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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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fer came in with a bang, and left with one too.
Pro tip: if you’re an organisation catching heat for making a move many perceive to be a bit cruel, try not to call other people classless.
fnatic, fer, kaze and xfl0ud are under the microscope today.
The Budapest Major has finally kicked off and we couldn’t be more excited for the most important eve… oh wait. It’s the Bucharest Masters. Sorry, we just can’t wait.
Anyway, the PGL Masters Bucharest 2025 might not have the most stacked lineup of teams, but hey, at least it’s not the Thunderpick World Championship. So yes, we’re actually looking forward to seeing how things play out in Budap… sorry, Bucharest.
Aurora, fnatic, Astralis, B8, 3DMAX, SAW, BetBoom, MIBR, GamerLegion, FlyQuest, HEROIC, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Legacy, Liquid, paiN, and Gentle Mates have all accepted the invite to fight for a share of the $1.25M prize pool.
Apart from MIBR, SAW, and FlyQuest, who seem a few levels below the rest, most of these teams have a fair shot at taking home the trophy - simply because the sharks stayed at home.
For squads like Aurora, 3DMAX, Astralis, NIP, and paiN, this is the perfect chance to grab their first big trophy of the year and head into the Major with a confidence boost. And for the most part, they lived up to that favoritism in their opening matchups. Again, for the most part.
The Turks, French, and Brazilians comfortably swept fnatic, SAW, and Gentle Mates, respectively, with some juicy highlights sprinkled in.
In the storied matchup between Astralis and B8, the Ukrainians reenacted the Austin Major MRQ - not to keep Astralis out, but to drop them into the 0-1 group in Bucharest.
The battle of mid between HEROIC and NIP saw xfl0ud go absolutely nuclear, finishing the series with a 2.15 rating and a very sore back. He finished Nuke with a 33-11 KD. That’s just insane.
In the remaining matches, Liquid proved that old habits die hard as they managed to edge past Legacy 2-1. Meanwhile, GamerLegion and BetBoom took their time to send FlyQuest and MIBR to the winless pit.
On today’s menu, we’ve got Aurora vs Liquid as the marquee matchup in the winners’ group, while ewjerkz faces his former team for the first time as NIP take on SAW in the 0-1 game.
Editor’s note: Sorry to all of our Romanian readers, but we know you have humor – otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. And to everyone else, 🇷🇴 Bucharest = Romania. 🇭🇺 Budapest = Hungary. 650km / 400 miles apart.
Sometimes you just have to feel sorry for a player.
We’re not even talking about ICY, who got cut from VP, but instead b1st who was moved up to replace him. Getting cut from VP is being set free, and being signed by them is a death sentence for your career.
Best of luck, kid. tO0RO showed you what NOT to do. Unfortunately, what not to do was ‘join VP’s main roster’. Bit late for that.
At least b1st seems to be a quality player by the numbers - his 1.26 rating in last three months gives us a little bit of hope. Just a little bit. He’s aggressive and got the skills to back it up, on paper. What an exciting player.
An exciting player for VP to ruin, again. They’ve ruined every bit of fun in every player they’ve signed in the last few years, and somehow have become 100x more boring after cutting Jame.
That’s like having sex for the first time and somehow becoming more of a virgin.
If you see that a player has become a player coach for his team, you’d assume that just means he’s the IGL and the org can’t be bothered to find a coach, but that’s not the case with this story.
No, because whilst Summer is still the IGL for Rare Atom, their AWPer kaze - insert Ian Wright “I thought you were dead” here - has decided to become a player coach for his team.
The Malaysian AWPer will step back into the team to undertake his new duties, replacing current assistant coach Marek both on and off the server.
Now, we don’t want to overreact here, but Kenny Dalglish did this for Liverpool and became one of their greatest managers in their history, and Ruud Gullit did it for Chelsea and won the FA Cup. So what we’re saying is, with the Major coming up, buy your Rare Atom stocks now.
With that wild story in mind, Senzu’s surprise benching, and the host of other bizarre roster moves to happen this year, it’s got us wondering:
This week’s Roster Hopper is another TLDR favourite, but whose career is shown below?
Scroll down to find the answer!
The lion, the witch, and the audacity of fnatic.
On the week that it was confirmed that CYPHER would not be at the Major despite helping fnatic qualify for it in unlikely fashion (as the best player in the final of Fragadelphia, by the way), the org decided it was best to take a swipe at someone else for classlessness.
They did put out a video explaining why they made the decision (but deep dive readers will know the real reason is their cartoonish evilness), which basically amounts to needing to make the most of this chance to get back into tier one.
Which is sort of fair enough - if the replacement wasn’t just as average at this tier of play.
blameF took to Twitter to try to be nice to CYPHER, and ended up giving one of the most backhanded compliments we’ve ever seen. “One of the best entryfraggers in tier 2”.
Just call him rubbish, it would be less painful.
Speaking of aggressive riflers…
fer is a favourite of TLDR. He was a swashbuckling lunatic who could barely hear what was going on and so just decided to be ultra aggressive. He completely changed the way people play the game, especially on Overpass around Toilets, and he was bloody good, too.
He embodied aggression, and seemingly, did that from day one. His first game - at least recorded on HLTV, Liquipedia reckoned he was playing before that, the snitches - involved him playing for KaBuM against ProGaming.TD in the BenQ All-Star Showmatch in a 2-1 win.
Nothing says aura like your first game being in an All-Star game.
He proceeded to drop 79 kills over three maps against some of his old teammates, the most in the server, including 14 opening kills, again, the most in the server. This was a star-studded server, too - FalleN, fnx, LUCAS1 and HEN1 on his team, and boltz and steel on the other team.
Not bad.
He ended his career as he played most of it - trying to carry TACO in a Major game. Except this time, it was an RMR Open Qualifier. How the mighty have fallen.
After over a year off, fer stood in for O PLANO, and in his first and only CS2 game topfragged ahead of kNgV, boltz, fnx and TACO in a loss to Dusty Roots, a team full of Argentinians you will never have heard of, and then dipped into the sunset again. What a guy. What a hero. A genius.
He did have only three opening kills in this map, though. O PLANO lost 9-13, and fer never played CS2 again.
Trivia Answer : Boombl4
