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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
He achieved immortality before adulthood.
As the new best player in the world is crowned, a challenger emerges from the shadows… soon.
And we get to laugh at some terrible teams in the meantime.
While tier one is getting destroyed by donk, tier two is getting destroyed by itself.
BLEED, after failing to qualify for the RMR, lost a map to footballer Oleksandr Zinchenko, which prompted coach kassad to promise that “changes are coming.”
The team were rapidly picked up in the off-season ahead of the RMRs, so it should come as no surprise that changes follow their failure but it’s still a bad look for the new project.
Wings Up, meanwhile, have released their European players Blogg1s and kreaz and it turns out they didn’t even pay them.
“We found out they wanted to play with the Chinese lineup and that we could go home,” Bloggis told HLTV. “No one even came to say goodbye.”
Brilliant. What year is it again?
And, FURIA, — yes we’re including them in this tier two round up — lost in the BLAST Showdown qualifiers to lose another open qualifier and continue their horrible start to 2024.
It’s better news for TSM, whose results have picked up after signing controversial Swede, joel.
He was cleared from matchfixing charges in January, but few teams went after him despite his obvious talent. However, TSM’s gamble seems to be paying off, at least so far: he has a 1.43 rating in the last three months.
What we’re trying to say is that a lot is happening in tier two. And we’re not sure if any of it will ever make sense.
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No time to breathe, fellas and gals. The Major is starting.
Well, starting-ish. It’s kinda already started, in some ways, but the RMRs are right around the corner. Like, starting on Wednesday around the corner.
This sounds insane, but we promise there’s some merit to it — this is the biggest event of the year. The RMR, that is. Hear us out.
The money on offer for simply qualifying to the Major is enough to keep most tier 2 orgs running for a year alone, and for players it’s not only a massive financial boon, but you get your sticker in the game and get to be a part of the first CS2 Major.
Obviously the Major itself is kinda big, but… failure here is not an option.
This Wednesday, Valentines’ Day, we’re falling in love with the Major cycle again. Kicking off with FaZe vs 9 Pandas and VP vs SAW is a quiet start, but you can’t afford to miss a game in the RMR. Anything can happen.
NAVI take on KOI and G2 meet Into The Breach, who surely can’t do it again. We mean G2. They surely can’t bottle another Major.
Eternal Fire and NIP make up the closest game in theory (though probably not in practice) at the same time as AMKAL vs Enterprise. AMKAL is basically old Entropiq-ish and Enterprise are a Polish team. We assume you don’t know either of them, because we didn’t.
BetBoom and fnatic square off in a fun one, with 3DMAX against Falcons to close the first round.
But wait! There’s another round of BO1s on the first day. In fact, there’s 16 BO1s on day one!
We love the Swiss System. We love the Major cycle.
Oh, and then there’s a load of other RMRs, with the Americas, Asia and a second European group still to come.
Christmas has come early. Or late. Depends on your perspective.
The IEM Katowice playoffs were set up perfectly: two quarters with two storylines and another pair of young and talented teams waiting on the other side. So how’d we get three stomps and a heartbreak?
The Hall of Heroes had its opening played by its last two victors, G2 and FaZe.
We thought this would be an absolute barn burner, but instead, G2 just got burned. FaZe cleared the G2 hurdle with absolute ease going 13-9 and 13-6 across two maps. NiKo looked like he lacked confidence, which is far from what you want to see from the 2nd best player in the world.
m0NESY was the only G2 player who left the game with dignity, even if HooXi’s calling wasn’t poor. Although he did average his customary 0.67 rating.
Luckily, the other quarter delivered some heat, both in the storyline and the game. Falcons vs ENCE or dycha on home soil standing off with the traitors that jumped ship.
At first we thought this would be a walkover like the other match as Falcons cruised on Mirage to an easy win. But Overpass was a whole other story. ENCE managed to dominate on the T-side, which is harder than finding hay in a needle stack. Yes, we intended that, think about it. That dominance was converted to the map win, and so we went to Nuke.
The decider was a real toss-up. Both teams managed to win more T rounds than CT, but it wasn’t enough. Falcons crushed dycha and the rest of ENCE’s dream of winning Katowice on home soil.
Too bad it was for nothing.
Team Spirit absolutely wiped the floor with Falcons in the first semi-final, with the team in green only mustering a total of 11 rounds over two maps. Donk did what he does best – deliver insane stats – while SunPayus was the only player who managed to put up a fight. Unfortunately for the crowd in the Spodek Arena, this wouldn’t even be the only blowout of the day.
FaZe did more or less the same to MOUZ in the second semi. ropz delivered the goods on Nuke and the rest of the FaZe followed suit, taking a dominant 3-13 win. Map two was a masterclass from rain, and despite MOUZ mounting a “comeback”, the dominant 2-10 start to the map was enough for FaZe to close 11-13.
Katowice now had its finalists: the new challengers and the old kings.
We’re not sure what spurred this into action (cough), but the GOAT might be on his way back after the Major.
Well, maybe he’s not the GOAT — we’ll get to that. Give us a sec.
s1mple is coming back.
We knew he would eventually. You don’t go out with a whimper when you’ve done what he’s done, when you’re the guy he is, and when you’re the best in the world.
And the scene might just need it more than ever.
He spoke to BanKs before the IEM Katowice final, and confirmed he’s on his way back — which must have been music to Cloud9’s ears. Nobody is more desperate for s1mple than… 2021 NAVI without s1mple.
Realistically, he could pick any team in the world to join when he comes back.
Well, except maybe one…
donk is the best player in the world.
It sounds like a bold claim, but in truth it’s harder to deny it than accept it. He’s just finished the event with the tied-highest big event rating we’ve ever seen. On his arena debut.
Every time a barrier seemed to be erected in his way, he Fosbury flopped it with clear daylight. Could he do it on LAN? Yeah, he smacked everyone. Could he do it against FaZe? Yeah, easily.
Could he do it in an arena? With aplomb. Could he do it in a Grand Final, against FaZe, in the Spodek, in his debut event?
The real question is, could FaZe do it against donk?
82 kills, by the way. In three maps. None of which went to overtime. It’s MR12. He played 62 rounds.
We could talk about the game, but it broke down to nothing more than just witnessing greatness. donk started with 16 kills in the first eight rounds, and never stopped.
He routed them on Nuke, was a bit quieter on Mirage as sh1ro stepped up to match him, and then earnt his crown on Overpass. In a 13-3 win — against FaZe in a grand final, remember — he dropped 26.
He ended the event with some of the most obscene stats you will ever see. He averaged a 1.70 rating, 1.11 kills per round, a multikill more than once every three rounds, an opening kill every four rounds, 110 ADR, and a 1.80 K/D.
It’s IEM f-ing Katowice, and he’s made it look like Russian Betting Company Jungle Bash Mad Vibes 2024 or something.
We have never, ever seen a phenom like this before. This is beyond wunderkind territory. This is beyond cultural impact. This is beyond anything we could have imagined.
This kid is the best in the world, and if someone is going to stop him, we cannot wait to see that.
Team Spirit won IEM Katowice at a canter. This is terrifying.
Final standings:
1st 🇷🇺 Spirit - $400.000
2nd 🇪🇺 FaZe Clan - $180.000
3-4th 🇪🇺 Falcons - $80.000
3-4th 🇪🇺 MOUZ - $80.000
5-6th 🇵🇱 ENCE - $40.000
5-6th 🇪🇺 G2 Esports - $40.000
7-8th 🇩🇰 Heroic - $24.000
7-8th 🇪🇺 NAVI - $24.000
