Extinguished fire

Wait, what?!

That was our exact reaction when we opened Twitter on Saturday morning - because what else do you do on a Saturday morning - wondering if we were still stuck on April 1st.

Out of nowhere, just hours after benching their roster, Aurora shocked everyone by announcing the signing of the entire Eternal Fire lineup, plus coach Fabre.

Forget m0NESY, this has to be the move of the season.

So, how did this even happen? It seems like Eternal Fire was struggling to balance the lack of sponsors and funding with the growing success of their roster. w0xic took to Twitter to shed some light, explaining that “the inadequacy of CS sponsorship conditions in Turkey made it necessary to take this regrettable decision”.

According to the Fabrizio Romano of CS, the entire EF roster cost less than what Falcons paid (or will pay) for m0NESY, which kind of makes sense, but is still absolutely wild.

Now, this is a massive move for Aurora, an organization that has never cracked the top 15, but now has a top 5 roster under its banner. Their competitive success seems almost guaranteed at this point, as they’ve been looking sharper than ever. As long as the organization provides the right conditions, they should be in a great spot - just give them what they need and let them cook.

However, the same can’t be said for the massive wave of Turkish fans who’ve now watched their home team snagged by a Serbian organization backed mostly by gambling money. Given the passion the Turkish community has for the game, managing this relationship is going to be the real challenge for Aurora.

In the meantime, we’ve already seen the lineup in action under the new banner, kicking things off with a win over paiN at PGL Bucharest, which began yesterday.

Honestly, it feels like we’ve stepped into a parallel universe watching the boys play in blue instead of the usual white and gold.

Money, money, m0NESY

In one of the most predictable moves in the history of ever, m0NESY looks set to join NiKo on Falcons.

It’s no surprise at all really. G2 have been really underwhelming since the departure of the Bosnian, and the photos posted from their team dinners suggest that the mood in the camp might not be fantastic.

It’s no surprise that Falcons moved for m0NESY when they did, instead of waiting until after the Major. degster is one of the current sticking points for the roster and Liquid are also making themselves strong with siuhy. If making the Major is all but guaranteed for Falcons, why not make yourself a much more competitive team?

In a way, we genuinely do feel for m0NESY that it’s come to this. We all know he wants to join a Russian team but it seems that Spirit are happy with sh1ro, and now, to make matters worse, he’s going to have to play under zonic, who we’re pretty sure isn’t actually doing anything anymore.

But, on the other hand, he’s also going to be getting an unfathomable amount of money from Falcons, so we’re sure it doesn’t hurt that much.

And we won’t lie to you, we’re excited for this move. NiKo and his lack of Majors may be fun to laugh at, but having both him and m0NESY on bad rosters sucked, and this could now shake things up at the top.

However, when it comes to G2, we’re pretty sure this will be the end for them at the top of CS. At least for a while.

Sure, there are the fantasy signings out there like kyousuke, but he’s not a m0NESY replacement. There’s also dream moves like siuhy, but he’s off to Liquid, so who else can save malbs and HeavyGod from Snax?

It doesn’t exactly look like there’ll be a light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon.

But maybe we’re being too pessimistic, maybe they’ll go and surprise us all.

Who are we kidding? No, they won’t.

Welcome, hades, to G2 Esports.

What next for jks?

It’s no surprise if you’ve been keeping up with the newsletter, and you really should be, but Liquid have announced that siuhy has officially joined the team in jks’ spot. Well, it’s not really jks’ spot any more, we suppose.

This gives Team Liquid a real IGL for what feels like the first time since adreN. That isn’t true, obviously, but that’s what it feels like. Every single player break, the talk always seems to be about Liquid signing an IGL.

They’ve not waited ‘til the player break this time, at least, and siuhy looks like the perfect fit.

This seems like it makes sense for everyone: Liquid get an IGL that they desperately need (TLDR alumn NER0 agrees), siuhy gets a top team and some great talent to show his worth, Twistzz gets to stop the nonsense, and jks gets free from his support player prison.

You can unblock FlyQuest’s number now mate.

They seem like jks’ most obvious landing spot, although the jks fans in the audience might unsubscribe if we say much more. We like jks! We just want to see him ball again instead of squeezed into a round hole on a big team.

MOUZ could be a decent fit if Jimpphat left. Falcons made us laugh when we wrote it in this story, and that’s justification enough. If you want a more serious answer, genuinely, Astralis could really do with a player like jks.

They’d have to go international, which at this point wouldn’t be the worst idea, and he’d probably be their best player right now.

Mind you, so would Kjaerbye.

Any lower on the rankings, and it starts getting disrespectful. We thought about putting him on SAW, but we like him too much for that. At least FlyQuest speaks his natural tongue – which is to say, nothing at all.

If Carlsberg made debuts…

…they’d look like this. Because Carlsberg is awful.

“siuhy looks like the perfect fit”, “Liquid get an IGL they desperately need”.

Yeah, good one TLDR. Bloody idiots.

Liquid got pumped by Legacy in siuhy’s first game, and we’re not joking. Forget 13 rounds, NAF didn’t even get 13 kills in the series, and THAT is worrying for Liquid.

They can deal with a lot of things in a game; Twistzz’ calling, ultimate struggling against a top tier AWPer, the tears from former American fans getting in their eyes and stopping them from seeing the crosshair - but they can’t win with NertZ and NAF going a combined 30-62.

These are meant to be your hard hitters - they can’t go missing.

We’d like to shoutout dumau on the positive side, though, after he dropped 41 - he’s an extremely talented player who seemed to get lost in the shuffles when Brazilian teams changed things, and he’s showing exactly why he used to be such an exciting prospect.

Speaking of us being stupid little dumb-dumbs, Astralis beat FaZe after we said Kjaerbye would be their best player. Perhaps he’d also be FaZe’s.

It was a very good for American fans, at least, who both saw Liquid lose and bizarrely, Complexity win. 2-0! Over Falcons! That’s a legit win, or at least sort of. We have no idea if Falcons are good, bad, or a secret third thing.

Make no mistake, though; this was a pasting. Falcons got 11 rounds. hallzerk, when he’s on it, remains a terrifying player. If he was ‘on it’ more often, he’d be one of the best AWPers in the world, and we’re not joking. He was everywhere.

Speaking of Falcons, m0NESY helped G2 to a routine 2-0 win over GamerLegion with 40 kills.

3DMAX remain a real pain in the derriere to play against and took The MongolZ to the wire, and finished them off in impressive fashion. Colour us impressed.

VP lost to Rare Atom. That’s the punchline. electroNic got outfragged by somebody by a whole 14 kills. He used to be up there with NiKo, olofmeister and DEVIL, for crying out loud. Bring back Jame, we say.

Aurora at least had a good debut, beating paiN 2-1 quite predictably, and FURIA took care of business against APOGEE. Sadly, those results don’t let us take the Mickey out of anyone, so they’re an afterthought.

♻ Minirostermania

😡 Money Meltdown

🔥 Visual Art Exhibit

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

How did you like this edition?
Help us improve by clicking a smiley below.

Give your friend the tl;dr