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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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And Aleksib is the head of the barbecue.
NAVI are frying, Astralis are making some bizarre moves, FaZe are stumbling and Vitality and Falcons face off for the first time. 2024 is HERE.
Are NAVI finally cooking?
It’s taken a little while for NAVI to get up to speed, in truth. It wasn’t ever going to be a quick one — jL and iM were a little wet behind the ears, s1mple was clearly distracted and replacing him is near impossible, and b1t is inconsistent.
Led by Aleksib, who for all his strengths has been removed from every team he’s been on for the last few years, there was as much potential for ridiculousness as there was sublimity.
There have been moments in time where NAVI have flattered to deceive, but it seems to all be coming together just in time for the run-up to the first CS2 Major.
They kicked off Group C with a simple win over a Complexity team who, until now, had been very dangerous on CS2 (more on that in a sec), but followed up with a very impressive win over G2 to fire themselves straight into the Group Final.
Despite some whispers of b1t leaving, that Aleksib quashed as ‘hopefully being a meme’, it was the mercurial Ukrainian who entered sicko mode (do the kids still say that?) and ripped holes in the G2 defence over and over again. 40 headshots in those 58 kills, by the way.
Normal.
He wasn’t alone, of course - iM rolled it back to his Major form, and w0nderful was his normal, stable, dominant self. He often goes under the radar, the AWPer, but he never seems to make a mistake.
NAVI might finally be here, ready to win it all, if their stars continue to sparkle like this.
Or, well, a group stage at BLAST Premier. But even the longest journey starts with a single step.
Complexity, for what it's worth, got spanked by an NIP team that got just nine rounds against G2. hallzerk missed some shots he really shouldn’t have, floppy looked a bit lost and even ELiGE wasn’t as sharp as he can be.
We will say, k0nfig dropped a 1.54. He does do that sometimes to the best teams in the world.
Like, twice a year anyway.
You know what this new, galavanting, talent-stacked Astralis roster needed?
A bit of North.
They’ve recruited ruggah as their head coach, an old-time partner of MSL whom he helped to their famous win at EPICENTER Moscow 2016. He also lost a few group stages at OG, where he’s been since 2020. Ignore that bit.
He also played alongside device in his first ever team, Copenhagen Wolves, all the way back in 2011 — check out this interview of the pair by Richard Lewis — and featured in the now GOAT contender’s 2015 Valve player profile.
So, definitely a decision by Astralis management. Just like Buzz. Yep. Nothing to see here.
But, let’s be fair. Even if OG’s results don’t speak of much to ruggah’s game lately, there’s clearly a sense of authority behind the bearded Dane.
This new roster is not a typical Danish stack — it’s a mission of putting all the best players they could find into one lineup. Fuck the roles, it’s 2023. Good players win games.
And veteran coaches like ruggah make sure good players keep their heads down, and egos shackled.
There’s just one catch. In typical Astralis fashion, they’re refusing to buy ruggah out of OG, instead waiting for his contract to expire on April 1.
That means no ruggah until after the home Copenhagen Major, which should be Astralis’ No. 1 goal for the year, let alone the season. Are they sure it’s not an April Fools?
Instead, ‘assistant coach’ (analyst is fine, guys) R0nic will stand beside blameF’s snakey superteam as they embark on their tilt at restoring Astralis’ crown.
ruggah also wasn’t their first choice: Xizt seemed set to follow stavn and jabbi from Heroic before negotiations broke down, according to HLTV.
But there are worse pickups. Let’s see if he joins the Major winners or just another burning wreck of an Astralis Major campaign come April 1.
Illustration byFuffy, Source: PGL
We’re back in the swing of things, with RMR stories galore, Asian team names to smile at, BLAST games to draw sweeping conclusions from and laughing at BIG. Get locked in:
No matter the opponent the Legion of Gamers stands strong. Unless it’s Team Liquid.
FaZe are historically slow starters, so it makes sense they start the year losing to GamerLegion. But that’s no excuse for having only one player with a positive rating on Overpass, especially with it being rain of all people. The newest FaZe recruit, frozen, had the worst time of it, sharing a 0.89 rating with karrigan over both maps.
Even their best friend, overtime, couldn’t save them.
On map 2 FaZe managed to push GL to OT by closing out the last 2 rounds. With FaZe’s OT track record, we wouldn't have blamed Snax’ merry bunch for packing it in. Instead, they limited FaZe to one OT round and closed out the series.
Fortunately for karrigan and co, they got another chance at it. frozen led the charge against a donk-less Spirit, scoring a 2+ rating and setting the team up for a rematch with GL.
But that’s just group B, let’s go up to group A where our #1 in the world… is in the lower bracket?
Despite easily beating OG (shocker) in their opener, Vitality is in a bit of hot water. Stabbi’s Astralis came out swinging and knocked ZywOo and friends straight down to the lower brackets, beating Vitality over 3 maps, embarrassing them 13:4 on the decider. It’s not just a fluke either, earlier on Astralis clipped the Falcons wings with ease.
The end result is Vitality facing old friends Magisk and zonic in the consultation final. Oh, the drama. If only it was for a real tournament.
That does leave us with one more group we’ve left unmentioned in this edition, and for good reason. Group D has been the straightforward group: VP annihilated BIG, C9 bullied Heroic, and in the winners game VP won the most dominant 2-1 series you’ll see. We’re writing this before Heroic vs BIG is even done, because it doesn’t matter, the group final will be VP vs C9 again. We’re asking for trouble, aren’t we?
If your favourite team has been eliminated, don’t worry. We’ll be doing this all over again in the showdown.
