Has a team ever been more “2016 Virtus.pro” than FaZe Clan, right now?

They’ve now lost two series in a row - one was the Major final, and the second was to EYEBALLERS at BLAST Bounty. With a player called ‘bobeksde’ topfragging. And JW playing.

Yes, that JW.

The scary thing is that nobody is surprised about either. FaZe making the Major final barely even shocks us any more, and neither does losing to JW. Yes, this is an online game, but we’re not even sure that matters.

It’s a nice big payday for EYEBALLERS, though, who claim the bounty and move on to almost certainly give it to whoever they play next.

Speaking of which, NAVI managed to lose to a team with some UK influence on it, and we don’t mean Vitality. Despite Aleksib’s hubris (or indeed because of it), Gizmy owned him on map three to deliver an unlikely win to Monte.

rainwaker (AYYY, remember rainwaker?) pulled off a clean 1v3 to close out Mirage, which can’t be a good sign. Again, it’s an online event so we won’t be too scared, but… are NAVI okay?

Liquid started 2026 with a win, which must be a relief, but beating NIP doesn’t really prove anything. They’re the only team who might be bigger bottlers than Liquid.

Astralis beat fnatic in a game that would have been massive like… wow, ten years ago? It didn’t feel massive this time, though.

Vitality and Falcons picked up routine wins over VP and ECSTATIC respectively, and HEROIC had one of the easier wins of the tournament so far over Friendly Campers. No easier than Gentle Mates’ win - Americans actually tried to hype up JBa to M80 for him to get 13 kills against a Spanish team.

(He’s still good, we’re just joking!)

3DMAX continue to underwhelm by losing to Inner Circle, with newsletter fave cptkurtka023 going crazy, Aurora dropped a map to HOTU, FUT 2-0’d OG, and Passion UA lost to GamerLegion in a lose-off.

Spirit and FURIA play today, by the way. We recommend watching.

Poll

With FaZe and NAVI both having difficult starts to their year, we want to ask you this:

Following the news that Anubis will be returning to the map pool in place of Train, we asked you: Are you happy to see Anubis return? Here’s what you had to say:

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😄 Yes (18%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😕 No (30%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🥲 Yes, but why -Train? (52%)