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Counter-Strike: NoA looks to HACK through opener

By: Mark Cheben - Published April 22, 2006 at 12:04 AM EDT - Writer Archive
The second place finisher from WEG3, Hacker.project, takes on the latest iteration of NoA's lineup in the second match of Group Two.
The match will take place on Sunday, April 23 with a best-of-three match on the following maps: Train, Dust2, and Inferno. Project_kr will look to make a repeat of their showing in the WEG Finals and please their new sponsor Hacker-Gaming. NoA will try to prove that their new lineup can recapture their past glory.

The last match between these two teams saw project_kr ruining NoA's WEG dreams by beating them 16-5 on Dust2. Project_kr barely made it past the second group stage. They advanced out of a three way tie for second by having the least number of rounds lost. Project_kr sneaked into the finals with a 2-4 record in group play, with wins versus NoA (16-5) and x6tence (16-13) on Dust2.

NoA did not attend another event in 2005 after placing 5-8th at WEG season three, and, subsequently their former roster disintegrated. In order to rebuild, Joergen "XeqtR" Johannessen handcrafted NoA's current lineup from portions of team9 and Asylum. The Danish players Danny "zonic" Sørensen and Brian "hpx" Christensen from Asylum were the first two additions to NoA, and later they were joined by two rising Norweigian stars Preben "prb" Gammelsaeter and Lasse "xione" Stokke.

SHGopen marked the first public test of NoA's new lineup. At SHG, NoA took down SeriousGaming on Nuke 16-8, lost to Fnatic 5-16 on Dust2, and came back to defeat Fnatic on Nuke 16-13. With eSports in an off-season during the first few months of 2006, NoA has yet to test its new lineup at a high-caliber international competition.

NoA will look to their two Team9 pickups to put up solid numbers throughout the WEG Masters event. At CPL UK, which Team9 won, Gammelsaeter scored a 0.774 FPR (Frags Per Round) and a DAR (Damage Average per Round) of 82.6. He was joined by Stokke with a 0.661 FPR and a DAR of 78.5. Both Sørensen and Christensen will be making their GameSense debut at WEG Masters.

Hacker.project has also seen a roster change. In mid-March project_kr added ParkHee "hee" Jin to replace SeungKyu "ssamba" Yoo, who went inactive. The Koreans, to start the 2006 year, have stayed close to home playing in local leagues. They have not played internationally since WEG's third season. Recently they defeated Lunatic-Hai, the second place finisher at CPL Winter 2005, on de_inferno (16-6) in the Benq Online Qualifiers.

Project's Gamesense statistics are lacking as their only event in the system is WEG season two, where they were quickly eliminated from the event. GeunChul "solo" Kang will be a key player for Hacker.project who, despite the beating Project_kr took in WEG season two, managed to put up a 68.5 DAR. Jin and SungJae "BaiL" Lee will make their Gamesense debuts with Jin trying to fill Yoo's shoes, who put up a 74.8 DAR to lead the team.

Notes:

Project_kr finished WEG season three with a total record of 5-7 with their only non Dust2 win being their overtime match versus NiP on Train... Johannessen is one of the few players to have attended all four WEG events... All five of NoA's players attended WEG season three, on three different teams.

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