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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
This is no RMR for old men, says donk.
Even on the RMR special, with hundreds of games to keep track of, we’ve still got our eyes on one very, very special player. It’s malbsMd.
It was a weekend of few upsets in Asia, as is tradition.
Grayhound beat the - sighs - Bad News Kangaroos in the final to ensure their spot in the Asian RMR was set, while TheMongolz unsurprisingly took top spot in the East Asia qualifier.
We will say Eruption and NKT had been teams who had often qualified alongside them to these events, but instead they will be joined by ATOX, fronted by former teammates of TheMongolz dobu and kabal.
TYLOO beat out Rare Atom in what can only be described as a grudge match, given TYLOO nicked the whole Rare Atom squad late last year, to secure 2nd alongside Lynn Vision.
Sadly, in the Asia mainland qualifier, we didn’t see our new favourite team ‘MAG’ go through. We just like the names Derek and WasteOfAmmo, honestly. Instead, Trouble makers and their egregious team name styling went through.
The final spots will go to the Middle East qualifier, with some bigger names (JiJieHao, who have El1an, ISSAA and DavCost, for example) and some very funny ones too. OnyxRavens have Pakistani prospect PokemoN, Shush have HopeDaBeast and Twisted Minds have D0cC. In 2024.
There’s a team called 15 average Gang, stylised like that as well, and there’s three South African teams flying in for the event - Bravado, Goliath and Nixuh.
If you’re ever up far too early, there’s real joy to be found in some of these games; not least from the names involved.
There’s pain, and then there’s paiN Gaming.
From being down 0-12 on map two, with a qualification on the line, paiN pulled off the miracle and swept Imperial’s defence away to take the game to OT.
Sadly, they lost it.
Neither side could pick up a single CT round in regulation, but Imperial immediately chained two in a row to kick off OT and pushed paiN into a 2-2 game.
That leaves Imperial through to the Americas RMR, joined by Legacy - a team led by a guy you might have heard of. He goes by the name coldzera, and rumour has it he used to be quite good.
They smashed paiN, toppled 9z and beat Red Canids (us neither) 2-1 to secure their spot in the RMR, with MIBR also cleaning house to go through convincingly.
BESTIA, the aforementioned Imperial and ODDIK (who have formed MIBR players WOOD7 and Tuurtle) made it through in four games, leaving a host of teams - some you might even have heard of - in the 2-2 bracket.
9z play W7M in what should be a win for them, RED Canids take on Flamengo in what is anybody’s guess, and paiN square up to Case (whose most famous player is their owner: football player Casemiro).
No, seriously. You won’t know anyone else on this team.
If you’re left asking ‘where on Earth are Fluxo?’ then honestly, points to you for keeping up. They went out 1-3, with former star, felps, being the highest rated player at the event over on Imperial.
Says a lot, really.
There’s currently no NA RMR, as there was IEM Chengdu qualifiers for NA - an event which, as the name suggests, is taking place in China this year. Hilariously, Liquid played in the NA event and lost to M80.
Newsletter favourite malbsMd dropped a 1.36 with over 100 ADR to ensure Liquid will be sent home - to Europe - instead of Chengdu.
As the Closed Qualifier phase of the RMR wraps up in Europe, some BIG names have fallen already. Pun intended.
BIG was genuinely one of the most disappointing teams we’ve seen at the RMR so far. They went 1-3, only managing to beat fellow 1-3 seed Permitta. Fair enough, they lost BO1s to fnatic and BetBoom. You can’t be too harsh about that. But being swept 2-0 by Nexus is honestly inexcusable. Free Krimbo!
BIG wasn’t the only national team to struggle at the RMR closed qualifier.
SINNERS, under the tutelage of oskar, got quite an unfortunate draw. They went 0-3 alongside JANO, but SINNERS got the harder matchups. They played VP and fnatic in BO1s, which are unforgiving enough on their own. Add to the fact that SINNERS also got eliminated by a Nexus 2-0 sweep and we see a pattern forming here.
Maybe it’s that we criminally underrate Nexus, or criminally overrate other teams. Not to worry, if we just talk about Group B, it doesn’t matter.
Group B probably has some of the harder losers. EYEBALLERS and Aurora both went 0-3, despite being damn solid teams on paper. It just wasn’t meant to be.
Not to mention the now Jerry-less FORZE who looked really shaky in every game except for a BO3 against Aurora. That kind of CS won’t take you to the Major and they finished 1-3, along with a refreshed Entropiq roster that has failed to show much, plus the MICHU and Lekr0 led, IKLA.
These aren’t the only teams who failed to qualify, but they’re the ones that stood out.
If you want to see all the details yourselves, then see Bracket A here, and Bracket B here.
It feels like we might be talking about donk quite a bit this year.
Spirit kicked off their run in the RMR qualifier with a loss, but it was immaterial - because donk decided he wanted some stickers, ASAP.
He ended the Closed Qualifier B as the highest rated player, beating out names like NertZ, XANTARES and blameF en route to the RMR.
That rating was largely powered by an absurd 23-6 - in 15 rounds - against MOUZ on map one in Spirit’s qualifying game, which also saw Jimpphat end on a singular kill. One prodigy seems better than the other, in this one game sample size.
Elsewhere, Group A saw Cloud9 and NAVI go 3-0, with Group B’s 3-0 teams perhaps being a bit more surprising. Eternal Fire have been on the rise, in fairness, but AMKAL’s 2-1 win over Astralis wasn’t on many people’s radars.
Astralis went through 3-1 regardless, with Spirit and ex-ThunderFlash (no idea), mirrored by SAW, BetBoom and VP in the other group. SAW took down fnatic in a BO1 to kick off their run, and two-zipped 9 Pandas to qualify. Fair play.
Rounding out those groups were OG, fnatic and 9 Pandas in Group A, with Heroic, KOI and MOUZ sneaking in at 3-2 in Group B - but that’s not all.
The remaining 2-3 teams had a last chance saloon: the decider bracket. Counter-intuitively, five of the six teams go through, for reasons unbeknownst and not-understood by us. 3DMAX scraped through in fifth place, beating out poor sYnck, who miss out.
Preasy, Nexus, PERA, ECSTATIC and 3DMAX live on - just about - to the next stage.
