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Everything you gotta know from CS:GO without wasting time on news sites, reddit or twitter.
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Astralis are all over the shop, Vitality’s new roster gets off to a lovely start and chopper does a chrisJ. Not a vaccine joke.
OG is OKay
This week, the final lineup for the BLAST Pro Series Spring Finals was decided and OG was one of the first teams to clinch their spot. With the highest team rating of the qualifier, 1.22, and a 2-1 victory over NiP, OG was one of the first teams to qualify.
Their new roster, completed by nexa after their trade with G2, seems to be excelling so far this year. The mixed-European lineup ended up all in the positives after the six games this qualifier, including their games last week where they went 3-0 with a win against MIBR and two wins against Astralis.
18-year-old flameZ was a standout, with a 1.27 rating in the six maps OG played.
Vitality also performed well after questionable performances last week where they barely beat FaZe once and then lost to them later in the same day. This week, when it actually mattered, Vitality 2-0d the struggling MIBR and 2-1d G2.
ZyWoo, last year’s second-best player in the world, continued to show top form with a combined 97-62 record over the five maps but this time he had help from his teammates.
dupreeh and Apex also recorded positive KDAs for the weekend, a welcome change from their struggles against FaZe in the earlier stage of the qualifiers.
FaZe, meanwhile, claimed a win over BIG clan that cemented their status as a team to keep an eye on despite their difficulties finishing maps early in the qualifiers. It was good to see broky perform, but seeing both rain and Twistzz in the negatives for that series should still make FaZe fans nervous.
As for the favorites, well...NaVi lost to NIP and Astralis lost to BIG so, gotta love the return to online CS. Two of the favorites of CS:GO ended up having to play on Sunday, looking for one last chance to make it to the finals.
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Lucky to be here
And then there were three spots left.
Though NaVi might have fallen at the hands of MIBR, G2 swept them away with consummate ease. NiKo, as he does seemingly every single game, topfragged and dropped 100+ ADR. No sweat.
The encouraging thing for G2 is just how good m0NESY is looking already; and that clutch above, man. Just an absolutely outrageous display of talent. It’s a really easy comparison to make, but... there are shades of s1mple in that.
The control, the speed, the presence of mind: It’s just perfection.
We’d like to say this was a good effort from MIBR, with lots of positives to take, but... they got 11 rounds in two maps. There’s not a lot of positives to take.
Take a guess who topfragged for NaVi as they beat NiP? You’re right!
s1mple and his boys sliced through NiP over and over; until eventually NiP made a giant comeback on map two to bring the game to 14-14 from 14-7.
And then lost anyway. How typically NiP.
Don’t worry; it could DEFINITELY be worse. Astralis got 2-0’d by BIG, and fell down into the BLAST Showdown with NiP, MIBR and the whole of NA. And it was... it was bad, man.
If you want the perfect encapsulation of quite how far Astralis have fallen, watch this, and imagine it happening under the old five and zonic. Hitting the site with too little time, not checking corners, missing shots... it just wouldn’t happen.
Lucky is catching a lot of heat for his performances as of late, and probably not unfairly. But he’s not the only one who’s struggled; xyp9x’s numbers have been terrible of late, k0nfig is wildly inconsistent and gla1ve isn’t the same all-action player he once was.
blameF has great stats, but as pointed out by people smarter than us, there’s a reason for that.
Astralis are in shambles, boys and girls.
Drop, chop and roll
- chopper is back on Spirit, but mir is nowhere to be found. Surely someone would take a gamble on him?
- frozen has renewed his contract with MOUZ - despite their weird bait tweet. We will never clickbait you like that.
- Poland BANS TYLOO from entering the country - the team who replaced them will SHOCK YOU! (It’s Sprout)
Putting those biceps to work
Illustration by NovaH
If you’ve been on Twitter this week, you might have seen a whole bunch of paszaBiceps with his shirt off.
We’re not complaining.
If you were too scared to ask as to what was going on, he was in a fight. And not a “Thorin fight” where he tweets passive aggressively at you despite having you blocked - a real, in a cage, refereed fight.
It seems to have been a one-off thing - at least for now - and according to a reddit comment (yes, we know) he was probably offered a wad of cash. A bucket of Wonga. A whole load of buckaroos.
The guy he was fighting was a well-known fitness ‘personality’, whatever that means.
Most professional competitors tend to be good at everything they touch; Freddie Flintoff seems to be excellent at every sport and broadcast role he tries, Michael Jordan went into the MLB, Gareth Bale is an excellent golfer and Rick Fox is stuck in silver on LoL.
Alright, it’s not always true. But for pasza, it holds; as he knocked out (warning, it’s pretty graphic) his opponent in round 2. Talk about a plow, eh.
His opponent sadly has suffered some pretty horrible after-effects from the scrap, which is... unsurprising, but still not nice to think about.
Show that to your dad next time he says video games are for nerds.
Just us?
BLAST do something genius and something silly
👀 Worth your time
- If you’ve got 41 minutes to use up at work, put some headphones in and watch this mini documentary from BLAST.
- Our own NER0 put out a must-read article on MSL and the case for his return to the top level of Counter-Strike.
- Jérôme Coupez, or the Mino Raiola of Counter-Strike (but a little bit nicer), put out a lovely thread detailing why the new Major rules have some major issues.
🤪 For the lulz
- KQLY was caught watching a pirate stream of pasza’s fight while flexing his Ferrari car keys - well his exotic car rental’s car keys anyway.
- smooya’s origin story has been leaked on the internet by an AI.
- If you’re not already familiar with voo, this video of him breaking down m0NESY’s clutch sums him up pretty sharpish.
- BLAST made an oopsie mixing up oSee with another Liquid player. From Valorant.
