Loading…
GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
We’re not sure if you’re aware, but Vitality are really good.
Falcons are good, really good. Vitality are just that much better.
The latest edition of their burgeoning rivalry may not have been in front of an Aussie crowd, but that didn’t stop it from delivering. Maybe the trilogy match should happen in a subway…
For years, MOUZ has always been considered budget FaZe, but no more.
Gone are the days when MOUZ will be seen as a glorified academy project for FaZe, and even though FaZe got the better of MOUZ just last year, we’re pretty sure those days will stay firmly in their place in history.
Don’t let the Dust2 13-11 fool you, MOUZ always felt in control in their quarter-finalmatch against karrigan and co. Sure, FaZe may have gone on a lengthy round-winning streak, but MOUZ won when they decided they were going to. This xertioN 1v4 sums up just how much of a mess FaZe are right now.
Mirage was an absolute drubbing, too. Jimpphat was a menace on the T side, going 21-2 to limit FaZe to just two rounds. He didn’t let up in the second half either, adding six more to his tally as MOUZ sunk their long-time rivals 13-2.
That Mirage game wasn’t the only 13-2 in the quarter-finals at BLAST Rivals. Spirit also gave Wildcard a dressing down on Dust2. A scoreline that lies within the realms of expectation given the gulf between the two teams, alongside the 13-7 that came on Anubis, we had some hope for Spirit’s chances in the semis.
Boy, were we wrong.
As it happened, Spirit were just no match for Vitality in the next round. Even a month away to rest and practice couldn’t give Spirit enough juice to win a single map. They were blown out of the water with 13-8, 13-9 defeats on Mirage and Nuke.
MOUZ didn’t fare much better in their own semi-final, although they did manage to push Falcons to OT on map one, Nuke.
A far better outcome than at IEM Melbourne – this time they managed to make one of the maps competitive – but when Magisk even decides to turn up to work, it’s never going to be easy.
An eventual defeat that clearly took a lot out of MOUZ, Falcons secured their spot in the grand final with ease. m0NESY styled on them with 23 kills to send them packing at 13-6 on Dust2.
Now that the Counter-Strike scene is fully settled into the new system, teams are figuring out how to play the VRS game.
If you’re a tier 2 or even tier 3 team trying to get invites to hang out with the grown-ups, you’ve got to grind every ranked tournament you can find. Just look at NIP - they’re out here playing random $10k LANs in Sweden and the US, doing whatever it takes to squeeze out every last point.
That’s where events like FiReLEAGUE Buenos Aires 2025 and MESA Nomadic Masters Spring 2025 come into play, both gaining a lot more attention due to their beefier prize pools of $100k and $250k, respectively.
But in the jungle of tier 2 CS, you never know what kind of danger’s waiting around the corner…
Take the MESA Nomadic Masters in Mongolia, for example. The team list was mid, to put it nicely. HEROIC, BIG, B8, SAW, and a few other names you’ve probably never heard of.
But for the teams that made the trip to Ulaanbaatar, this tournament was a big deal. Winning it, or even just pulling off an upset, could give you a huge boost in the VRS.
That’s exactly what happened with JiJieHao. They came in, swept their opener against SAW, walked away with 166 points, and shot up 38 spots in the rankings. We’re still trying to figure out how a team that can beat NAVI one week gets rolled by a squad with 0SAMAS the next.
In the end, HEROIC secured one of the best trophies we’ve seen and jumped from 20th to 16th in the ranking. Doesn’t sound like much, but in this system, that small jump could be the difference between playing the IEM Cologne Play-In or watching it from home.
Same thing with FiReLEAGUE Buenos Aires 2025. The tournament you might have heard was played inside a subway station. Side note: sick setting for a CS event, don’t get us wrong, but it’s probably not very fun having a train roll by every 10 minutes and blocking your view.
Anyways, this one was a bit more modest, with Imperial, Sharks, BESTIA, and 9z in the mix. Imperial ended up taking the $50k first-place prize - and more importantly, secured 123 points, jumping from rank 44 to 27. That boost puts them in a great spot heading into the post-Major tournaments.
So, if there’s one good thing to come out of the VRS, it’s that it’s brought a whole new level of relevance to tier 2/3 tournaments, giving smaller TOs the chance to put their product on the map and reach a much wider audience.
