| In the meantime, there was apparently some Counter-Strike going on - though if you watched Astralis games, you might have missed it. | | | | BLAST Premier Drama | A new pandemic? |  | Illustration by Andy |
| Astralis just can’t help themselves.
It’d been a few weeks since Astralis had done something to make everyone hate them, so of course they had to go and break the rules to sign the guy two of their players stabbed in the back on HEROIC.
We mentioned on Sunday that they might have broken the rules, and it seems pretty likely that they did - even if BLAST said they have ‘no reason’ to suspect Astralis lied about br0 being sick (Twitter users have declared an outbreak of ‘br0vid-19’, hilariously).
Lads, his agent said he wasn’t sick. He’s apparently trialling with ENCE in the meantime. Oh, and six of the other IGLs at the event went on strike during media day by also pretending to be ill.
Are we supposed to believe they all simultaneously got ill for a day?
The only IGLs who showed up to media day were cadiaN, obviously, and chopper, who seems like enough of a dinosaur that he doesn’t have a phone to check the WhatsApp group.
Was it worth it, Astralis? P*ssing everyone off? Telling the whole world that br0 and ruggah were both ‘unfit to play’?
Well… no, not even remotely.
They got absolutely goobed by Team Vitality in cadiaN’s first game, to the point that they didn’t win a single T-side round in the entire series. They got 13-0’d on Inferno and lost 13-4 on Dust 2.
Yeah, good job lads. Well worth it. Nobody on their team got more than 15 kills in the series. Three players were below 50 ADR, four below 50 ADR on T side. Nobody had more than 7 T side kills.
Luckily for them, they came up against donk in the lower bracket.
Originally, we intended for that line to be really sarcastic, but in fairness, he was effectively muted on map one as Astralis steamed to victory; but as he so often does, he posted a 1.76 on map two and zont1x and sh1ro picked up the slack on map three.
Good work, Astralis. You got romped by Vitality and lost to Spirit with donk not even playing well. |
|
| | BLAST Premier Fall Final 2024 | Grounded Falcons | We all learned in school that falcons are birds of prey, but the only thing these Falcons are praying for is a win.
Over their last 8 BO3s, Snappi and co. have secured just a single victory – vs. ATOX at EPL Season 20 – and the nightmare continued at BLAST Premier Fall Final.
In Group A, NAVI and FaZe were their opponents. After being swept aside by NAVI in a swift opening round, Falcons surprisingly held their own against FaZe in the lower bracket, despite a rare prime broky appearance.
This team needs a change—we all know it, and so does Sonic. NiKo can’t come soon enough.
The opening round winners clashed in the upper final, where NAVI secured a 2-0 victory over G2, propelled by w0nderful’s magic stick.
If we criticized HooXi while he was on the team, we now have to turn our attention to Snax. What most people perceive as a firepower upgrade over the Dane is now questionable. Snax is putting up the same (or even worse) numbers as HooXi. Besides, sometimes G2 just look lost on the server, something we didn’t see as frequently before.
Over in Group B, amid br0vid-19, we saw Liquid triumph over Spirit. We’re not sure if we should call it an upset, considering Spirit is following the same downward trend as FaZe, while Team Liquid have been looking very sharp.
NAF took center stage this time, delivering a crucial clutch to prevent OT and push the series to a decider.
Unfortunately for them, they’re not quite sharp enough yet to take down Vitality. They fell short in the upper final matchup and missed out on a spot in the semis.
The lower bracket final saw Spirit ruin cadiaN’s debut event, sending the Danes home.
Don’t worry guys, it’s just a quick five-minute Uber ride! |
|
| | Podcast | Numbers never before seen |  | Illustration by Fuffy, Source: ESL, BLAST |
| A big thank you to Astralis for once more giving us endless content. Absolute clowns. We want chrisJ back. | | |
|
| | Roster updates | There’s been some roster changes this week, so along with the newsletter, we’ve wrapped those up for you. Efficiency. | Feeling the buzz: OG has signed Buzz permanently after he joined as a stand-in back in August. This isn’t a terrible signing, but it’s a bit unambitious. OG continues to build a team that is just okay at best. At least this roster is very young, so there’s some room to grow. But how high is that ceiling really Seriously will the BLEED ever stop? nawwk is the most recent player to be freed from BLEED’s shackles, leaving the team on a 6-month loan to fnatic. He’ll be benching afro, who wasn’t particularly bad but didn’t show much in the way of growth. This probably isn’t the upgrade fnatic fans wanted, but it’s a small upgrade that might improve the team long-term. Where BLEED goes after this is anyone’s guess. Making a T1 team: Korean org T1 is eying a CS team, or at least that’s what their CEO said in an interview. Curiously they’re looking at Brazil as their entry point, which confuses us a little. But T1 is League of Legends’s most decorated organisation, so surely they know what they’re doing. Haha, right guys?
|
| That’s about it for this week, well except for Everything Else. That’s Everything Else. |
|
| | Everything else | 😠 This is how we find out? | Of course the year we were supposed to win the Esports Journalist of the Year Award, the Esports Awards scrap it. Just our luck. Although not many people seem to want Esports Awards these days. Wait, allu - the infinitely quotable allu - is getting a biography. Source? An in-browser ad, bro.
| 🤷 Blame it on the calendar, blame it on a Finn | | 📊 Bad stats | That moment when you score so high on a test, the teacher gives you a 104/100. “I didn’t even study bro”, yeah sure. We don’t know what’s worse: Astralis getting zero rounds, zont1x going 3-23, or the graphic just making no sense whatsoever.
|
|
| 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. | |
|
| |
|
Astralis
Liquid
G2
