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We finally got fnatic back on a Major, only for them to completely flop in the Opening Stage.

In a catastrophic run, Fnatic lost to Wildcard and Cloud9 and, most shockingly, was eliminated from the Major by hometown heroes Rare Atom.

We could honestly write a whole thesis on why Fnatic’s performance was so dismal, but let’s break it down into two words: nawwk and body.

The Swedish AWPer was brought in from BLEED with the expectation that he would bring a more aggressive playstyle than afro, but he ended the Stage with a disappointing 0.86 rating. That’s unacceptable for any player, let alone when you have the most impactful role in the game.

As for bodyy, we could compare him to HooXi, but that wouldn’t be fair. Sure, HooXi might bottom-frag every match, but at least he knows how to call.

The truth is fnatic have been enjoying some relative success in tier 2, carried by blameF, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a competitive team - at least not by Major standards - and the Opening Stage exposed their glaring weaknesses. fnatic have big names that should carry some weight, but experience clearly isn’t enough when you look this disoriented.

The future is uncertain for fnatic, as KRIMZ himself admits, but one thing is clear: this team has a lot of work to do and changes to make if they want to be relevant in 2025.

What's that? Imperial? Oh right, we almost forgot them. We were too busy laughing at fnatic to remember the other 0-3 team.

Let’s be real - Imperial doesn’t deserve too much attention. It’s clear that decenty was the only one making an effort to push the team forward, but unfortunately, that’s just not enough at this level.

Whatever, the Silver Coin looks better than the Diamond one anyway…

The Great Wall has been breached

The MongolZ's fifth place in Valve’s world ranking might seem like an obvious reason why that system might be flawed, but they made absolutely light work of the Opening Stage.

Kicking it off with a 13-2 win against the hometown heroes Rare Atom, they followed that up with a 13-6 vs MIBR and then secured their 3-0 record with an absolute drubbing versus GamerLegion.

We’ve been quite impressed by GamerLegion since they went 0-2 in the RMR (especially because they made a mockery of Falcons) but that match was one of the most one-sided we’ve ever seen at a Major.

13-5 on Mirage and 13-2 on Anubis, GamerLegion never stood a chance as FL4MUS failed to record double-digit kills across the two maps, while Senzu and Mzinho both picked up 30 or more.

We haven’t seen Mongolians go this hard in China since Genghis Khan. Well, technically we didn’t see that, but you get the point.

The other team to advance with a 3-0 record is Liquid, despite the fact that NAF has so far played like he’s forgotten where his hands are.

That hasn’t mattered for much though, YEKINDAR seems to have located his hands again and ultimate is also firing on all cylinders after struggling in the past couple of months.

They even had some entertaining games, coming back from 9-3 down against Cloud9 on Ancient and getting revenge against Wildcard on Inferno. Okay, so the Wildcard game wasn’t as fun, but when is Inferno ever fun these days? “But tl;dr, your podcast is called Overtime on Inferno!” Shut up. Stop talking to a newsletter.

Their 3-0 game was also good, but mainly because their victory stopped FlyQuest in its tracks, and rampant Aussies are never a good thing.

It’s yet to be seen how well the two teams will do in the next stage, but our money is on The Mongolz to go pretty deep in this Major, so place your bets now and give us a cut when the winnings come in.

We’ll accept payment in P250 Sand Dunes.

The milk de la milk

If your favourite team haven’t been mentioned yet, it’s important to remember that ‘no news is good news’.

Then forget we said that because we’re going to tell you about them anyway. But they’re probably not out yet, except they also might be by the time you read this.

Glad you all understand.

Passion UA is somehow still making it happen. It seemed certain that the high of the RMR was their peak, and financially, it probably still is. But they once more sit one BO3 away from salvation.

An opening-round loss to BIG, who beat them in the RMR, wasn’t ideal, but they kicked Complexity down to 0-2 and then soundly beat MIBR to put themselves in the 2-1 bracket.

The last round against Complexity was intensely yet morbidly, amusing. Jackasmo hit three one deags, including two in a 3v4, to turn the round and leave Jambo to hit another to win the game.

FURIA just about sneaked past a Wildcard team who continue to impress, but find themselves 1-2. FURIA continue to baffle, surprise and entertain in equal measure.

ICY might still be putting up silly numbers, but right now, it doesn’t matter all that much. C9 have lost to both Liquid and paiN and have only beaten fnatic, which in hindsight isn’t as good of a win as we might have thought.

ICY still has a 1.57 rating, by the way. His team are 1-2.

paiN now sit one game from the main stage, and this clip from kauez is one of the best you’ll see in a long, long, long time. Just pixel perfect. Watching it feels like finally getting to the toilet when you’ve needed a wee for two hours.

Finally, BIG beat Virtus.pro in a game that, quite predictably, went all 24 rounds. The only surprise is that it finished at all.

Dante’s eighth circle of hell is watching BIG vs VP in infinite overtimes.

What’s next?

Now that you know what’s happened, how about what’s coming up? (Edit: We were a bit late today for our Asia/Euro folks, sorry!)

When you get this newsletter, odds are Rare Atom vs. MIBR, and BIG vs. FURIA have already wrapped up. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of CS going on today. If you’re reading this as soon as we publish, FlyQuest and PaiN will play alongside Cloud9 and Complexity.

You’ll never guess which is the 2-1, and which one is the 1-2 game. Yeah, it’s in that order.

It’s pretty cool one of Fly and PaiN is guaranteed to make it, just for region representation. On name value alone though, C9 vs CoL being an elimination game is wild. Both teams looked to have much brighter futures ahead of them. At least in theory.

We'd like to remind you that not long ago we thought this C9 was a CIS superteam.

The next round of games is headlined by the game of the day, Passion UA vs GamerLegion. The team that took the RMR by storm and the team that came back from certain death to make it here. If Passion wants to make it, they need performances, we trust Jambo to show up, but fear needs to instill his namesake onto GL for them to win this best of 3. Win, and you’re through, lose, and you get one more chance. You might be at low risk, but 2-2 games are tricky.

That leaves our final game of the day, Wildcard and VP.

We’re entirely unsure who wins this game. Wildcard lives up to its name by being truly unpredictable because while they have the ceiling to beat Virtus.pro, their floor isn’t even close. Then again, this VP hasn’t shown much of themselves. We’re kind of excited to see how this unfolds, but we’re weary that this might be a steamroll. We’re just not entirely sure yet in which direction.

There’s more than enough to play for today, so may the best teams win. Or whoever suits your narratives.

🇨🇳 Not so tough crowd

⌚ Talk about bad timing

✖️ Honest tweets (X’s?)

This TL;DR was written by aizyesque, shoko, AN1MO, Horizzon and napz.
Crash_ coded the email and copy edited.

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