Counter Fett

Get your EE-3 carbine rifles, we’re hunting bounties.

BLAST’s newest innovation in CS Event technology, BLAST Bounty is starting on Tuesday. “What makes it so special?” You might ask. We’re glad you did.

For this event, seeding has a different meaning. The higher your seeding, the bigger the bounty on your head. G2’s bounty is $60k for example, whilst in comparison, Liquid’s is $30k. 16 teams have these bounties, whilst 16 “underdogs” are hunting them with no price on their heads. These underdogs even get to pick who they play.

BIG got to pick first because their seeding was the highest. They picked SAW. How German of them.

These games are all played in a big bracket, starting in a round of 32. Every game is a bo3, except for the final which is a best of 5.

Some notable games to watch out for is ropz’s debut with Vitality against metizport, and EliGE’s debut for FaZe against M80. We’re especially curious to see how a NiKo-less G2 looks, heavygod is a sick signing for them, but will malbs really have what it takes? Spoiler: Yes.

BLAST will be doing draws for the other stages, including a “special” live draw for the playoffs. Which is an odd term to use in a bracket tournament. They mean from the quarters onwards.

This format is a pretty cool idea, it definitely adds some motivation for underdog teams, and letting them pick their opponent is a cool game within the game.

It’s a bit gimmicky, but hey, we’re down for a gimmick here and there. Especially if it includes good counter-strike.

End of the road

As the season kickoff approaches, with BLAST Bounty starting this Tuesday, we’re also saying goodbye to Rostermania, our favorite part of the year, as teams finalize their lineups.

For starters, the rumors surrounding the new HEROIC roster have been confirmed… well, sort of.

The org has indeed signed Sangal’s core of LNZ, xfl0ud, and yxngstxr, bringing along those juicy VRS points, and decided to round out the roster with SunPayus and tN1R. However, nilo and maden are listed on the bench.

We’re not entirely sure what HEROIC has planned here, but it’s hard to believe nilo would leave Metizport just to warm the bench alongside Maden. They’re cooking something, we’re just not sure if we’re fans of the smell.

G2 have officially announced HeavyGod as NiKo’s replacement, putting the rumors to rest. Replacing NiKo is practically impossible, and any move was bound to be a downgrade. That said, HeavyGod’s time in Cloud9 proved he’s a very solid option. With malbs stepping into NiKo’s roles, this team is looking more than capable of competing for trophies.

In two less flashy moves, Boombl4 and Ax1le have made the switch to BetBoom from Cloud9, who appears to be disbanding. Meanwhile, BIG confirmed their replacements for rigoN and syrsoN, bringing back hyped and signing kyuubii from fnatic’s bench.

The first move looks like a clear upgrade for BetBoom, who now have an incredibly reliable IGL and rifler. They’ve assembled a roster that feels like what Cloud9 always aspired to be.

As for BIG, though, this move feels like a straight downgrade. We honestly don’t know what to say anymore. This team has been recycling the same players for the past 5 years, constantly shifting the same pieces in and out of the lineup and going nowhere. Stay strong, German fans.

To wrap up the roundup, this week also saw:

donkmania

Carlsberg don’t do rookie years, but if they did, they’d be much worse than donk’s - because Carlsberg is rank.

Hopefully, they weren’t looking to sponsor us. We’d prefer Birra Moretti. Jk, please sponsor us.

donk swept at the HLTV Awards, pretty unsurprisingly, and was also part of some of the best photos of the year. It is January, in fairness, but they’re still fire.

He took home Rookie of the Year (lmao), Opener of the Year, Highlight of the Year and the fabled Player of the Year. That is frankly ridiculous. We all knew donk was going to be good, but how many of you thought he was going to be this good?

This is what they would call ‘PlayStation stuff’ in football.

A teenager showing up and being the undeniable best player in the world, being the MVP at the biggest tournament, and winning it against some of the biggest names on a fairytale run?

It’s completely unheard of, and if we didn’t watch it happen, we wouldn’t believe that it did.

m0NESY was second ahead of ZywOo, who at least showed up to this event. It can’t have been a big one, then.

NAVI were the Team of the Year, with Imperial fe being the Women’s Team of the Year. Big shock, we know. You’ll be even more shocked to find out aNa won her 3rd Women’s Player of the Year.

To be completely honest, the only two that weren’t really, really obvious winners were jL as Closer of the Year and b1t as Anchor of the Year. Aleksib and B1ad3 picked up IGL and Coach awards, too.

No love for chopper and hally?

There’s some non-player awards too, and you can read about them here if you want. Which skin won, and we’re not joking here, Skin of the Year? You’ll have to read on.

The full top 20 can be seen here, with new selections XANTARES and malbsMd being our personal favourite inclusions. XANTARES feels well overdue, and malbs feels like he might stay for quite a while.

Big winners and even bigger losers

Forget Falcons finally having a decent roster, forget FaZe EliGE, even forget Vitality ropz and the stinking amount of money HEROIC made.

MOUZ are the real winners of this rostermania.

That’s right. A team that made precisely zero changes is the winner. Who’d have thunk it?

Heading into the off-season, everyone expected Jimpphat to leave MOUZ. Perhaps they even expected more players to leave as a result of that. But none of that happened.

In fact, not only did Jimpphat stay on MOUZ (mostly thanks to G2 and their refusal to actually accept money for m0NESY before he leaves for free), but he also signed a new contract with them, guaranteeing a big payday whenever Falcons get bored of their current team.

And we say that with confidence because we all know it’s an inevitability as soon as m0NESY makes the jump.

Of course, MOUZ will still have to contend with their inability to play on a stage, so you could say that not being forced to sign a player with a bigger set is a loss. But we’re willing to bet that they’re happier keeping their squad together.

But what about the losers? HEROIC may have won with all that money they brought in, but the players they’ve signed certainly haven’t.

Despite making a reported $10M from transfers in 2024, HEROIC couldn’t be bothered to put together a proper announcement for their shiny new tier three squad, leading us to believe that they’re not intended to last very long at all.

Well, that and the fact they have seven players on their roster for BLAST Bounty, including maden and nilo.

We’re sure they totally haven’t just signed the Sangal trio for the Valve points. Surely they wouldn’t do that.

🧠 Every advantage has its disadvantage

🏅 Three youngsters have taken over CS

🆚 Interesting matchups

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

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