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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Falcons can’t stop catching Ls.
It’s our last edition of 2024, and we’d like to thank you all for being along for the ride. It’s been a blast. Time to relax and get a break from Counter-Strike by watching our favourite YouTuber, Coffeezilla.
It’s the end of the year.
Santa Claus is lining up his nades ready to execute on your chimney, Rudolph is getting ready to go full YEKINDAR into the night sky, and 2025 is on the horizon.
That means there is no Counter-Strike right now, and for the next couple of weeks, there will be no TLDR.
We’ll be getting jolly and filling our tummies over Christmas and New Year, and we’ll be back with a bumper edition in 2025 covering the chaos of rostermania.
Intimidation, gambling, harassment, investigative journalism, and… Counter-Strike?
Coffeezilla, YouTube’s premier investigative journalist and scam buster, has released a new video (series) on CS gambling. Only Part 1 is live on YouTube, but Part 2 has already gone up on his Patreon, and let's say it’s not looking great. We’ll leave out lots of details, so please check out the video if you can.
Of course, not everyone has 25 minutes to watch a man talk to a CGI robot about CS gambling, so we’ll do our best to cover the important bits.
This story came onto Coffeezilla’s radar after Monarch, Owner of CSGOEmpire, the gambling website that stormed the Copenhagen Major stage, offered Coffee a “bribe” to investigate CSGORoll. If you remember the Copenhagen Major story, you’ll recall that that was sparked by their objection to CSGORoll’s sponsorship of G2. Hence why they “protested” during G2’s game with MOUZ. Take protest with a Major (ha) grain of salt.
But storming Major stages isn’t all this man has done.
He’s intimidated streamers sponsored by Roll, sending threatening DMs and, for one specific streamer, full thrusting. Monarchs’ goons spread flyers around his hometown with his face on it, calling him a scammer who scams children – which coming from another CS Casino owner, is quite rich. They even sent 18 people to his house to march around it and chant, like, again, “protestors.”
If it isn’t already obvious, these are mafia intimidation tactics. And their implications are big for the scene.
While most of this won’t be news to a lot of the CS community, it never reached mainstream attention. Meanwhile, this video already has over 2 million views at the time of writing, and we promise you most of those people don't know what a fire serpent is. The last time we had this much attention on CS and Gambling was 8 years ago during the Syndicate and TmarTn drama, and the consequences that had for Valve and skin trading are still felt to this day. Even if it was much less… serious.
We’ll be keenly watching where this story goes because it might have wide-reaching implications for our game. Won’t somebody think of the Skin investors D:
Oh Falcons, it’s happening again, isn’t it?
The Saudi org picked up Magisk and zonic from Vitality and it was meant to be the start of a new era in CS, but that one didn’t quite work out for them.
NiKo did a U-turn, plenty of other players declined them, and they ended up with the core of ENCE without their star. Oh, and BOROS. We all know how well that went.
Fast-forward through one depressing year and somehow Falcons are still in the exact same place. Well, they’re actually in a worse place, they at least had five players this time last year.
With NiKo now basically confirmed to be finally joining the team, many had expected that the big spenders would look to bring m0NESY with him. Thanks to a report from neL and HLTV, we now know that doesn’t seem to be happening. At least not yet, anyway.
The Baby GOAT is G2’s prized asset, and the organisation has stressed that they won’t be entertaining any offers for him, but things can change very quickly in Counter-Strike. His contract ticks down every day, and if he wants to reunite with NiKo, eventually they’ll be forced to sell or accept losing him for nothing. Rough.
Of course, to the pure joy of many CS fans, m0NESY not being able to join Falcons also means that another deal has fallen through. The deal would have seen Jimpphat also join the team, providing Falcons with one of the deadliest cores in the world had they both joined.
The Finn is still bound to be one of the hottest prospects in the upcoming rostermania, and he’s already hinted at his MOUZ exit.
Given that it seems he was only heading to Falcons if m0NESY was to join, we have an idea about which org he might be calling up to see about a move.
For Falcons, it seems like 2025 may be another tough year for them. It’s clear they never got close to the roster that they would’ve liked to have had, and it might take them a while to pull something competitive together for 2025, too.
That is, unless they’ve pulled off some transfer wizardry. They’ve been given a wildcard invite to BLAST Bounty, meaning they need to have a core that was either a top eight team or won a tier one competition in the last year.
If they haven’t signed anyone, they could fulfill that criteria by reinstating some of the players they have on their bench. It might go a little differently with a true star in NiKo, but we have our reservations about that.
All we know is that we feel very sorry for the Bosnian for stepping into this mess.
What’s the difference between Imperial fe and Falcons?
Falcons required a ‘wildcard’ invite to go to BLAST Bounty.
BLAST Bounty is an attempt to spice up the BLAST circuit that, in our opinion, had become a bit bland - and honestly, we love it. The lowest seeds get to pick who out of the big teams they play, and the better team you beat, the more money you get.
Falcons can just pick Astralis, straight up, game one. That’s hype.
That’s the long and short of it; our only issue is that 30 of the 32 spots are decided through direct invites, which is a bit boring on paper. It has thrown up one big cat amongst the pigeons, though, in a women’s team.
Imperial fe are far and away the best women’s team (prev. Nigma Galaxy, which might ring some bells), and this gives them a chance to see how much they’ve progressed and how good they can be.
FURIA fe were also invited, but FURIA’s ‘main’ roster is taking the spot, as one might expect.
Falcons are currently the only one out of two wildcard invites, as BLAST’s rules for it are as follows:
“[The team] includes at least 3 players who individually were members of a top 8 Roster on the VRS at any time during the preceding 12 months or, [The Team] has won any Tier 1 event in the 12 months preceding the announcement of the Wildcard Invite.”
Apparently, only Falcons meet that criteria, which is weird given they don’t have any players, but whatever. They’re going to get invited to every event no matter what. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
That last spot should be confirmed by the end of the year, supposedly. We’d like to see Rare Atom or TYLOO or something, but it’ll probably be NIP, somehow.
The full list of invitees can be found here.
This one is a sad episode of Overtime on Inferno; not because it’s longer and you have to spend more time with us, but because it’s the last time our beloved host Logan will be doing his thang on it. And by it, we mean the podcast. And by ‘his thang’ we mean hosting. That was probably obvious.
We wish Logan all the best in his future endeavours, and you might see him back at some point as a guest, but for now, he’s off to build thestratbook.gg, which is all about LoL and VALORANT. Check it out! If you’re into all that.
Sam, or AN1MO, who’s been 3rd-wheeling it for the past few episodes will be taking over the hosting duties and continue the pod with aizyesque when we return after the player break.
FlyQuest has announced aliStair’s benching in a tweet so bland, it’s almost hard to believe. Sure, he might not have been a stellar performer, but at least throw the man some kind words.
It’s honestly surprising how the Australian AWPer managed to hang on to his spot for this long, but then again, YEKINDAR is still playing for Liquid, so maybe it’s not that shocking.
Yeah, they won ESL Challenger Atlanta 2024 with a solid 1.12 rating from the guy, but when tougher opposition came around, his performance dropped off a cliff. aliStair posted a 0.98 rating in the Asia RMR and 1.01 rating in the Major’s Opening Stage – numbers you simply can’t afford from your AWP in the big leagues.
It will be intriguing to see who the team picks to take up the big green and potentially elevate them to new heights in 2025.
Here’s hoping it’s someone who can actually hit some shots.