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February 3, 2023

Remember when Evil Geniuses gave it large after beating Heroic? Also BIG having their biannual rise and Katowice’s about to get all spicy and that.

The Boombl4 comeback tour

Source: boombl4

CIS Insider Overdrive has been tweeting about the new Boombl4 team for months, and it’s been different every single time.

This time, though, might be final. Maybe. No promises.

He reckons 1Win will be scrapping the core of their old team, leaving just deko and travis.

They’ll add the big boom to replace them, as well as ex-Entropiq duo Nickelback and Forester.

Nickelback’s presence means that Boombl4 — who was basically just a Russian nexa that happened to have three of the best players in the world in NAVI — won’t have to be the IGL, returning to the star roles he had in Winstrike in years gone by.

Forester’s presence is also exciting, a stable rifler who nearly joined Cloud9 this winter.

The gem of this team, however, is deko. The 21-year-old AWPer has been building some buzz for years, an uber-talented young gun who has hit a glass ceiling in a frankly ridiculous sniper pipeline.

s1mple, sh1ro, and w0nderful have the three best CIS teams’ sniping slot on lock. There’s even m0NESY, headtr1ck, and degster in Europe. deko is yet another AWPer to develop, and this team is his best, maybe his only, shot at gaining even more notoriety.

Breaking into the top twenty with a new lineup, though, is not easy without a partner slot. And, let’s be real, FaZe, and G2 aren’t losing sleep over the prospect of this team. There’s a decent chance 1WIN end up just like Apeks, losing in open qualifiers again and again before everyone forgets they ever existed.

But, with deko and Forester, there’s a real chance we get yet another upset machine; another forZe or Spirit that pops up at a few events every year to ruin someone’s day. Then, those big guns might regret those extra few hours of sleep.

Author: 
NER0

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Three favourites and a BIG Clan

The IEM Katowice Play-In has produced fairly few shocks for anyone but FURIA.

Yet there was still electric Counter-Strike on display, so if you’ve missed the last few days of games, then lets get you back up to speed 👇

Cloud9

The Russian favorites avoided a BO1 upset in their first game against IHC (aka Tyloo 2.0) who didn’t show much talent.

On the flip side, Ax1Le and sh1ro made the game a fun one to watch as they tried to one-up each other's kills for sport. They both ended with a 24-11 KD but Ax1Le took home the trophy by putting up a 1.83 HLTV rating, beating sh1ro by .11. Margins.

IHC’s most notable moment came from sk0R who managed to win the clip competition with this outrageous effort.

Next up came the BO3 decider against ENCE. C9 started the series off strong by winning Anubis – a map they looked like they had prepared well for. However, all that prep might have led to them to forget about Inferno, where ENCE lived up to their music kit taking a solid 8-16 win.

You might have noticed that we haven’t said a word about buster in this debut event for Cloud9. Well it’s because his presence in the server had been rather unremarkable so far.

But, on Mirage something magical happened: buster topped the scoreboard and carried Cloud9 over the line.

One favourite qualified, three more to go.

NIP

The Ninjas came into this Play-In with plenty to prove, and a lucky draw saw them become favourites to make it through to Katowice’s main event.

NIP faced off against a feisty MIBR. Their BO1 took place on Nuke and despite NIP’s favoured status, the game was a close 16-13. You could see why they signed a fighter in k0nfig.

On paper the Ninja’s BO3 decider against Spirit was gonna be tough. But when NIP destroyed them 16-7 and 16-8, they showed why they belong amongst the big boys.

Still no upsets, two more spots to go.

OG

This one got wobbly. On paper OG were the favourites although they did have some challenging opponents ahead of them. We’re not talking about EG, rather Sprout and fnatic who could prove to be potential pitfalls for an OG that can go missing sometimes.

The Red Bull boys cut it very close in their opener where they had to go OT against Sprout. Still, in overtime, they rallied and closed with a clean 4-1 (19-16).

Their decider game was set to be against fnatic who looked good against EG, although that doesn’t say much. fnatic showed up in good form taking the first map. It looked like we could finally get an upset. But NEOFRAG and nexa decided otherwise and sent the series to map 3.

