Tier 1 CS:GO is back! Finally! It’s been about a million years, but it’s back!
Okay, so it’s only actually been a month since IEM Cologne, but in 2022 time that’s either a decade or about 10 minutes.
This week will see the beginning of the Blast Premier Fall Groups, where we’ll finally get to see the results of the player break and subsequent roster decisions (or Astralis’ lack thereof).
FaZe might have a pretty easy shot through group C. They’re opening with a series against almost 1/4 of EG’s players, including the newly promoted HexT and neaLaN.
A win against FaZe might at least get them out of 217th place in the HLTV rankings.
In Group A, Vitality might have a chance to try and show that they’ve learned something over this break. Their group has Astralis, who just failed to make the RMR, OG, with a still relatively new lineup, and NIP as…NIP.
All in all, anything other than a won group is probably a loss for ZywOo and co, especially as they formally signed Spinx this week.
Group B, at the time of writing this, is the most open simply because of the s1mple situation. Neither he nor Navi have, at the time of this writing, clarified if he will or will not be playing and while headtr1ck has shown that he’s not bad, he’s not s1mple.
On the other hand with or without their superstar, I’d expect a NaVi win in group B. hallzerk might be a good addition to Complexity, but 3 weeks isn’t going to be enough time for him to turn that team around.
Keeping YEKINDAR for now gives Liquid a shot, too, though it sometimes feels more like they’re auditioning for him than he is for them. G2’s newest duo of jks and HooXi have had even less time to get their feet under them.