The chokers become the… chokers?

Choking is much more effective when you do it to your opponent’s best player, rather than yourself, it turns out.

MOUZ have always been the inexperienced, young ones. “They don’t know how to do it on stage,” “they’re still just kids,” and all that other nice stuff you say about a team who aren’t quite good enough. Let’s be frank: MOUZ have had a while now, and still choke on stage.

Fortunately for them, they came up against a younger, even more inexperienced team in The MongolZ, and one of their stars fell as flat as a witch’s bosom.

mzinho, the actual child, was infallible on stage but was let down by Senzu. ‘Til this point, Senzu had been superb, but he dropped a stinky 18-37 scoreline that ruined mzinho’s 46-kill haul to the point where the game was unwinnable.

And the dream was dead. Just like that. MOUZ knocked out The MongolZ 2-0. The first map went to OT, but there was no doubt who the better team was on Nuke.

Spirit were, on paper, one of the favourites for the tournament – but on vibes, they were basically nobody’s pick. The vibes were so bad. So so bad. They haven’t been able to beat NAVI in ages, and their form was, to be kind, patchy.

Since Katowice they haven’t really put together a scary run of form, but donk was still in the running for HLTV #1, and he had something to prove. If Spirit were going to do anything at this Major, it would be on donk’s back.

Well, f–cking obviously. But you know what we mean. It needed a donk carry in every game.

A casual 1.63 rating against Liquid, 47 kills in 46 rounds, 104.3 ADR and +22 for the, again, actual child, mashed Liquid into little pieces. It’s making us feel really old. Not as old as YEKINDAR suddenly seems, though.

The Latvian went from a hot-hand speed demon to a geriatric duel-loser in record time. We have no idea what is wrong with him, but he’s not the YEKINDAR we fell in love with.

Liquid almost mounted a comeback from way down on Anubis, but frankly, if you expected anything other than a 13-11 loss from Team Liquid, you haven’t watched much Team Liquid since… well, ever. Always the bridesmaid…

That leaves a tasty MOUZ vs. Donk matchup for the first semi, meaning at least four players will be in the Major final who have never been there before.

VP call time on Jame

We thought Christmas was when Jesus was born, not when he got benched by his Counter-Strike team.

Okay, sorry, that was really poor. But seriously, we love Christmas, and we also love Jame, so this news out of Virtus.pro has really put a dampener on our festivities.

After their early exit from the Major, we all knew that a change would coming from VP, but this was probably the one thing that we didn’t want to happen.

Of course, there were plenty of calls for Jame to be the one removed, and plenty of positive reactions to it, but our displeasure at his benching isn’t just because we like the bloke - we genuinely think it’s a bad idea.

Jame was, and still should be, the identity of this team. Their playstyle was the perfect evolution of the “ruination” of Counter-Strike that began with Astralis in 2018. But unlike Astralis, we didn’t hate it. In fact, we loved it, probably because everyone else hated it.

However, that style was compromised long ago and throughout 2024 it was bastardised even further by the arrival of electroNic. Who, just for the sake of clarity, we would have removed from this team long before even considering Jame’s departure.

You can say what you want about Jame’s style not being suited to MR12, but Jame’s style hasn’t been suited to his team for a long time and we don’t think that’s his fault. Jame’s style works best when he has two soldiers on his team, and he hasn’t had that since Qikert was benched for mir last year.

electroNic’s arrival was meant to remedy that, to make up for the compromised system by adding more firepower. But he hasn’t done that.

Instead, all electroNic has seemed to do is destabilise the team. Much like Cloud9 before VP, the team crumbled around the former NAVI man, and we’re starting to think that might be more than just coincidence.

Blame Jame all you like, but we truly believe he hasn’t yet had a fair crack at CS2. He’s a fine AWPer and one of the greatest IGLs in history, his skills aren’t something that just vanished overnight.

With faltering players and a team clearly lacking chemistry, what was he meant to do? Well, like many before him, all he could do was accept being the scapegoat, but at least he got a parting blow on electroNic.

We truly hope we see Jame back on a server again soon, and we know whatever team he finds himself on will improve because of his presence. In the meantime, we also know that he’ll find plenty of ways to, er, ‘entertain’ himself.

NAVI get their… salad tossed?

Who is going to win the Major? Is donk #1 in the world? Are Liquid secretly good? These questions, and many more, will absolutely NOT be answered by this week’s podcast.

Play the music

Rostermania waits for no one.

With the Major still ongoing, the first moves in the offseason’s game of musical chairs have already occurred.

Ninjas in Pyjamas

The first move comes by NiP, who have opted to bench maxster.

This decision follows his absence from the lineup due to health issues, which caused him to miss the RMR and likely cost NiP a Major spot. At this point, it’s unclear what NiP's management is aiming for with its CS division, and judging by the current situation, they might not know either.

At this rate, not even by January 2027…

Complexity

A wise man once said, “When you’re having problems, just cut the anchor”.

Curiously, that’s exactly what Complexity have done, benching floppy after a disappointing exit from the Major’s Opening Stage with a 2-3 record.

Along with him goes assistant coach JamezIRL, and if we were EliGE, we'd probably be looking to hop on that outbound train right about now.

Astralis

This one comes as no surprise, as Astralis have announced that device will be returning to the active lineup after missing the RMR due to health issues, with br0 heading into free agency in 2025.

Given everything br0 has been through, we wish him the best of luck in finding a team that truly appreciates his talent.

In other transfer news:

Titanic showdowns

If the teams that played yesterday were too “woke” for you, we think today will be up your alley.

It’s all teams you’ve heard of before, even if you stopped watching CS in 2021. Starting with G2 and HEROIC, a series that probably has a clear favourite in most people's minds. G2 is arguably the best team in the world and this event has a “last dance” element with NiKo’s rapidly approaching departure. However, it’s worth questioning if HuNter’s solid performance at this event will drop back down to the levels we’ve seen more often, especially on stage.

If he can show up above a 1.0 rating, we’re confident G2 win this. Unless Degster manages to outawp m0NESY.

But the game we look forward to most? FaZe vs Vitality.

Sure, this could be a blowout to Vitality, since FaZe are a bit of a mess in recent times. But think of what FaZe can be, feel that hopium course through you for a moment.

Then, snap back to the real world, where karrigan will probably have a 0.56 HLTV rating, and one of frozen or ropz will be average. But with FaZe, you’re legally obligated to say: “there’s always a chance.” Say the line, Bart.

We’re at least sure it’ll be entertaining. There’s no way both of these games suck, right? right?

🧃 A story so juicy you get double the hyperlinks

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

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