To make matters worse for fnatic, someone got a lighter out and lit some FlameZ who, with a 2.2 K/D Ratio, burnt Inferno down (forgive us) and made sure OG moved on.

Okay, well Furia is in the final bracket, so the next heading has to be…

BIG

Wait, what? Okay, saying BIG wasn’t a favourite might’ve been slightly wrong.

After all, they have a habit of dropping out of one qualification only to win the next. And since they just failed to make it out of BLAST Spring Groups, we were due for a win.

That said, we would have put our money on FURIA to make it out of this side of the bracket.

But BIG did it again.

Their first game was relatively straightforward, beating Complexity 16-12. A scoreline only that close due to the T-sided nature of Anubis that basically gifted 8 rounds to COL.

Next up, BIG faced FURIA.

As the BO3 started, it almost looked like BIG was going to steamroll FURIA. They won the CT side on Anubis for Christ's sake. But FURIA did the same, with a 9-3 masterclass. I know we called it T-sided but FURIA was just that good.

Too bad it didn’t matter. BIG did what BIG does and showed some German efficiency. Taking both Mirage and Ancient from FURIA with 16-9 scorelines.

So, in the end, we got three favourites. And BIG.

Qualified Teams:

  • Cloud9
  • Ninjas in Pyjamas
  • OG
  • BIG
Author: 
Horizzon

KatoWincing at BIG’s chances

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

  • An anime reference that we pretend not to understand
  • Some NA copium
  • How to be wrong about paiN and IHC
Author: 

In play-ins, without the paiN

Are we doing this right?

Four teams have already been eliminated from Katowice, which is a real shame. For them, anyway. We’d rather not watch any more Evil Geniuses than we need to.

The biggest surprise among them is Brazilian paiN — we expected more from them. They impressed us in Melbourne and biguzera, Skullz, and zevy are all talented players.

Turns out, we expect far too much.

A first-round loss to ENCE is easily excusable, but getting two-zipped by IHC is a little worrying. Especially as IHC have a stand-in — teenager Bart4k, who dropped a 100+ ADR map on Nuke.

Still, someone has to disappoint. Not everyone can win. Someone has to be paiN. Or Evil Geniuses.

Permitta got clapped by Complexity after getting thumped by FURIA but showed glimpses of what they can do. Sadly, their post-plant discipline and late-round composure were lacking. They seemed to be having fun at least.

Unlike Evil Geniuses’ staff, whose mentions must be crazy right now.

Grayhound took a map off of MIBR, which in truth is more than we expected. Slowly, but surely, Grayhound are… doing something; we’re sure of it. Insani of MIBR looks like a player, and if it weren’t for a solid performance from him, we could be talking about two Brazilian teams out.

Oh, and if it wasn’t already obvious, Evil Geniuses lost. 2-0 to Sprout and 16-8 to fnatic.

Yawn.

At least kassad is enjoying it.

Eliminated Teams:

  • paiN
  • Grayhound
  • Permitta
  • EG
Author: 
aizyesque

FaZe busta? Me gusta

💸 Nothing in Paypal

  • FaZe might only have cash to last until November, according to Forbes, so maybe karrigan will end up on TSM again?
  • We didn’t take EG for being NFT scammers, but they apparently really do #LIVEEVIL.
  • Not only are Copenhagen Games out of money, but they are also shit down. We shit you not.

💉 A juicer for the roster-mania

  • Every time you think you know who plays for forZe, they find a new Russian talent. According to OverDrive, their newest recruit is r3salt. We don’t know either.
  • GeT_RiGhT, olofmeister, f0rest, and GuardiaN on the same team? We are SO erect.
  • bymas is now a free agent. Yes, the guy that played on FaZe and MOUZ, and who we completely forgot existed.

🍆 Big plays

  • Want to get inside cadiaN’s brain for his insane 1v5 clutch against Vitality? Well, here you go, full explanation from the man himself in his recent Reddit AMA.
  • Apparently, SPUNJ got Talking Counter banned from YouTube for saying cunt too much. Well that’s a beep
  • Oh k0nfig, please never change.
Author: 
PHedemark
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