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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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BO3s are hard for Australians, apparently
The Major is now underway, and although we may have criticised the rather CCT-nature of Stage 1 (of 3), it’s actually been a pretty decent watch.
HEROIC are really good, btw, but you’d know that already if you watched the podcast.Maybe its time for your first watch/listen?
Why are you here?! Did you not read the sign?
Well, it’s too late now. You’ve crossed the point of no return.
Unfortunately, you’ve now entered a realm where the CS is so catastrophically bad it’s only rivaled by the chaos of our own weekend PUGs.
We’ll do our best to make it as painless as possible. See you on the other side.
Stage 1 of the Austin Major is still underway, but the first pair of teams have already been sent packing without a single win to their name. The teams that pulled off such feat were Fluxo and Metizport – which, honesly, isn’t much of a surprise.
It’s no coincidence that 80% of Pick’ems had Fluxo finishing 0-3. Just look at their lineup. You can’t expect much from a team whose most notable players are arT and kye.
The first two games told the full story, as Fluxo couldn’t even crack double digits in their losses to FlyQuest and Complexity.
In the eliminating BO3, they faced a legitimate contender for the title of worst team at the Major. Fluxo and Chinggis Warriors went head-to-head in a painfully rough series, though it still didn’t quite reach the lows of NIP vs. AMKAL. In the end, the ‘MongolZ at home’ proved to be the less terrible team, taking the Nuke decider and surviving to fight another day.
In the other 0-3 spot sits the Swedish squad, whose performance was surprisingly poor. Not because anyone expected them to advance or anything close to that, but because we at least thought they could win a map.
Metizport managed to win a grand total of five rounds in their opening BO1s against Wildcard and TYLOO, setting the stage for what was a complete disaster of a Stage 1. Across the four maps they played, they only broke the five-round mark once. That’s just catastrophic.
Their final BO3 against Imperial brought the inevitable result: Metizport managed to push the first map of Nuke into OT but then quickly crumbled with a 13-2 loss on Dust2.
To be fair, what can you expect when L00m1 is your AWPer? Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh, as no one on this team posted a rating anywhere near competitive. The highest across their four maps was adamb’s abysmal 0.87. At least they’ve got someone else to root for.
Okay, we’re all done. Good, you made it through in one piece. See, that wasn’t so bad.
Logan’s sticking around for the Major, which we know you love to see. Unfortunately, you’ll also have to deal with the return of Jack. Not everything can be good.
In this extra episode of Overtime on Infernowe get into.
We’ve been quite mean about the teams in this Stage of the Major recently, so allow us to be nice for a moment.
We’ve genuinely had a good time watching these games, and names like zweih and nicoodoz hitting banger after banger has been a big contributing factor towards that.
nicoodoz and OG have especially been a joy to watch. Chr1zN is the latest to come from the MOUZ NXT talent pipeline, and let us tell you, that kid is going right the way to the top. He’s got hands, he’s a great fragger, he might just be the man to replace karrigan.
If he ever retires.
OG, or rather, nicoodoz, blitzed Complexity in their opening game. If you didn't catch it live, you should go and check it out in the match highlights.
zweih has also brought plenty of positivity. We’ve somehow enjoyed watching Nemiga games, and it’s all down to him. Like OG, they’re now through to Stage 2 after winning in the 2-1 bracket.
We’ve also had a great time with BetBoom, but that’s mainly because we’re big fans of Boombl4. Much love, (former) big man.
It’s not all positive though.
Complexity absolutely stunk it up in Austin, and we really don’t care that they didn’t have hallzerk. They’re out of the event after losses to OG, NRG, and TYLOO, with their sole win coming against Fluxo.
Imperial were also disappointing. They picked up a decent result recently by winning that event that took place in some Buenos Aires subway, but as VINI said in his interview with BLAST: “We qualify for tournaments, go to them, we lose at them, we suck.”
Yeah, that about sums it up.
Chinggis Warriors also went out 1-3 and couldn’t live up to their wicked team name.
For the second Major in a row, FlyQuest have gone 2-0 in the BO1s and then collapsed and found themselves in the 2-2 games.
If you can’t do the quick maths, that means they’ve lost five BO3s in a row – at Majors.
Sorry, Aussies, but that’s a joke within itself. We don’t even have a punchline.
They’ll play TYLOO in the 2-2 games, who we expected to see in the 2-2 bracket. We now expect TYLOO to beat them in said 2-2 bracket, but that’s purely because JamYoung is the greatest player to ever grace Counter-Strike. JamYoung hive, rise up.
Joining them in the 2-2 bracket are NA team NRG and “NA” team Wildcard. For NRG, we’d consider this a positive result, but for Wildcard, we’re honestly a little disappointed. They were unlucky to lose two OTs against BetBoom, but their collapse against B8 in the 2-0 game was a bit of a shame.
