The phoenix has stopped rising

Despite multiple roster changes and the loss of key players like Spinx, NertZ, and SunPayus, ENCE has somehow managed to consistently rebuild and stay competitive… until now.

With recent underperformance, the org has decided to make some much-needed changes by signing sdy and podi, while benching dycha and hades.

For dycha, the home crowd buff turned into a nerf.

Since announcing his contract extension with ENCE at the Spodek Arena in Katowice, his performance has been lackluster, to say the least.

On the contrary, hades was one of ENCE’s top performers, making his benching a questionable decision.

However, podi, the young star from the academy lineup appears ready to take the next step. Huge opportunity for the Finnish AWPer.

As for sdy, we believe he’s a solid player who could improve any team he joins. Just look at his resume. After successful stints with top teams like Spirit and NAVI, he leads Monte to a quarter-final appearance at the Paris Major and a top #6 peak in HLTV’s ranking. We’re curious to see how the experienced rifler fits in gla1ve’s system.

“Our players are great individuals, but we need a TEAM to win systematically. Bring back the joy and do it with passion (…). Lately, we’ve lost that spark,” admits coach Kuben in ENCE’s statement.

Let’s see if sdy and podi have what it takes to reignite ENCE’s fire.

ENCE are now:

🇩🇰 gla1ve (IGL)
🇺🇦 sdy
🇵🇱 Goofy
🇵🇱 Kylar
🇫🇮 podi

🇵🇱 kuben (coach)

Maybe OG is allergic to success

Winning is hard, it takes work, dedication, and grit. But losing consistently is just as hard. It takes serialized incompetence to be a legendary loser. Solid logic, no?

Well, OG has managed the legendary. Somehow, they've played 5 events and not won a single game. They've won a map in every series, but figuring out how to win two is outside their budget, like any player who might improve them, apparently.

It's gotten so bad that at MESA Masters, they lost to a team called “Chinggis Warriors.” The jokes write themselves.

Whilst we did single out Chinggis Warriors for comedic effect, it’s not just tier 1 teams OG is struggling to beat.

They lost to Insilo at CCT, a team from which we couldn’t name a player if it were life or death. And then they lost to Sashi, but that’s not actually funny because, apparently, Sashi is ranked higher than OG.

Well, what do you do, kick the roster?

We think not. It’s hard to blame players at this point. Such generational losing just stinks of issues in the organization's foundation.

If you own OG, go hire a random Redditor to do your GMing, it very literally couldn't get worse. Just reply to hire a tl;dr consultant, we're always diversifying.

America! Pod yeah!

In this week of Overtime on Inferno, Logan lies about how good Twistzz is, finds Complexity’s new AWPer and fixes Liquid all in one podcast. An all-American hero.

Liquid and MOUZ get fraudchecked

The fun thing about being a lifetime hater is you can find joy in every event.

Schadenfreude is a wonderful thing.

There’s always someone who’s not living up to expectations or, indeed, soiling the bed. Today, we look at two teams on either side of that scale and laugh at their demise, obviously.

MOUZ absolutely bombed in Dallas, going from back-to-back wins and never losing in groups to getting ignominiously dumped out by G2. With a stand-in.

And that stand-in is Stewie2k.

MOUZ lost their opener to 9z in a BO1, which is obviously… not good. If we were trying to win a tournament, we would just not lose to 9z in groups. That’d be our first step.

The next step is winning every other game. Which MOUZ also didn’t do. G2 had nexa and Stewie2k going a combined -29 and still won. Their magic knows no bounds.

Still, at least they can look back at the last few tournaments and not be too disappointed. For Team Liquid, they’ve never really taken flight.

Rumours were abound before the event that this might be cadiaN’s last one on the team, and more and more, that seems to be the case. cadiaN basically admitted himself he ‘wants to be at a place… where [he] can be the cadiaN everyone knows’.

That’s not so much a confirmation as it is a resignation letter.

It was with the same energy that Liquid limped out against G2, with nothing really going their way from the halfway point. They won map one and were up 8-4 on Inferno, but got themselves stuck in a forcebuy loop and ended up losing the game with a whimper.

They bowed out on Nuke in a close game that could’ve gone either way, but you’re playing against a team with a stand-in and nexa. This shouldn’t even have gone close.

Things have to change at Liquid, and by the sounds of it, they’re about to.

9z go crazy in Dallas

Where do 9z pull this from?

Once or twice a year, 9z come out of seemingly nowhere and beat some good teams, before disappearing into the ether like Homer Simpson into the bush.

It’s frequent enough that it’s noticeable, while infrequent enough that it’s not really a studiable phenomenon. They just rock up, knock out your favourite team and leave - except this time, they’re at least staying for the weekend.

After toppling the best team in the world, MOUZ, in a BO1 (as mentioned above), they moved into the upper bracket against Team Liquid. If you’ve read the story above, you’ll probably know that 9z won that - because how else would Team Liquid be in a decider against G2?

Former Movistar AWPer MartinezSa topfragged, which didn’t do cadiaN any favours as either an AWPer or IGL. That said, it’s not like Martinez is a bad player in any way - and he’s been playing out of his skin in Dallas.

He even went blow-for-blow with ZywOo as 9z beat Vitality. 2-0, too. It wasn’t even a grind, a close game that could have gone either way. This was convincing.

dgt and max have been on this team for a while, and they both continue to be excellent players. One can’t help but wonder how far this duo could have gone if they weren’t tied to their local scene – and the Spanish language. We respect their commitment, but maybe they could have done more.

But then, what’s better than going to the semi-finals of IEM Dallas with your homies?

In the meantime, Team Spirit overpowered FaZe Clan without donk really going too crazy, which is a frightening sight for anyone else. Spirit move into the semi-finals, while FaZe Clan are moved down to face G2 in the quarter-final.

We will be there.

Vitality and HEROIC will be in the other quarter-final. They haven’t really noticed degster’s absence. nicoodoz has quietly gone about his business, and HEROIC has snuck into the playoffs, beating M80, BIG, and NAVI to get there.

We would have talked about NAVI being bad here, but there’s only so much hating we can do.

✨ Looking fresh

🧠👎 All +W, no brain

🔍 Worth a look

This TL;DR was written by aizyesque, shoko, Horizzon and napz.
Crash_ coded the email and copy edited.

How did you like this edition?
Help us improve by clicking a smiley below.

Give your friend the tl;dr