his career to now be one of team mouz's supports. He has shown adaptability not many players possess, with a bigger hero pool than most.
Out of all his team mates, MiSeRy is the one with the most experience in the competitive scene. Mousesports' number 4 isn't a stranger to top-tier tournaments either, placing highly starting with 4th place at DreamHack Winter 2008 in DotA and moving on to win 4th place at The International 2011 as part of Meet Your Makers. This achievement brought his team an $80.000 prize, but the team disbanded just a few days later.
It was upon joining team LGD.international when he switched from his usual semi-carry role to play support and has stayed in that role since. He left LGD at the same time Pajkatt did as well and formed Team Dog together a couple months later.
paS
Pascal Lohmeier
Signature Heroes: :d2_sd: :d2_aa:
Player Position: 5 - Hard Support
paS is another player who switched roles to adapt to the needs of his team, having played offlane more often than not, and now converted to full support. Although he did play DotA for various German teams, he did not gain any recognition until DotA 2 was released. He was a part of teams such as ubelst Gaming, Ariana Gaming and PANZERS, but his biggest break was joining Mousesports back in 2012.
He replaced SexyBamboe and played with KuroKy, Black^, Alex- and FATA as his team mates. His usual heroes were Jakiro and Keeper of the Light, but datdota.com statistics show that his picks in the last year have been focused on Ancient Apparition, Bane and Visage more often than not. paS has been known to be the quiet, focused one of mouz, rarely ever being one to show any kind of reaction at tournaments, unlike team captain Pajkatt.
The International 2014 Predictions
With the team's "do or die" attitude, it is difficult to predict how far into the competition they will manage to go, as the team relies heavily on timing which, if it is off by a half a second, can cause them to lose the game. We've seen some very impressive comebacks from them and they have played amazingly well at DreamHack Summer, but their overly aggressive play style may not be at their advantage in most cases.
Their first game will be a Best of 1 against Vici Gaming on Tuesday and it feels like it will already be hard enough to win such a matchup, but the players of Mousesports have been nothing if not surprising from the get-go. It might be that their abnormal drafting will surprise their fellow Chinese players as they did iG at ESL One, but in the end, Mousesports might need a bit more experience as a team to get to any great achievements.
Of course, with Pajkatt leading and MiSeRy backing the team as two experienced players on the scene, mouz is not a team to be ignored in any way. One would dare say that Mousesports will place in the top 10 at the end of the tournament.
Trivia
Pajkatt achieved the very first Rampage in competitive Dota 2 with Sniper, in a match between his OK.Nirvana.int and Virus Gaming during The International 2011.
Apparently FATA- has a Troll fetish, as revealed by MiSeRy at DreamHack Summer 2014:
How do you think Mousesports will do this year?
This article was written by Sandra Radu, joinDOTA's Senior Editorialist.PookieThePie started playing DotA 2 while waiting for the big Diablo 3 revamp, where she'd spent quite some hours before starting to work her way up the corporate marketing ladder in real life.Location: Würzburg, GermanyFollow her on @pookiethepie.
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