Roll up, roll up for the first Counter-Strike of the year!

You better not disappoint us, BLAST, ‘cause this roster season has been a snoozefest.

Fortunately, the signs are good. Bounty offers one of the coolest formats in the scene, and brings us fun match-ups, a wide array of teams and names, and big stakes with a place at the LAN Finals a few days later.

Hang on… did we just say LAN Finals after? Does that mean…

Sadly, yes. While Bounty’s unique format and position as the first event on the calendar make it a must-watch tournament, they ruin it by making it an online event. We wanted to see JW vs FaZe on LAN, and quite frankly, we deserved it, too.

This might be upset central, with teams coming in cold with new lineups, or after a long break, in an online single-elimination format. That could be fun, or it could be a bleeding nightmare.

This will be a fun watch, but don’t go drawing any big conclusions. Just sit back and enjoy the chaos.

Regardless, the full list of games can be found here, but we’ll pick out some of our favourites.

EYEBALLERS calling out FaZe is an obvious hit, with JW playing karrigan for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and that it’s followed up with fnatic vs Astralis makes for a great opening day.

Virtus.pro vs Vitality could be a fun one, but a day later, we get to see NIP vs Liquid. We love this game, because NIP are fun to watch but notorious bottlejobs, and Liquid are also bottlejobs while only being fun to watch from afar.

Any result is a fun narrative.

If you want a good hipster one to watch, OG vs FUT should showcase a lot of upcoming talent, and you can tell your mates all about them when they get big.

Isn’t that what it’s all about?