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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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Everyone’s favourite serpent is back on screen.
It might be a quiet week, but you can still hate watch NIP and s1mple. Time waits for no hater!
Alright, let’s not waste time here.
There’s one reason you should care about ESL Challenger Katowice. Actually, there’s two, and the second one is: what choice do you have when there’s no other big tournaments on?
The first reason, however, is you get to watch s1mple against some also-rans.
Falcons’ games at ESL Challenger might be the most watched Challenger games ever because it’s sort of a win-win. Either you get to watch the greatest player ever in CSGO excrete on some nerds (we keep it PG here) or you get one of the most satisfying hate-watches ever.
s1mple is back and he’s been confined to playing teams like B8 and Legacy, as well as some half-decent teams. Actually, now that we mention it, this is quite a stacked ESL Challenger.
We just wanted to watch s1mple play vs. Rooster, not see if he’s actually still good against SAW, Eternal Fire, and paiN. Falcons’ group has both SAW and Eternal Fire, so there’s a pretty decent chance that s1mple won’t even make playoffs.
Of course, that’s assuming SAW are any good now that Mr Rice has moved on. They can’t be much worse than Falcons.
Group A is rounded out by B8, who can probably count themselves unlucky. They’re a solid team who can cause an upset, but they’re probably not getting out of that one.
Group B, on the other hand, is deeply uninteresting for non-Brazilians. MIBR, paiN and Legacy are joined by Monte as we get to find out which of the three Brazilian teams is best. Frankly, who cares.
Sorry, lads, we’re just a bit bored of paiN now. Kind of sounds like the start of a Lily Allen song?
This all starts this morning as you read this email newsletter, so if you’re quick enough you might be in time to watch Falcons. Get out of bed!
The snake man himself is back, this time at a big boy event. No offense to small boy events.
Mauisnake returns to BLAST, and it’s not just groups this time. Some of you might remember that BLAST was the company that gave Maui his first gig back last summer. Well, clearly, they were impressed with what he delivered there (or at Espoo) since he’s now come back to do their flagship event. This is great news because we’re starting to like what desks are turning into.
When one man’s inability to act normal opened up a desk spot, we got quite excited about who could fill in. But we were equally worried.
Fortunately for Counter-Strike fans all across the globe, STYKO is filling that space at BLAST. That gives us a desk lineup of Mauisnake, Pimp, Freya, and STYKO, which is pretty fire. There’s some real personality there, unlike the sea of sameness that desks are at risk of becoming sometimes.
Even the casters are great: Anders & Henry and Scrawny & launders will draw no complaints from us.
All that’s left now is the Counter-Strike, and with a million dollars on the line, these teams better deliver. Especially since it’s the circuit's first visit to Singapore, at least in our memory.
Hopefully, that means everyone shows up for it. If the desk is bad now, we’ll personally file a complaint for making us look silly. Don’t make us do it.
BLAST Premier World Final begins on Thursday next week.
There’s a bit of a calm before the storm in Counter-Strike right now, but that’s where we get a little silly to compensate. In this week’s Overtime on Inferno, our wonderful hosts M3CHATR0NIC and aizyesque get into:
The Thunderpick World Championship has kicked off, and you might be asking “Who cares?” Normally you’d be right, but this one is special.
s1mple returned to the competitive stage, and that’s about the only reason anyone would bother tuning in to the misery that is Falcons’ CS. Over 100k people to be exact.
Don’t get us wrong. We loved seeing that the classic s1mple magic was still there, but having to play a 1v5 every single round against 3DMAXand Virtus.Pro probably didn’t help.
Sure, we’re not talking about just any player, but it says a lot about the team’s state when your standout performer is someone who hasn’t played competitively in nearly a year.
But enough with the Falcons slander; we’ve got to save some heat for the RMR.
Now, onto the teams that played proper CS – if you’re here for NiP, we apologize. The MongolZ, HEROIC, and BIG dominated Group B, C, and D, respectively, with relative ease.
Sorry, we lied. We just can’t resist talking about NiP –
After getting trashed by the JANO retirement home back in Espoo, the Ninjas are in dire need of a win. Securing a spot in the main event could be a (small) step on their (long) road to redemption.
Four spots in the Thunderpick LAN Finals in Berlin are up for grabs, with the following Play-In qualifying matches being played today:
