At the start of the year, GamerLegion were a team that we here would’ve counted out.

They’d just lost ash, benched ztr, and their replacement for him was Snax. An IGL who we previously loved to constantly criticise for his unquestionably poor leadership of G2.

We didn’t see them much at first, and when we did, we didn’t think much of them. A Stage 1 exit from IEM Krakow seemed to confirm all the negative first impressions we had when this roster was formed.

But they went away. They practised. They grew accustomed to Snax’s structure, and they made PR forget all about the move to MOUZ he was reportedly getting after Budapest.

And it turned them into the best version of GamerLegion we’ve ever seen.

Their two most recent tournaments - BLAST Rivals and IEM Atlanta - haven’t just restored faith in the team, they’ve got us thinking we might be about to see Paris all over again.

Okay, maybe that’s too far. But seriously, 3rd-4th in Texas and 2nd over in Georgia is pretty good going.

REZ and PR are peaking at the right moment, and Snax and new coach imd have hypex looking like a top-quality AWPer. When you consider the fact that Tauson is a very solid fourth star and Snax himself is having genuinely solid impact for an IGL, it’s a recipe for real success in Major Counter-Strike.

It’s for that reason that we don’t just predict GamerLegion will breeze it through Stage 1, we’re willing to say they’ll go all the way to the playoffs, too. That’s just how good they are right now.