NRG will be facing Lynn Vision in their do-or-die game, who realistically, they should be beating. But this is NA CS, so absolutely anything could happen.
As for Wildcard, they face Legecay. We expect Wildcard to win that one, but we do have a slight hope Legacy wins it. It will be really funny to see the BESTIA fans start acting up again, and that’s the kind of chaos we’re here for.
HEROIC’s IGL talks about how a friend got him hooked on CS, the weirdest reactions he’s had to being a pro gamer, and the unreleased banger that gets him locked in for deathmatch.
When did you start playing CS?
I started playing in 2014-2015, somewhere around there. Around the time that NIP won the Major in Cologne 2014, I think it was.
It was actually a friend who introduced me. We didn't have anything to play, and he said 'I found this game' and then we bought it, and we just kept on playing.
If you weren't a CS pro, what job would you imagine yourself having?
Good question. I've asked myself this a number of times recently, and I honestly don't know. I think I've played CS for almost 10 years, and I couldn't imagine myself doing something else, actually. So, I can't answer, really.
It's kind of crazy you say 'recently' considering how well CS has been going for you recently.
Yeah, it's just like people have asked me, and then you ask yourself that question. When you don't have the answer yourself, you just think more about it, you know?
When you tell people that you're a professional gamer, what's the strangest reaction you ever got to that?
I think the question that I get the most is like 'can you make money out of this?'. Like yeah, people make a lot of fucking money on it but... it's probably that. People don't believe that it's an actual job that you can actually make a living out of. So, it's probably that.
Just wait until they see the sticker money, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Do you have any pre-game rituals?
I think I've actually recently started doing a bit of visualization, which I haven't done before. Drink a bit of caffeine also, just to feel more energized. And just some breathing exercises. That's the thing I'm doing right now.
How much is a can of Monster?
I know in Sweden it's like 25 SEK. Should be like… probably three dollars?
Have you got a favorite song to deathmatch to?
There is one. I don't know, it's not even released. It's like an unreleased song from Playboy Carti, which is called 'Tundra' on Spotify. And it's like one of these really hype songs you know, you just feel it a lot.
From any of the teams you've ever been on, which player would you choose to win a 1v1 clutch for the fate of the world?
Oh, good question. Probably SunPayus, I guess. I think he's the one I would choose.
If you were stranded on a desert island with one of your current teammates, which teammate would you pick?
I think that would probably also be SunPayus. I think he's really funny. He just makes... He's just so energetic all the time, and you would not have a bad time with him.
So there are no thoughts about survival. It's just like, 'nah, I'll just take the vibes'.
Yeah, exactly. It's the vibes, you know.
Who would you least want to be on a desert island with from your team?
That's a bit trickier one. Probably tN1R because he barely speaks English, so you wouldn't really talk with him.
If you could own a house located on any CS map, which map would you choose?
Maybe... I can tell you which one it isn't and it's Dust2, at least. Probably it would be... maybe Ancient would be cool. In the jungle, you know?
I can see that, I can see that. So finally, then, are you a cat person or a dog person?
Cat, easily. I've had a cat my whole life.
It turns out being a dead team is still better than being FlyQuest.
In fairness, it’s also better than being any other team (bar B8, if you’re going to be pedantic) in the first stage of the Major. You can draw your own conclusions about the quality of the teams from that, or you can just believe that HEROIC might just be quite good.
It doesn’t really matter that your AWPer is leaving if tN1R goes 61-40, as it happens.
HEROIC outclassed FlyQuest in a 2-0 game and booked a spot in the next stage – to the surprise of nobody – but it’s nice to not be let down by a favourite every so often.
HerOIC also smacked NRG 13-5 and the Wholesome Chungus 100 Warriors (or Chinggis Warriors as the Danish website calls them) 13-7 to make the whole thing look a bit easy.
Maybe it was.
They were joined by B8, which you’d know if you were paying attention at the start of the piece where we called you pedantic. Or if you watched the Major, which you should be doing. Obviously.
B8 kept it close vs. Imperial but were impressive in taking down an OG team who have looked very solid, before moving on to face Wildcard in a 2-0 game.
Sorry, we mean Amouranth’s team. (That link is SFW, don’t worry)
Amouranth, channeled through the body of the strapping young Swede, susp, powered Wildcard to a map one win, but – ironically enough, given the opening to this paragraph – it was npl who topped the scoreboard for the series as B8 won out.
Because it sounds like nipple. If you read it out loud. Never mind.
He had plenty of help, though - headtr1ck won Dust2 almost on his own, and alex666 and esenthial both picked up over 100 ADR on Inferno. Actually, npl didn’t do a lot at all.
Guess he couldn’t stick out underneath that swimsuit.
Stage 2 probably won’t be so easy, but we’ve seen enough to be at least mildly optimistic about both teams. There’s still some very beatable teams in Stage 2, like… all of them. The best team is Falcons, and they have NiKo.
At a Major.
We all know what that means.
