Ninjas in Pain

The Ninjas just can’t seem to catch a break.

Things weren’t looking good for NiP after a string of disastrous performances at ESL Challenger Atlanta, ESL Pro League S20, and CCT. Now, we’re pretty sure they’re just cursed.

After temporarily fielding jocab for maxster at Elisa Masters Espoo due to health issues - a tournament where they were eliminated by JANO (yes, you read that right) - NiP will now keep jocab in the lineup for the RMR, and potentially the Major - if by some miracle they manage to make it that far.

In a video shared by coach Xizt, he and team manager THREAT explained their decision to keep jocab in the lineup: “We felt that [maxster] is not going to be ready to practice (…) before heading to the RMRs, and that's a huge factor into why we made this call”.

Relax, NiP fans – it’s not all bad news. Though, let’s be honest, most of it is.

Xizt did mention that maxster is “doing better and better everyday”, so we should expect a full return in 2025. For now, jocab will remain as the stand-in.

NiP needed every bit of practice with their full roster heading into the RMR if they were to stand a chance at qualifying for the Major. Unfortunately, this setback only puts them further behind.

We usually joke about NiP here, but at this point, it's getting hard NOT to feel bad for them.

The most wonderful time of the year

Christmas is coming early. The Major is en route, but even before you get to open the presents under the tree, there’s a stocking being filled.

Or, well, five stockings. Santa ain’t messing around this year.

We’ve got a bunch of RMRs coming up, and this one might seem like the least interesting at first - but there’s a bit more going on under-the-hood in Asia. Also, it’s the first one chronologically. That’s a good enough reason for us.

First, we’d like to introduce The Official Team of the TLDR Newsletter™️: welcome, Alter Ego. We’re not sponsored or anything, we just love them.

Listen: they won’t make it through. We’ll be honest. This is a team that is fun, full of cool names, but isn’t actually any good. This is the home of Asian CS veterans like former hot prospect BnTeT, Korea’s last man standing XigN, and Freeman, the TYLOO outcast.

dobu, who was on ATOX (that famously beat ENCE 2-0 in Pro League, while he was there) and aidKiT, who was on iNation, and has a ludicrous 1.68 rating in his last three months. Just don’t ask who he’s played against.

Alter Ego are the heroes, but DRILLAS are the villain, and not just because of ohnePixel (who owns them). They have just one Asian player and have clearly danced around the rules to be there. They’re half-decent, but they’re not Asian…?

It’s just totally unfair.

The MongolZ will be expected to fly through, and FlyQuest should be expecting a top two showing too, but the third spot is up for grabs. Lynn Vision are the favourites for it, having shown domestically that they are among the better teams in the region and playing internationally.

That’s all well and good, but GR have five Russian players we haven’t heard of. If we’ve learned anything from Major cycles, it’s that they’re going to be amazing for one tournament.

The final two teams are Rare Atom, who qualified over their former players in TYLOO, and Aussie second string, TALON, who also have former MOUZ NXT AWPer mhL. He’s talented, and if they do sneak in, he’ll probably have a big part to play.

Rare Atom have somebody and ChildKing, so they are our second favourite team here, but sadly, they aren’t actually very good. Many such cases.

Depending on where you are in the world, this RMR kicks off early Monday morning, or late Sunday night. Catch the match overview here.

Do NOT remove Mirage

Elliott is subjecting his wife (yes, you read that right) to the pain of watching Counter-Strike, but Logan made his Dad watch League of Legends, which is even worse. Two terrible people.

In other, more relevant news, we get into:

Duct taping the Titanic

CS2’s most recent update didn’t quite jump on the hype train, but not every update can be major. Though what even changed here?

Well, we’re glad you asked.

The biggest change you’ll notice will be in your spraying. The recent update has added a visual clue to see where your last shot bullet in your spray was. CSGO did the same thing, so it was weird that CS2 didn’t, but this should make it much easier to track your own sprays. Keep an eye out for a small bright spot, that’s the last bullet you shot.

The rest of the update is a classic Valve mix of random stuff, but we’ll take anything at this point.

They fixed the bug that let you defuse from any height, not sure what took them so long. Much like how it took them too long to make it so you can jump on a slope without sliding down. Any nerds who love practicing lineups are rejoicing. That’s us, we’re the nerds.

Speaking of nerds, you might notice a change if you’re up at gamer o’clock queuing for stars.

The game now tells you how many people are in queue with you in particularly slow regions/times. This is great because, when you buy the pass, they no longer give you a star; you have to earn them all now.

As always, Valve has added a bunch of extra obscure map changes at the end of this update as well. Most of them will be quite obvious by reading the patch notes, and the visual changes we've got covered thanks to Redditors.

It’s not the update we wanted, but it’s an update we needed. Now, please add train, we need something new in this map pool.

👍 Good developments

🪳 Call pest control

🤨 Nice try

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

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