Whatever was in that breach, changed UKCS forever.

Into the Breach rode recklessly into places UKCS had heard about, but never knew existed for sure - but their fate was one all too familiar for the English; splitting up, giving up, and fading away.

CYPHER found his way to TSM (and to a pay rise), Volt found his way to GamerLegion, a Romanian flag and indeed, we’d imagine, a pay rise. And now, the last bastion of UK’s greatest ever success, Thomas, has also taken a backseat.

We assume temporarily, but the euphoria of the Major quarter-final to the disappointment of splitting up, trying to rebuild and dealing with NEOFRAG is one hell of a comedown. And chasing the dragon is tiring if you never catch it.

Thomas made it clear in his statement that it was temporary, and he’s just taking a step back - but for the few remaining UKCS fans, temporary is a long time.

That leaves not a single UK player on Into the Breach, just four months after becoming the greatest English team of all time. With NEOFRAG and Bymas’ signings not having the desired effect - not least the former, who has now departed - ITB are now without superstars, an IGL or even that good ol’ British stiff upper lip.

Shortly after Thomas exit, misutaaa got confirmed as the replacement for NEOFRAG, which can’t go any worse but mightn’t go any better either. Into the Breach have left England and become another identikit tier 3 international team, and now like everyone else need a great leader to guide them.

It’s a familiar, predictable end to a story we’ve heard many times. Fairytales in real life rarely end happily. Pardon the doom and gloom, but many of us at tl;dr are UK based and hoped the story would've had a different ending.

Into the Breach' current, incomplete roster:

🇫🇷 misutaaa

🇱🇹 Bymas⁠⁠

🇵🇱 rallen
🇳🇱 CRUC1AL⁠

⁠🇩🇰 trace⁠ (coach)

• Editor to the stars and EDM DJ beefkeeper recommended 🎶 Mojito from CloudNone and Direct. Not the rum, sugar and mint kind, more the touchy-feely electronic music kind. Though, in fairness, both are good.
• Punk is dead, apparently. That’s the word on the street. UK punk twosome SOFT PLAY (formerly Slaves) take aim at criticism of their new name and how bowing to public criticism isn’t very punk at all, with their new anthem 🎶 Punk’s Dead, recommended by design guru novah.
• Writer and Real Gamer (tm) aizyesque has been engrossed in Baldur’s Gate 3, but as that’s mainstream now, he instead invites you to the bonkers world of 👾 Tape to Tape, a cartoonish roguelike based around ice hockey. Expect speed, chaos and a little bit of wit.
• Fellow Real Gamer Horizzon recommends the ‘wonderful’ 👾 Minit, an underpriced gem with great music, a simple concept with enough depth to keep you coming back and ‘a real charm’. The perfect game if you’ve only got a minute to spare. You’ll get that joke if you buy it.
• The ever-eclectice socials druid, dickle, brings us a video from exurb1a entitled 📺 ‘Sleep is just Death Being Shy’, an existential crisis in video form. Should… should we be worried about him? Quite possibly.

Only six weeks ago, NIP’s hampus-led rebuild had got off to a flying start.

A win over Vitality qualified them for BLAST Fall Final, and there was hope that hampus’ loose style could get the best out of the ever-inconsistent rifler trio of k0nfig, Brollan, and REZ.

Two events later, that hope is already extinguished. The Ninjas lost to a now-functioning Vitality, FalleN’s FURIA, and then GamerLegion to get sent home early.

Now, Aleksib’s NIP got dunked out of Pro League too, with even more embarrassing losses to Grayhound and 00NATION last season.

But can we all see now, that maybe it wasn’t Aleksib's fault that this lineup didn’t work? Is there an IGL on planet earth that could get them clicking? We’re not so sure.

Elsewhere, Vitality secured first seed over Movistar Riders and Astralis successfully ran the gauntlet to secure 3rd.

All that was left to play for was fourth place, with FURIA ending the GamerLegion run in a smart 2-0 win.

(Not sure why we mentioned it was a 2-0 to be honest: Only two of the 16 BO3s in this group went to three maps.)

It has been a gruelling group for FURIA, despite KSCERATO’s early heroics. But they have now won four best-of-threes, which should be valuable experience for the fledgling team as they still try and merge FalleN-ball and arT’s childlike flicking of paint at a radar.

We hope it was valuable, anyway. It might be hard to learn anything from beating NIP and Grayhound other than “crikey, they were rubbish weren’t they?”

Onto Group B this Wednesday, and the joys of Rooster vs Evil Geniuses. Finally some premium Counter!

🤓 CS2 tips and tricks

• Thour gives us all of the NVIDIA settings you might need to make CS2 smooth, and again.
• Over a third of people now have the beta, so if you don’t, you’re just not cool. Sorry, not sorry.
• Some config binds and stuff you might find handy.
• Finally on the CS2 side, how fortunate can you be to hit this once-in-a-lifetime clip on day one?

Miscellaneous news and cool 💩

• Armin van Buuren led the celebrations at IESF, which apparently is cool and ‘based’. We’re too old for it, personally.
• Ever wondered what 1k hours on controller would look like on CS? No, us neither - but some poor soul struggled through to create this masterpiece.
• Sprout parted ways with alpha to bring back raalz to the IGL role.