We Made Astralis Bad Again, Ukraine has a new set of heroes, G2 are making it look worryingly easy and Spirit are not the same team from Katowice. Obviously.

G2

16·13

9Pandas

Astralis

11·13

Sashi

E.Fire

16·19

3DMAX

Passion UA

Today

BIG

Astralis

Today

B8

G2

Today

3DMAX

• Guess, we dare you: Two of those bottom three games are 2-0 games. One of them is an 0-2 game. If we didn’t give you the answer above by showing some of their other games, you’d be unable to guess which was which.

Clipped Wings and Rising Legions

EU RMR A finished as it started, with no surprises. Well, maybe some.

Last time on Dragon Ba- sorry we mean RMR A, we saw the obvious names win, and honestly, that didn’t change much. NAVI, FaZe, MOUZ, and Vitality made it through with relatively little effort, with their only losses being against one another. Cloud9 did go on a redemption run since last time, rebounding from their opener to go 3-1. But that’s it for interesting big team news.

Fortunately for us, and everyone else, some teams did the impossible.

GamerLegion, despite a 0-2 start, showed the grind that got them to the Major Final not so long ago. They went on a four-game win streak against some good teams, and Falcons, to qualify for the Major. You read that right: four games, as GL had to play BetBoom in a 3-2 decider for the final spot. We’re unsure if that’s the best system, but we have no better ideas.

Not everyone can be surprisingly good, though.

The other team to do the impossible was Falcons, mostly because they were impossibly bad. Their run was off to a solid start, beating ECLOT (who finished with a better record than them) and taking FaZe to OT. But anyone who watched that FaZe game could tell you it didn’t look good, and we saw that in their next match against SAW. Because they didn’t just lose, they got spanked, with s1mple failing to make an impact of any kind.

That loss set them up for the previously mentioned loss to GamerLegion. Which, in fairness, was a 2-1, but one of those where they just won their pick and lacked bite on the other maps.

It’s not much of a surprise that this is the end of this Falcons roster… speaking of which

RMR A Results:

3-0: Vitality, MOUZ

3-1: FaZe, Cloud9, NAVI

3-2: Fnatic, GamerLegion, Betboom*

*Not qualified due to decider game

Blowing up the nest

They finally did it.

Following the RMR disaster, Falcons have announced the benching of Snappi, dupreeh, and Maden, alongside the decision not to extend s1mple’s loan.

"Missing the Shanghai Major has been an incredibly disappointing and heartbreaking setback for us (…) We are now dedicating the time and effort needed to rebuild our roster for 2025”, the statement reads.

The decision to rebuild around Magisk and the subsequent moves aren’t shocking, but they raise an important question: what about zonic?

He was entrusted with full control to shape the team to his vision, yet he has profoundly failed to deliver. Our FACEIT 5-stack has more chemistry and cohesion than this team, and ultimately, that also falls on the coach's shoulders.

Here’s the TL;DR of the TL;DR: Falcons benched SunPayus, one of their best players, right before the most important tournament of the season, to bring in s1mple - who hadn’t been playing consistently for almost a year - only to bomb out of the RMR with a 1-3 score, leading to an inevitable rebuild in which s1mple is not included.

You really can’t make this up.

G3-1 (incoming)

“G2 definitely won’t go 3-0 and will lose to B8 at some point” - more brilliant insight from our finest mind. Well done mate.

• The most unpredictable group of all time
• To be fair we did say Wildcard were decent
• ICY is donk except good

There’s always one CIS team

Are you shocked that Passion UA are 2-0 right now? Because we aren’t.

Well, sort of.

In truth, we really did expect them to beat Virtus.pro. Let’s face it, VP are awful right now and have been for a while, and an electroNic bottom frag was about as predictable as Man City winning the Premier League. And yes, it pains us to say both of those things.

But beating Spirit? We didn’t have that on our bingo card. Partially because we hate bingo. Even though the Dragons are far from spitting fire on the server, they did demolish B8 in their opening game so we thought they meant business here, but we guess not.

Guess a little patriotism goes a long way.

Seriously though, full plaudits go out to Passion UA. Unlike Nemiga, they weren’t spoken very highly of in this week's Overtime on Inferno and they’ve proven our best minds wrong.

Considering they’re affectionately known as Passion UAV by some tier two gambling enjoyers, we’ll say that they don’t know anything either. We wonder why they have that nickname. Probably nothing.

Already an incredible achievement, they’ve now got one of the best chances any team has ever been given to go 3-0 in the RMR, a game against BIG.

Hang on, BIG are in this group?

The Germans haven’t exactly excelled so far this year and are nowhere near the level of Spirit, so this should be light work for them, right guys?

Let’s just hope for their sake that they’re not another 9z.

It’s all too easy for G2…

G2 are 2-0 in an easy group they’re expected to win.

Those who don’t know: :) Those who know: -.-

Admittedly, they got there by choking a 9-3 lead against 9 Pandas and winning in overtime, which is largely how one might expect G2 would win a BO1 against an underdog. Snax was top of the scoreboard, and NiKo was bottom. As you’d expect.

They’re playing 3DMAX for a spot in the next round, because they beat Eternal Fire in a very fun BO1. 3DMAX consistently looked like the better team, but EF pulled rounds out of their collective behinds, including a 3v5 at 13-15 down to keep the game going.

3DMAX, though, looked good. Worryingly for G2.

BIG beat Sashi and HEROIC, which are reasonable results. I mean, Sashi is a freebie. Nobody would lose to Sashi.

Those who know: D:

There are three Danish-majority teams in this group, and they have one win between them. It was Sashi, against Astralis. Yes, you are allowed to laugh. No, you don’t have to stop.

Astralis and TSM are 0-2, obviously. TSM at least lost to 3DMAX who look good, and VP who are… well, better than TSM. Astralis lost to 9 Pandas and Sashi.

It’s not looking good for them.

PARIVISION and B8 are also 0-2, with B8 coming up against Astralis and PARIVISION obviously playing against TSM. Those are not games we would want to play if we were Danish and needed a win.

PARIVISION did lose to NIP, though, so there’s a chance. NIP now play HEROIC, Spirit take on Aurora, 9 Pandas and Virtus.pro and Eternal Fire vs Sashi for the 1-1 games today.

We’re at boiling point. G2 are definitely losing to 3DMAX today. We’re certain. Lucky will drop 60.

We’re not certain. Nothing is certain in this group.

🐝 Vital(ity) signs stable.

• Last edition we left you flameZ leaving but actually not leaving Vita, and Spinx not leaving but actually leaving. Or something like that. Turns out apEX is also leaving but not leaving.
• We’re inclined to believe the organisation’s response, as flameZ seems a little too unserious about the entire situation.

🌏 Old friends from Asia

• A lot has changed in six years. s1mple’s no longer in NAVI, his graffiti they both have tattooed on their arm is gone along with Cache, and we have our first Major in Asia. Oh and we didn’t exist!
• TYLOO have moved JamYoung to the bench after their disappointing result in the RMR, which sees one of Asia’s staple organisations miss out on their home Major.

🧠 CC up in your EE (Creative Content up in your Everything Else)

• G2 advertising indestructable desks using NiKo? Now this is marketing.
• First of all: great job on the real life case. We also love the fact that you picked a knife to put in there that actually is in the Phoenix case. Although it’s probably illegal.