fnatic’s rebuild is complete (they mean it this time)

Question marks were raised when fnatic signed Burmylov at the start of this year and understandably so. Their new IGL fear had worked wonders with jambo over on Passion UA, so it always seemed a little odd that they didn’t both jump ship over the Winter break.

However, just a few short and entirely unconvincing months later, Burmylov has now been benched. And, in an entirely predictable move, he’s been replaced by jambo with fnatic saying that this was their “original plan” all along.

Typically this is the part of the story where we’d shit on fnatic for being underwhelming for years, but we’re actually pretty excited by this move.

Their roster may not be perfect (it does feature blameF) but it’s one with more potential than they’ve had in a long time, and jambo is the perfect piece to complete it.

It may have just been a fluke event, but jambo looked like a genuinely solid AWPer at the Shanghai Major. One capable of being both passive and aggressive when the situation calls for it, he has a style that should actually adapt well to tier one.

As long as fnatic ever actually get to play at a tier one event, that is.

We may have cracked our obligated blameF joke earlier on, but it’s hard to argue that he’s not playing below his means, considering where fnatic currently find themselves in the rankings. Now he’s got a proper team behind him, it shouldn’t be too long before we see him back in the big time once again.

It’ll take some time, whether that’s for the roster to click or just for the VRS system to not be bad, but like NIP, fnatic have finally built a roster that looks like it will be able to compete at a tier 1 level.

And look, we’re nostalgia merchants here at tl;dr, so we just can’t complain.

Well, until we watch blameF bait again. Then we’ll have our fun.

The long way down

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

In the case of cadiaN, “hero” might be a subjective term, but let’s pretend that HEROIC at least have some fans.

Things just haven’t gone well for our favourite loudmouth Dane since he was stabbed in the back by his teammates. Whether it’s the mess that was Liquid or the mess that was Astralis, the poor guy really just can’t catch a break.

But as Astralis suffer yet another early elimination from an event, is it really his fault?

Maybe.

cadiaN didn’t exactly have his greatest moments over at BLAST Open Lisbon, in fact, he probably had some of his worst. But there are many IGLs in tier 1 who have put in similar performances, and they tend to get the piss taken out of them more than they get legitimate criticism.

When it comes to Astralis, the problem is more the fact that they don’t have the players to make up for cadiaN performing badly. device isn’t what he was, jabbi is inconsistent, Staehr is known to drop a stinker here and there and stavn… the less said about him the better.

If you look at the other national teams currently making waves in tier one, those teams are full of aim demons. Think of XANTARES and Wicadia, Techno and Senzu, who on Astralis is capable of ripping a head off like they are?

stavn isn’t even capable of getting a kill in a big match for crying out loud.

There’s things they could try: cadiaN could AWP instead of device, and they could even beg blameF to return just to beat up stavn every time he chokes. But neither of those options seem feasible, and neither of them really fix the problem.

In truth, Astralis is just a poisoned chalice for any IGL right now. They’re an org hanging on to their glory days in a bygone era, and they’re lucky to still even be at big events.

Danish CS has died a slow and painful death, and honestly, it makes us a little bit sad that one of Counter-Strike’s great entertainers has been caught up in that death.

Time is a strange mistress

It’s been two whole years since CS2 was announced. Well, two years and three days if you’re going to be pedantic.

We hate it when you do that.

We had big, big dreams back then. Simpler times. When we heard the smoke grenades were going to be more than just tools for gla1ve to abuse and tarik and Stewie to run through, we were excited.

It looked better, smokes were better, and… well, we had reservations. Not as many as Lobanjica, but reservations nonetheless.

Two years later, and we have mixed opinions. CS2 has not been without its problems, and it’s probably still an inferior experience to CSGO. It’s not all bad, though.

The smokes are a lot better, and the game is undoubtedly prettier. It’s brought in new players, new viewers and the changes to Premier were, on the surface, excellent.

But none of that really matters - because it still doesn’t feel right.

It’s hard to quantify what makes a game great sometimes, and CSGO just felt right. Trying to recreate something as transient and subjective as feeling is largely futile, but Valve in their infinite wisdom, tried.

Subtick just doesn’t feel as smooth as 128 tick, and certainly, early on, was a buggy mess. It’s a lot better than it was, but it does feel like Valve overcomplicated things. Just give us 128 tick. We weren’t asking for a lot.

The performance is worse, which is understandable given the graphical upgrade – but one has to remember that nobody was playing CS for the graphics. If Football Manager upgraded their graphics and made the performance worse, that would be a terrible decision.

Or if they upgraded the graphics and just never brought the game out.

There’s no community servers, no Danger Zone, no working anti-cheat (mind you, there wasn’t one on CSGO) and just an overall feeling of no polish.

CS2 isn’t finished yet - in more ways than one. Here’s to hoping the next eight years will be better.

H/T to u/busywinterfell for reminding us of the anniversary. Check his reddit thread and read the community’s verdict – at your own risk.

All aboard!

The BLAST Open train is hurtling toward Lisbon at full speed, with days 3, 4, and 5 wrapped up as we near the end of the Group Stage today.

In Group A, the first round of the Lower Bracket went as expected. In two straight sweeps, The Huns put up a tougher fight against Falcons than Astralis did against FaZe - which, honestly, is a wild statement. But hey, look at the silver linings: cadiaN managed to take down 12 enemies in total, nearly doubling his 7-kill performance in the first series against Vitality! Finally, some progress.

The Group A Upper semis were a bit more exciting - well, at least one of them. The Vitality vs. Virtus.Pro match went pretty much as expected: an absolute stomp, with four of Vitality’s players posting a 1.20+ rating.

However, the other semifinal between Spirit and MOUZ was a whole different story. It went to a triple overtime decider on Ancient, with MOUZ pulling off the upset thanks to xertioN’s strong performance, securing their spot in the MEO Arena.

Over in Group B, every series went to a decider – except for the one between Eternal Fire and G2, where the Turkish team sealed their trip to Portugal with a double 13-10 victory.

In the Lower Bracket, Liquid eliminated Imperial, while M80 took down FURIA in an Inferno decider that FalleN and co. had in the bag with a 9-4 lead. In typical FURIA fashion, they ended up choking it, which led to an heartbreaking clip of yuurih crying after their elimination. Changes are probably on the horizon for the Brazilian squad.

The marquee matchup of the day, though? The battle between The MongolZ and NAVI. NAVI took Dust 2 relatively convincingly but then got absolutely battered on Inferno, only managing to secure one round to avoid pulling a FaZe. The Mirage decider was much closer, going to overtime, which NAVI dominated.

Now, if you had to guess who won just by looking at the player ratings, who would it be? Yeah, we’d probably be wrong too.

The final Lower Bracket matchup, between Virtus.Pro and Falcons, was likely the closest series we’ve seen so far, stretching close to 4 hours before VP ultimately secured the win. Despite the marathon, the real highlight came from a comms clip that BLAST shared on X of a Zonic timeout, which has already sparked a formal complaint from Falcons. Honestly, it’s just not that deep.

BLAST Open Lisbon’s Group Stage will wrap up today, with the Upper and Lower Finals of each group taking place, and we’re especially looking forward to Group A’s MOUZ vs. Vitality matchup.

🫢 DRAMA

🔥 Some of y’all are too creative

📺 We’ll be back after the commercials!

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

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