ENCE add protection

They’ve loaded up Kaspersky and they’re ready to stay safe. What? Who’s xKacpersky?

ENCE has signed xKacpersky and Neityu, officially ending the Polish ENCE era. The writing was on the wall when Goofy stepped down in September, but Kylar’s benching on Friday officially ended any Polish involvement with ENCE’s CS roster.

Is it unsurprising that picking up one of Poland's best teams and making them communicate in English didn’t work? You be the judge of that.

So, is ENCE good again now? Well, we’re confident enough to tell you that xKacpersky is at least a good talent.

He’s put up impressive stats despite being an aggressive player, even if that is an archetype of a player who struggles to make the leap historically. As for Neityu, we honestly don’t really know. The small amount we’ve watched of him on VODs looks pretty good – he eye-tests as a well-rounded rifler. That’s the extent of our knowledge of him. Oh, and he’s French.

The good news is that those stats and VODs were against tier 2 opposition, which is basically what ENCE is aiming at right now.

Their measurement of success is making big events again. They got destroyed at the last big event they attended in EPL, and the most recent elite LAN they attended before that, was the previous EPL.

For now, ENCE only really has one other question left hanging above their head: Is gla1ve staying around to make this work?

With these changes, ENCE are now:

🇫🇷 Neityu
🇵🇱 xKacpersky
🇫🇮 podi
🇺🇦 sdy
🇩🇰 gla1ve (IGL)

BLEEDing out of life

The BLEED squad can’t catch a break.

After missing out on one of their biggest goals – the Shangai RMR – this weekend we learned that they were not even being paid. Now it all makes sense.

The players and coach kassad issued a statement revealing troubling issues around lack of communication, unpaid salaries, delayed buyouts, out-of-pocket bootcamp expenses, and delayed tournament prize money. Don’t worry; that last one shouldn’t be much anyway.

The issues have been ongoing since the project’s inception, as “most of the players received their first salary in April, despite signing contracts back in December”.

These practices seem to be a hallmark of the BLEED organization, affecting not only the CS2 team but also their Dota 2, Valorant, and R6 divisions, whose players have also spoken up.

Several hours after kassad’s statement, BLEED an update addressing the allegations, denying any claims of communicational issues.

However, they conveniently ignored the more serious financial allegations. Maybe the PR team isn’t getting paid either.

In response, kassad came out with the receipts, backed by Apeks and G2 noting that they also have unresolved issues with the org concerning the transfers of nawwk, jkaem, and more recently, nexa.

Just another day in the esports scene.

El Biskela Redentor

Who do these teams think they are? Finishing after 10pm on the Lord’s day of rest. Some of us have things to be up for on Monday morning.

Admittedly, not us. But you get the point.

In NAVI’s defence, they did get it done at a few minutes past 10pm, so we could get all cosy in bed not long after. This was a best of five to decide IEM Rio, but it was quite a quick one as they go, largely down to how badly NAVI clubbed MOUZ on Dust 2.

It started on Inferno, which was actually pretty tight, with NAVI winning it in round 24. Both teams had excellent T sides, but Aleksib called just one round better.

And then jL and iM decided to Eiffel Tower MOUZ on Dust 2. Don’t google that.

xertioN has a reputation as an inconsistent player, and MOUZ felt the downswing heavily on D2, with the Israeli dropping just two kills. It does happen, but in a grand final, it hurts.

Mirage was also one-sided, but this time it was MOUZ who coasted through. All eyes were on Jimpphat, and he stood up tall (albeit goofy as ever) and locked NAVI out. torzsi was pretty great too, and xertioN showed back up.

MOUZ were back in the final, and they took that momentum into Ancient. Jimpphat was frying, Brollan was immortal, and MOUZ were completely shutting it down on the CT side. They picked up ten rounds, and the grand final, in Rio, was back on.

Nuke was the last map, and it was an all-time classic. Some of the craziest rounds ever, ridiculous clutches, Aleksib and siuhy’s brains colliding like the scene where Harry Potter and the bald fella are casting spells… is what we would be saying, if MOUZ weren’t such massive bloody chokers.

They actually lost from 10-2 up.

w0nderful was hitting everything, and iM turned mid into his playground. We’re not calling MOUZ mid, we mean the part of the ma- you get it.

He ghosted through a smoke to turn a 4v5 into a 4v3 in a deciding round down the stretch, and you could feel the air being sucker punched out of MOUZ as he did it. It was a killer move - and the sort that excited us on GamerLegion back in the day.

siuhy must be gutted.

For Aleksib, though, he’s broken the curse of losing every IEM final, and NAVI are now inarguably the best team in the world. Shanghai is going to be a movie.

Final standings at IEM Rio 2024:

1st 🇪🇺 NAVI – $100.000
2nd 🇪🇺 MOUZ – $42.000
3-4th 🇧🇷 FURIA – $20.000
3-4th 🇪🇺 HEROIC – $20.000
5-6th 🇪🇺 Vitality – $10.000
5-6th 🇷🇺 Virtus.pro – $10.000
7-8th 🇪🇺 FaZe – $6.000
7-8th 🇲🇳 The MongolZ – $6.000

💛🇫🇮 There’s more to NAVI’s win

💻🪄 Computer magic

🇧🇷🤫 “The best crowd”

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

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