The sandy map is dead. Long live the sandy map

Harry Richards
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Source: BLAST Premier

Despite the invisible walls, VALORANTesque connectors, and it clearly being worse than Train, Anubis has been deemed worthy of competitive play. First by Valve and now BLAST, who will debut the new map pool at BLAST World Finals in Abu Dhabi.

But who can blame them? It’s been added to Refrag, the ultimate sign that it is ready to go.

Look, we don’t really know what to make of the map yet. It’s been in the game for two years but has generated as little buzz as a Heroic signing session in Copenhagen.

The main source of Anubis’ excitement is that it’s just something different. Anything that pushes pros out of their comfort zone is fun for us at home, it doesn’t matter if it’s any good.

It means we don’t have to see BIG lose their pick of Dust2 every best of three. It means new magic molotovs, new specialists — shoutout to early Ancient k0nfig — and exceptionally entertaining tweets from pros who wished their permaban got removed.

Change is good, folks. But, the best change to the game for this event has nothing to do with Anubis: It’s the nerfed M4A1-S (and the not really nerfed AWP) which will also debut here.

All those frauds who abused the silenced WMD for the past twelve months will finally be exposed. A now-suspended prophet told us months ago that we’d look back on this era like we look back on the Krieg and AUG metas, and he might be right.

Mauisnake reckons that the “rifler skill ceiling” might have been hit in this meta, the type of talk that terrifies a CS:GO community that (correctly) prides itself on its superiority over other games.

Hopefully, this change should go a good way to reverse both that and the unsatisfying CT meta the M4A1-S fuelled.

That’s more than enough to get us excited. Roll on, BLAST World Finals — the best sporting event happening in the Middle East this year.

November 24, 2022

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