For the first time since 2015, Counter-Strike is going back to Cluj-Napoca, Romania courtesy of PGL.

If your brain doesn’t instantly tell you how long ago that was, allow us to fill in some of the blanks:

In 2015, NiKo was still on MOUZ, Swedish and French CS was still relevant, and m0NESY and donk weren’t even born yet.

Crazy.

Back then we were in Cluj for a Major, and while this event may have a Major-level prize pool, the teams attending are far from Major-worthy.

Well, they’d be at the Major, but probably wouldn’t get out of the first stage.

The headline acts are undoubtedly FaZe, they’re the team that need this the most given that they haven’t exactly lit the world on fire since picking up EliGE. NAVI, Spirit and Vitality are all skipping the event, so this is the best chance they’ll have to win one this year.

That is, if they can get past The MongolZ.

It’ll be no surprise to anyone that the Mongolians are our favourites for the event. They’ve been on fire recently and we back them to beat anyone in this event. It could be the catalyst for them to go onto even bigger and better things, so maybe aizyesque will see his dream of an Asian team winning a Major realised this year.

The two other teams we’ll have our eyes on are MOUZ and Falcons. MOUZ because they’ll be debuting with Spinx and because we’re still convinced that Brollan IGLing is a social experiment, while Falcons will always be an intriguing prospect for as long as they remain entirely underwhelming. Both of these teams could massively shift opinions with solid results in Romania, so let’s see if they can muster up anything by getting out of a full BO3 Swiss stage.

And yes, you did read that correctly. A full BO3 Swiss stage. Valve better be watching.

As exciting as that is, it does come with one major drawback - both BIG and MIBR are at the event. You’re guaranteed to be getting a game between them, so just make sure you set an alarm before you start watching for when you inevitably fall asleep.

The event kicks off today and will continue through next weekend where we’ll find the winner.

We’ll of course be back right here in your inbox with recaps and previews, stay tuned.