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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
It’s going to be scary, but not for us
TYLOO have won a million dollar event. In Counter-Strike. TYLOO. JamYoung bodied Astralis. We can’t believe it either. We’re buzzing. Shaking, even.
Oh, and that little thing called IEM Cologne begins this week. Our lives have taken a serious up-tick.
FISSURE Playground has been fun, but move over, lads, the big boys are back in town. IEM Cologne kicks off this week, and we’re honestly buzzing for it.
makazze. kyousuke. New G2. broky back on FaZe. NIP in a real event. Liquid continues to be awful. There’s a lot to look forward to.
Kicking off with the Play-In stage, names such as Astralis, FaZe, NIP, FlyQuest, FURIA, and TYLOO will all be looking to advance into the Main Stage. We’ll give you one guess as to which of those teams we hope makes it above the rest.
Now that jks has returned, FlyQuest will be an interesting prospect. But they’ll have to first get past a FURIA team that will be keen to prove their performance at FISSURE Playground is just a bump in the road and not a real concern.
As for FaZe, they have to play a terrible BIG squad and, if they win, a decent paiN team or a terrible Liquid team. So they should go through with ease, but we still have our doubts.
NIP, Astralis, and TYLOO should have no concerns.
The hardest squads they can play are 3DMAX, FURIA, and GamerLegion, respectively. Time and JamYoung should see TYLOO dispatch GamerLegion, while Astralis also seem to have raised their floor with HooXi. As for NIP, we just choose to believe they get past 3DMAX because we don’t like the French.
Of course, the real party begins when the big boys arrive.
Plenty of changes have occurred to the teams that received direct invites to the Main Stage, so we’re hoping it all gets a bit funky at the top. But we’ll still be putting our money on Vitality.
Something tells us Spirit will start slow, whilst Falcons might get off to a shit hot start and then capitulate as the year goes on - roles matter, people - we’re also very excited to see G2 they put together a really strong team in the off-season, and although they likely won’t win the event, we’d like to see some positive signs.
However, the team we’re most excited to see is Aurora.
We like Aurora, but we also accept they’re only good at one map. Or rather, were only good at one map. Anubis is gone now, and that will hurt them more than a lot of people realise.
But hey, at least the real Counter-Strike begins again next week.
There were plenty of players making their debuts at FISSURE Playground, and let’s just say it went pretty poorly for some of them.
It wasn’t all bad. Some pleasantly surprised us. But christ, we feel bad for Perfecto.
We’re not sure if we’re meant to start with the ugly, but we’ll do it anyway. After a promising performance at the Major, we thought VP might not actually be as bad as we thought they were.
We were wrong.
A torrid performance from them, neither Perfecto nor the rest of the team actually performed leaving us scratching our heads as to why he ever came back at all. Get out ASAP, mate.
New MIBR man Nicks was also torrid, but that’s nothing new for MIBR. A 0.75 rating is pretty pants, though. Maybe it’s worth considering a return to Fortnite?
Wildcard’s new signings also looked crap, but like VP, so did the rest of the team.
They made baffling moves over the player break and with Sonic basically saying he’s going to soon be out of the door, we don’t think those changes are going to change any time soon.
For one of NA’s “great hopes” Peeping didn’t look like anything special, but then again, neither have any other the other “great hopes” Americans have been telling us about for the last few years.
His teammate fr3nd was slightly better. There was a little promise there, but that promise is sure to evaporate when he takes over the IGL reins. We still just do not understand what they were thinking. Are thinking. Not sure. They’ve fried us.
There were some impressive performances.
SAW’s new signings aragorN and krazy both performed okay in the Portuguese team’s unlikely run to the semi-finals. Ratings will tell you otherwise, but considering they were losing in ESEA Main before this event, we’d say they did alright all things considered.
There’s more potential there than Wildcard at least.
But as always, ash and GamerLegion are the real winners.
In one event Kursy has gone from a head-scratcher of a signing to a prospect there’s now plenty of anticipation for. He’s raw, but more game time and ash refinement will help with that. The firepower is already there.
Great scout, that ash fella.
FISSURE Playground 1 has come to a close, and we were pleasantly surprised by the tournament overall.
Going in, our expectations were low. After all, most top teams are focused on preparing for Cologne.
But we were proven wrong. FPG 1 delivered some surprisingly entertaining matches, all the way through to the final.
The quarters began with no real surprises in the bottom half of the bracket, as Astralis and BetBoom dispatched Lynn Vision and GamerLegion, respectively. Boring.
Things got far more interesting on the upper side, though. SAW pulled off a hard-fought win over Complexity to reach the semis - a dream run for a team still trying to find their footing after significant offseason changes. Just like in the group stage, krazy and aragornN proved they can hang at this level, and more importantly, elevate SAW’s overall game.
Another unexpected result came with TYLOO dismantling 3DMAX in dominant fashion, not letting them reach double digits on any map. And yes, they were still playing with their coach standing in.
When they topped their group ahead of teams like Astralis and Virtus.Pro - which, to be fair, isn’t saying much - it felt like a fluke. Playing with zhokiNg? Come on…
But then they ran over 3DMax just the same. Suddenly, everyone had their eyes on TYLOO. It was hard not to. But the madness had to end soon, right?
Spoiler: wrong.
Up against SAW in the semis, with Jee finally back on the server, TYLOO faced some real resistance - but even then, they managed to close out the series 2-0. Another JamYoung masterclass led the way, and just like that, TYLOO booked their spot in the Grand Final.
As entertaining as TYLOO had been, most people expected the winner of FPG 1 to emerge from the second semifinal: Astralis vs BetBoom.
On paper, it looked promising, but the match itself turned out to be rather anticlimactic. device rolled back the years with a vintage performance, leading Astralis to a clean 2-0 sweep and sending BetBoom packing.
And so, the Grand Final was set. TYLOO versus Astralis. The trailblazers versus the veterans. For TYLOO, a shot at making history. For Astralis, a chance to win their first big event since 2019 (yes, it’s been that long).
But it wasn’t even close.
TYLOO dismantled the Danes in four maps, with Astralis only scraping together a win on the opener. Just so you understand the scale of the collapse, HooXi was their highest rated player with a 1.09. Yeah, that about sums it up.
On the other side, who else? JamYoung showed up once again, dropping a 1.45 rating performance with that unmistakable flair and confidence you only see in true superstars.
As for Astralis, this is the kind of tournament you have to win 11 times out of 10. To implode in the final like this is simply not good enough. But let’s be honest, we’re kind of used to it by now.
With the trophy in hand, TYLOO became the first Chinese team to win a big event - and they did it with their coach standing in for over half the tournament. That’s just insane. Add that to a massive leap in the VRS, with TYLOO now sitting at #7, and it’s clear the era of Asian CS is coming.
And while the whole team deserves credit, we have to highlight just how absolutely dominant JamYoung was. He carried his team through the gauntlet with a monstrous 1.40 rating over 13 maps, earning a well-deserved MVP.
Get ready to learn English, buddy.
Final standings:
1st 🇨🇳 TYLOO – $150.000
2nd 🇩🇰 Astralis – $100.000
3-4th 🇷🇺 BetBoom – $35.000
3-4th 🇵🇹 SAW – $35.000
5-8th 🇪🇺 GamerLegion – $17.500
5-8th 🇨🇳 Lynn Vision – $17.500
5-8th 🇺🇸 Complexity – $17.500
5-8th 🇫🇷 3DMAX – $17.500
