It turns out being a dead team is still better than being FlyQuest.

In fairness, it’s also better than being any other team (bar B8, if you’re going to be pedantic) in the first stage of the Major. You can draw your own conclusions about the quality of the teams from that, or you can just believe that HEROIC might just be quite good.

It doesn’t really matter that your AWPer is leaving if tN1R goes 61-40, as it happens.

HEROIC outclassed FlyQuest in a 2-0 game and booked a spot in the next stage – to the surprise of nobody – but it’s nice to not be let down by a favourite every so often.

HerOIC also smacked NRG 13-5 and the Wholesome Chungus 100 Warriors (or Chinggis Warriors as the Danish website calls them) 13-7 to make the whole thing look a bit easy.

Maybe it was.

They were joined by B8, which you’d know if you were paying attention at the start of the piece where we called you pedantic. Or if you watched the Major, which you should be doing. Obviously.

B8 kept it close vs. Imperial but were impressive in taking down an OG team who have looked very solid, before moving on to face Wildcard in a 2-0 game.

Sorry, we mean Amouranth’s team. (That link is SFW, don’t worry)

Amouranth, channeled through the body of the strapping young Swede, susp, powered Wildcard to a map one win, but – ironically enough, given the opening to this paragraph – it was npl who topped the scoreboard for the series as B8 won out.

Because it sounds like nipple. If you read it out loud. Never mind.

He had plenty of help, though - headtr1ck won Dust2 almost on his own, and alex666 and esenthial both picked up over 100 ADR on Inferno. Actually, npl didn’t do a lot at all.

Guess he couldn’t stick out underneath that swimsuit.

Stage 2 probably won’t be so easy, but we’ve seen enough to be at least mildly optimistic about both teams. There’s still some very beatable teams in Stage 2, like… all of them. The best team is Falcons, and they have NiKo.

At a Major.

We all know what that means.