5 Australians, 26 Brazilians, 4 Americans, and 2 Canadians walk into an event. What do you call it? Yup, you guessed it right:

It’s the “BLAST Premier Fall Showdown 2022 North America”. A name that’s long, AND false advertising.

A) There are more Australians than Americans and

B) it's DOMINATED by Brazilians. Why even call it North America at that point?

Make it make sense BLAST. False advertisement aside: There are some banger matchups on the schedule for this event.

felps’ new team “Fluxo” will be playing against EG, who had a great showing at the Major. It’s a matchup ripe for an early surprise; felps always has some magic in him, while teammates lux and Lucaozy have been tearing up the SA events.

They’re currently on a 10-game win streak that has seen them beat 9z in a BO3 in order to qualify for the Blast Showdown. The same 9z that just made the Major. Don’t be surprised if the Evil Geniuses are the next to fall at their hands.

You’d have to be a genius to figure out the Fluxo-capacitor. No? We had to try.

If you have time next Thursday, or even if you don’,t we implore you: Check out the MIBR and Team One game. There’s gonna be some proper Brazilian CS on display. And whilst malbsMd might not be one of the Brazilians, we’re still stans here at TLDR.

Finally, if we see both Fluxo and 00NATION win their first-round matchups we could get a Coldzera and TACO VS felps showdown. One that decides who goes into the final game before Blast Fall finals qualification.

We’re rooting for that to happen, here at TLDR. Whenever former teammates get in a scuffle it’s bound to be fireworks. Especially with THESE Brazilians.

South-American chaos at the North-American event.

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Tune in to this week's episode of Overtime on Inferno where your favorite hosts aizyesque and Logan Ramhap go deep on the biggest news in CS:GO:

• What’s wrong with G2?
• FalleN’s plot armour
• Who’s the Brazilian to keep an eye on?

It’s all change at Astralis.

k0nfig’s removal has been confirmed, fit with a TwitLonger of his to the incident where he broke his leg. And, you know what? It seems like he was a victim, subject to a beating from an intoxicated nightclub promoter.

We’re not gonna re-hash that whole story — you should read his side for yourself. He deserves some sympathy, at the very least.

As for the rest of Astralis, our sympathy has run out.

After the disaster at the RMR, coach trace has been benched — HUNDEN time, anyone? — which is just the “first step” according to a typically boring press release. What those next changes will be is still up in the air, however.

Device seems pretty likely, if the seventeen drip-fed Jaxon reports about him replacing Farlig come to fruition, anyway.

And that is a huge upgrade. We don’t care if he’s only played FACEIT recently, he’s still the third best player of all time, for our money. He even got a 30-bomb against four of Vitality last week.

device is great. We know that. But that still leaves four question marks on the squad.

gla1ve has struggled since paternity leave in both fragging and calling. Xyp9x has dialled it in after getting a four-year contract signed in October 2021. k0nfig is gone, and blameF’s 25 kills a game still don’t stop analysts like Devilwalk calling for his head.

In an ideal world, they grab sjuush and stavn in place of xyp9x and k0nfig for a proper heir to the Astralis of 2018-20. But, Astralis has never been an org to spend money. Should they spend $600k on device, that prospective LCS-spot sale money will be dry, too.

Jaxon have also reported an inquiry for wonderkid Staehr as a replacement for k0nfig, with Farlig going to Sprout as a deal sweetener.

Which… probably won’t go through. It’s easier to get out of military service in Singapore than it is to get out of a Sprout contract.

Zyphon has also been linked, but after he was deemed not good enough for Astralis talent why would he want to go back? Plus, Xyp9x still has three years left on his lucrative contract — we don’t think he’s going anywhere.

As for that k0nfig spot, Astralis have options if Staehr is out of reach. There’s loads of Danish entry fraggers around.

There’s umm.. Fessor? Gade? Bubzkji? Kjaerbye?

Never mind, they might be screwed. It’s gonna take all six of Kasper Hvidt’s brain cells to sort out this mess. And we’ve got a feeling he might need a few more than six.

🤑🗳️ The politics of Counter-Strike

• Turns out dev1ce was so desperate to get back with his old buddies he pulled out his own wallet to cover part of the costs.
• Nouns doesn’t do any of that contract bs - they even let discord users help them “build the org”. Discord users!
• We’re sorry to say Astralis, but the Ministry for Clutches has been dysfunctional for so long we’re considering a motion of no-confidence in this roster.

😢 Gone too soon

• AppID 710, 4 ever in our hearts.

🧠 Clever problem solving skills

• There’s two approaches to every problem: peaceful and violent - as demonstrated by FalleN and fer.
• We never knew mimicry would make its return in modern Counter-Strike. We don’t think we’ve read that chapter of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

🔀 Roster updates

• Pick up your Entropiq roster right here, get ‘em while they’re fresh!
• iNation - the team that’s had basically every Balkan talent ever - has finally completed their roster again, after a rough few years.
• Want a way to keep up to date with every roster? Liquipedia’s finally got an app! See what we did there?