Welcome to the playoffs of ESL Challenger Astana.

Sorry, we mean PGL Astana. It’s a serious event. Seriously. We mean it. For real. On God. No cap. Real talk. Straight up. Deadass… seriously… on God.

Not convinced? Yeah, neither are we. It really is hard to imagine caring that much about an event that’s guaranteed a Brazilian team in the semi-finals. FURIA vs. MIBR is a miserable group stage match. It’s reprehensible as a playoffs game.

Actually, we say that we’ve quite enjoyed FURIA at this event. Maybe it’s not so bad after all. We still have to watch MIBR, though... nevermind.

It’s not all bad. We will at least be getting to see more of NIP, who have been great fun over in Kazakhstan. sjuush is the third-highest rated player at the event, and even ewjerkz and arrozdoce were starting to come alive in their 2-2 game against G2.

It’s just a shame that donk is going to send them back to 2018, 2019, 2020… we could go on. Just pick one, they were all bad.

After dispatching NIP, donk and his disciples will have to face one of the aforementioned Brazilian teams. Both outcomes should be another easy win for the Dragons, so expect a severe crash out if they don’t make it.

The other half of the bracket features the latest edition of The MongolZ vs. Aurora, which we are actually looking forward to. Two of our favourite teams to watch, the results of the matches between the two teams have been pretty one-sided, but the games are always a lot of fun to watch.

We’ve also gotNAVI vs. Astralis to look forward to, which is going to go one of two ways: it will either be the best match of the playoffs… or the worst match we’ve ever seen.

As good as Astralis have looked with HooXi, we don’t have too high hopes for them, we all know what happens to stavn as soon as there’s more than 20 people in front of him. He’s been key for them in Astana so far, so his inevitable disappearance will hit them hard.

NAVI are the team that really need to win it. Their confidence has been low for a while and Astana is a fantastic way to get back on top. They’ve already been playing a lot better, so let’s see if it continues into the playoffs.

Ultimately, a win for NAVI would be a win for Counter-Strike. Sure, we might feel bad for donk, but if NAVI go on to lift the trophy they might actually remember whatever it was that made them so good in 2024. And we won’t ever say no to a higher level of competition.