Google ‘Astralis coach bug’ to find out more. Elsewhere: BIG won ESL Atlanta and there’s one hell of a big tournament starting today, damn it!

FlyQuest

2·1

BIG

FaZe

Today

FURIA

NAVI

Today

Imperial

Liquid

Today

CoL

G2

Today

Heroic

E.Fire

Today

Astralis

• Just one or two? How can we pick just a few games from that list? They’re all eminently watchable. Astralis imploding? G2 with expectations? Americans? These are all teams we like watching lose.

Unfit to lead

No one is safe from br0vid-19.

Amid a storm of controversies, Astralis CEO Nikolaj Nyholm has officially stepped down from his role, remaining as a board member.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the drama, here are the main takeaways:

• The 2023 ‘stabbi’ situation left a stain on Astralis’ reputation, as questions arose about their conduct in the transfers of jabbi and stavn from HEROIC
• More recently, cadiaN was allowed as an emergency sub at BLAST Premier Fall Final, citing br0’s unfitness to play, despite the player’s agent claiming he was fully healthy

Astralis have been burning bridges across the CS scene, damaging relationships with orgs and TOs. It’s hard not to question the management’s decisions in the past couple of years, especially given their lack of competitive success.

Was it all worth it? They haven’t come close to reaching the heights they once commanded, and even the ex-CEO admits it.

Time will tell if the organization can bounce back and regain its status as a household name under new leadership.

The world has flipped upside down

Not to be mean, but what the hell are FlyQuest doing in a grand final?

Somehow, the answer is ‘winning it, ya limey prick’. Uncalled for, but I get it.

Honestly, we have no idea what just happened. FlyQuest and BIG seemed to be in a competition for who could manage to lose the final. There was a round that rivalled some of the worst you’ll ever see - and this clip doesn’t even show aliStair missing a freebie to start it off.

syrsoN flat-out refused to hit an AWP shot on Dust 2, somehow. INS, FlyQuest’s best player by a mile, barely bothered to show up. Krimbo had 32 kills in a map loss. He was BIG’s shining light, but let’s talk about FlyQuest’s.

We ragged on aliStair for missing that free kill, but he was superb on the CT side of Vertigo and pulled off the clutch of the event to win Dust 2 - and the trophy - for FlyQuest.

He was assisted by dexter, who somehow was comfortably the better IGL both as a caller and an individual than tabseN. It was like a weird psychedelic Aussie wet dream. dexter outcalling Europeans, Vexite and aliStair fragging out, and FlyQuest winning.

For BIG, it’s another disappointment; or at least it would be, if anyone cared any more. Nobody expects anything of them, so they weren’t really disappointing.

SAW, however, lost to BIG and FlyQuest (albeit the latter was in a BO1), which is essentially unforgiveable for a team who are now considered to be a good one. If FlyQuest beat BIG in a BO3, you probably should be.

We’re being a bit harsh to FlyQuest, really. They won, fair and square, and beat everyone they came up against. Quite frankly, they were the best team there.

God that feels weird to write.

Yeah the boys?

IEM Rio: Now NAVI proof

Today marks the start of IEM Rio 2024, our yearly visit to Brazil. The fans are notorious, the Counter-Strike is plenty, and the finals are best of five.

Okay, that last one just happened, but we thought you should hear about it. It’s not just IEM Rio either, that will be the case for all of the EPTM (Basically big ESL) events. The reason is that they want fans to get more content. But we know the real reason, it’s not ad money, and it’s not content for the fans. No, in reality, it’s to nerf NAVI. They can’t win a bo3 final, if those don’t exist.

Right, IEM Rio!

For most of today starting at 4 pm CEST there’ll be 2 games every hour until Group A’s lower bracket games are decided. More than enough content for anyone to consume in a day. Big games also headline both groups, with Team Liquid vs Complexity in Group A, and the newly cadiaN-led Astralis being tested by Eternal Fire.

That still leaves us with home teams to address.

If you want to see how the Brazilians do at home, FURIA, paiN, and Imperial are all placed in group A. Which is a bit lame, since that means it’s going to be very tough to see all the BR teams play in the playoffs. Though it’s hard anyway, PaiN plays MOUZ, Imperial plays NAVI, and FURIA plays FaZe. Hey, that last one doesn’t seem so bad. Too bad that if they win that, they either play PaiN or MOUZ. We can’t believe they didn’t put them in Group B, for Brazil.

In any case, we’ve got good CS coming up this week, and we can’t wait. Let’s hope at least one of the BR teams makes the playoffs. For atmosphere’s sake.

👨‍🌾 We’re all just looking for Armory stars

• m0nesy and snax own in Brazilian MM. At least snax can frag somewhere.
• This server has rules for Armory farming.

📈 Invest in yourself

• flamie has founded his own organisation. And he’s only 27?!
• How are NAVI winning so much? Heccu seems to know why.

🙈 Mo updates, mo problems

• While not new, why don’t we have a server browser yet, Valve?
• Packet loss is a hot topic lately, but maybe your router is causing issues…? Who knows at this point.