A rematch of the IEM Melbourne final, palms dry, knees strong, arms light, tensions not really that high, could Falcons break the Vitality streak? One might have thought so at first.
The five-map final began on Inferno, with m0NESY dunking on the reigning champions with a 1.54 rating, and mezii bottoming out at 0.60. ropz and ZywOo held their own though, ropz’s consistency is stunning, if he keeps it up he may even be a top five player this year.
Vitality responded with back-to-back 13-6 wins on Dust2 and Train, with flameZ and mezii propelling the wins with 1.79 and 1.44 ratings, respectively. flameZ up until this point had been rather unassuming, but he showed up to take series point in fashion.
Mirage started to look like a stomp. With a 12-3 score in favor of Falcons, apEX was at one point going 2-14, but Vitality didn’t let go easily, playing unbreakable post-plants as a ZywOo 1v1 took it to overtime.
Falcons managed to lose the man advantage nine rounds in a row. That served as a catalyst for ZywOo and ropz to farm on their CT side, running a woodchipper on A site that the birds kept falling into. Gross.
m0NESY kept Falcons alive with a thermonuclear 35 kills and a gleaming 1v2 clutch to close out the map and force Nuke. TeSeS was also instrumental, delivering several multi-kills in the closing moments of regulation, and some more impact in overtime, setting the stage for another close final.
The final map opened with ZywOo and ropz getting a combined 30 kills, helping their team to a huge seven rounds from the notoriously difficult Nuke T side.
For Falcons, m0NESY had a weak start with only five kills, which would only increase to 13 by the time the final map had drawn to a close. Worse still for NiKo, the Bosnian ended the half with six kills and the map with eight, bottling the trophy in the process. We’ve seen this before.
Vitality won Nuke 13-8 to close out yet another first-place finish, extending their series win streak to 25 since defeat at BLAST Bounty in January. It’s no secret that Goliath has arrived. When will David make his appearance?
Here’s the full series recap:
Inferno: 🇪🇺 Falcons 13-9 🇪🇺 Vitality
Dust2: 🇪🇺 Vitality 13-6 🇪🇺 Falcons
Train: 🇪🇺 Vitality 13-6 🇪🇺 Falcons
Mirage: 🇪🇺 Falcons 16-14 🇪🇺 Vitality
Nuke: 🇪🇺 Vitality 13-8 🇪🇺 Falcons
This Vitality streak is nothing short of incredible. Made entirely in BO3s and BO5s, in a game with a punishing CT meta and an MR12 system that can quickly see games grip out of your grasp? For our money, it’s the best streak of all time.
And we haven’t even mentioned the part-time farmers NIP got to play.
They’re the best team in the world. That much is clear. But just how good are the teams behind them? Well, they’re very good. In most other eras of the game, they’d probably be the best team in the world in their own right. That’s a big part of why watching this era of Counter-Strike feels so special – the competition for trophies is fierce.
Or is it?
Given how close Falcons and MOUZ have now pushed Vitality, grand finals are at least delivering on the illusion of competition once more. That’s more than we could say about IEM Katowice and ESL Pro League. Vitality still win of course, but one day they’ll be beaten. We just don’t know when that day will be.
Vitality’s dominance is also making the events they don’t attend feel almost pointless. They’re now just courtesy trophies, available to those who are extremely good, but not quite good enough to dethrone the kings. They don’t even answer anything unanswered anymore. After Vitality, the three next-best teams are as follows: Falcons, MOUZ, Spirit. In that order.
And considering Spirit’s form against the other top four teams, they’re fortunate to still be in that tier.
After those four, truthfully, the competition looks bleak. Sure, there are teams like The MongolZ, Aurora, maybe even Liquid, FaZe, and NAVI, but do you really expect any of those teams to break the mould? We don’t.
The point is, Vitality are really bloody good. And they’re going to stay that way. Some time away to practice for Falcons or MOUZ might change some things, Spirit winning in Astana might even make them remember they like lifting trophies. But Vitality are still going to be the top dog.
They’re Goliath. We don’t yet see a David. There’s a massive gap between them and their chasers, and an even larger gap between those three teams and the teams chasing them.
Counter-Strike is ridiculously competitive right now, but maybe only if you’re into a mid-table battle. The first-place winners and the Champions League places are already locked in - Who’s going to force their way through to change that?
