Astralis' eighth and ninth men, coming soon

North America saw a victory for Gen.G in their Road to Rio, with hometown heroes FURIA pipped at the post in the final. BnTeT must have been having flashbacks as he put the team on his back and carried them over the line, despite heroics from yuurih.

The other big winner in NA was Envy, who snuck into 5th place after beating 100 Thieves. They very much had Turkish star Calyx to thank, who went absolutely ballistic, dropping 87 frags to drag Envy kicking and screaming past the Aussies.

The biggest winner in the Road to Rio in Europe so far, quite literally, are FaZe Clan. Because they've won every single game, topping their group and losing only three maps in the process. Broky, coldzera and NiKo are all sitting at around 1.2 HLTV ratings, and, well, that ought to do it.

The only players higher in HLTV rating than those three are ZywOo (expected), kennyS (not a huge surprise), maka and Farlig (BIG shock). While Farlig's Copenhagen Flames fell at the final hurdle to mousesports, his reputation is through the roof. If Astralis need an eighth...

...then maybe they should look at aizy. No, aizyesque hasn't completely taken over the newsletter, the mercurial Dane has been killing it, and has almost single handedly dragged North into the next stage, despite them playing with a coach. To be fair, Jumpy held his own against G2, who seem to have a... thing about playing against coaches.

• maka has been the stand-out player on Heretics, who somehow managed to sneak into 4th ahead of ENCE and fnatic.
• 4th place in Group B sees GODSENT, with STYKO actually putting up the numbers. Good for you, STYKO.
• Hard Legion and Team Spirit helped prove that the Road to Rio does in fact come with the random CIS team buff included, as they topped their respective groups. Though HL did do it with a negative round differential, because the format, or something. We don't know.
• Renegades won in Oceania, surprisingly, while half of the top four in Asia are Mongolian teams. Former Grayhound gamer erkaSt is on TIGER, while d13 have the excellently-named Annihilation.