Cache is officially BACK.

Valve have announced the fan-favourite map will return to the Active Duty map pool on July 6th, a little over seven years after being removed in favour of Vertigo.

The old school classic will be replacing Overpass in the active duty group, with the fact that Overpass is one of the least played maps in pro play, as well as being the least played map in Premier, likely being the reason for its departure.

We’re in two minds about this.

On the one hand, the changes to CS2 regarding smokes should work great in terms of making the map more dynamic, especially on executes. On the other hand, Cache is a very simple map, and Overpass was one of the more tactical maps, having already lost a tactical map in Train this year, Nuke now remains as the only really complex map in the pool, and we find that pretty troubling.

Our hope is that the smoke changes and the ability to blow them up, as well as the removal of skyboxes, are enough to prevent Cache from being the stale, boring map it was before it exited the pool.

However, if it isn’t, we’re in for an absolute stinker that has no place in the modern meta of CS.

Interestingly, though, if you want to know how this will change the pro landscape, this change sucks for Vitality, given how good they were at Overpass. It’s also really good for Falcons, given that Overpass was their perma-ban, so we guess Valve aren’t content at seeing NiKo win just the one Major.

At the end of the day, we’re happy to see Cache back and the fact that we now have another playable map in rotation (Once again, f-ck Vertigo), but we just don’t think Overpass was the right map to cut.

It’s a specialist map where the team who picks it ALWAYS wins it, and it’s not a bad thing to have maps like that in the pool. It is a bad thing to dumb the game down, though, but we’re not sure Valve is aware of that.

Had they removed Inferno, Anubis, or Dust2, though… then we’d be cooking with gas.

The rumour mill

🇲🇳 Senzu has officially signed for BC.Game. We have zero respect for him.

🇺🇦 jackasmo has also officially signed for fnatic, leaving everyone asking one thing: hadn’t he already done that?

🇸🇪 KRIMZ has also joined EYEBALLERS, which we’re actually a big fan of.

🇿🇦 Liquid seem to have finally realised siuhy is about as good as leading as any British Prime Minister in the past 10 years, and are targeting JT to replace him.

🇿🇦 He might not be the only leadership change at Liquid, either. The South African wants to bring his long-time collaborator T.c with him.

🇩🇰 And Liquid won’t be the only NA team looking to make a move, as NRG have benched br0 after the Dane realised he can do much better. At least we presume that’s the reason.

🇪🇸 Following the realisation that Spanish CS sucks, Gentle Mates look set to be exiting Counter-Strike. That doesn’t mean it’s the end for Spanish CS, though, as for some reason, three orgs are targeting the team.

🇧🇷 MIBR are also of nqz. From one sh-t Brazilian team to the next.

🇫🇷 Speaking of AWPers transitioning to rifling, 3DMAX have signed Kursy to replace Ex3rcice. Yeah, we don’t get it either.

🇱🇹 In other news, G2 are seeking loan moves for tAk after he impressed while standing in for huNter- earlier this year.

🇹🇷 And finally, FUT seemed to have already found the solution to their lauNX problem: they’re targeting HEROIC’s xfl0ud.