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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
A storm is coming
Remember 100 Thieves? It sounds like they’re making a comeback, and after signing a legend to lead the charge, they want to snatch another team’s core away.
Don’t you just love it when three out of the four playoff teams at a big event are national lineups? Ten proud countrymen facing off in one of the hotel lobbies of all time to bring glory back home. You just can’t beat that.
Our expectations were low going into the PGL Masters Bucharest 2025, as not a single top-8 team showed up. But to our surprise (and the 21 souls who actually tuned in), it turned out to be a genuinely entertaining event - especially once the Playoffs kicked off.
We got SAW’s yearly underdog run and an absolute banger of a grand final that finally saw the Turks lift a trophy after god-knows-how-many tries. We’re glad they pulled it off - mostly because the Turkish fans would’ve probably set fire to everything in sight if they’d gotten reverse swept.
But first, we must talk about the biggest surprise of the event, SAW.
How does MUTIRIS keep doing it? The man just plucks random Portuguese talent from orgs you’ve never even heard of and builds something much greater than the sum of its parts. After that initial loss to 3DMAX it just clicked, and from that point on there was no stopping them. Some teams learned that the hard way, just ask Liquid. Or maybe don’t, the trauma’s probably still a little too fresh.
In the semis against Legacy, though, it felt like the pressure finally caught up to SAW - especially on Nuke, where they came agonizingly close to reaching the grand final, but just couldn’t finish the job.
Now we’ll probably hear nothing from them until they somehow pop up at the grand final of PGL wherever-the-f-ck 2026.
HEROIC and paiN both went undefeated in the group stage and looked like they were finally bouncing back from a string of disappointing results… but that didn’t last long. Despite nilo and nqz carrying over their strong group stage form, both teams bowed out in the quarterfinals to GamerLegion and Legacy, respectively.
Speaking of GamerLegion, it looks like they’re already practicing the signature NA meltdown ahead of joining 100 Thieves.
Seriously, did they forget to turn their monitors on for the semi against Aurora? There’s just no explaining getting swept with back-to-back 13-1 demolitions and miserable performances across the board. Is it finally time to start calling hypex the Polish kursy?
Aurora finally made the leap and won a big event.
*touches finger to ear*
Ah. We’re getting word that it was a final against Legacy at an event where SAW made the semi-finals. Never mind, then.
All jokes aside, it’s good to see Aurora finally win. They have threatened for way, way too long and until now they were hollow threats. This mightn’t be the marquee trophy they looked like they might eventually build to, but a trophy is a trophy. They’ve won more than you, dear reader.
Don’t you feel silly.
It took all five maps, and Legacy put up one hell of a fight coming back from 0-2 down to a force a decider, but in the end it was woxic’s experience and guile that got them over the line on map five - but it was the power of XANTARES that got them there.
Not only did Turkey’s GOAT drop 103 kills in the 126 rounds of the BO5, he also was the topfragger in all three maps Aurora won. No statpadding in lost maps here - well, except for the fact he was also Aurora’s topfragger on Train, too.
Fair to say he was the best player in the series, we reckon.
And the tournament, as it turns out, as he deservedly won MVP. Well, we say deservedly - he wasn’t actually even the highest rated Turkish player, with xfl0ud finishing above him, as well as blameF, but they both lost because they’re losers and they stink so no MVP for them.
We do implore you to have a click around his stats from the event, because they are nasty.
For Legacy, their performance was admirable and just more proof that they are not just a flash in the pan fluke team but actually pretty damn good. We have some concerns over how well saadzin and n1ssim can ‘scale up’, but as a team they’re super solid.
Brazil might be back. At least sort of.
This week’s hopper really had a pained x6tence in the early days of their career! Isn’t that brilliant.
Do you know who the unfortunate soul is? Find out at the end of the newsletter.
Thanks to schedules and timezones, making a preview for IEM Chengdu happens to be a little difficult for us - day one will be almost over by the time this newsletter reaches you.
With that in mind, how about instead of doing a proper preview, we just try to predict how the game will go instead? That way, when you do read this, you can see how incredibly smart we are or laugh at our failures.
It’ll probably be the latter.
The day will kick off with a blowout as FURIA wipe the floor with Lynn Vision, however, China’s other hometown heroes, TYLOO, will manage to pick up an upset victory over Falcons.
We’ll then head into MOUZ vs FaZe and Vitality vs Virtus.pro. Both of these games will also be brutally one-sided, with jcobbb, karrigan, and insert any number of VP players here all stinking up the server.
Next up we have The MongolZ vs HEROIC, where a controlez masterclass will see the Mongolian side push past Harry Redknapp’s least-favourite CS team in a three map affair. The third round of fixtures will also see G2 take on 3DMAX, where we regrettably predict a tigh 2-0 for the Frenchies.
The final round of games - which should be on whilst you’re reading this - features paiN vs Spirit and Astralis vs NAVI. One of these is incredibly obvious, whilst predicting the other is basically a coin toss.
If that wasn’t clear, Spirit will make paiN regret ever flying out to China, but when it comes to Astralis and NAVI, one of these two teams or both could forget that they ever got on the plane in the first place.
Two teams that have the capacity to play like there are trophy winners on their teams on their best days, and like Rainbow Six players on their worst, this will be a long (and rubbish) BO3 that drags out the day just long enough that fans of either team can see their favourite lose on their lunch break.
Let’s see if we’re actually right for once.
The biggest news this week is that 100 Thieves are supposedly set to make their return to CS, and according to Dust2dk, they’ve apparently signed rain as the first member of their new lineup.
We’re honestly not sure what the bigger story is there, but we are excited to see rain return to the server and potentially in a new role, too. That’s because nadeshot and the lads are also apparently targeting GamerLegion’s core, which presumably means PR, REZ, and tauson could all see themselves on a new team soon.
Feels bad for GamerLegion.
That is rumours are to be believed, of course. And considering they come from OverDrive, they should probably be taken with a pinch of salt. GamerLegion’s CEO has already denied them, but how many times have esports CEOs denied things just for them to come true weeks later?
We do hope it is true, though. If rain is making the leap to IGLing, then the GamerLegion core is one of the best cores he could hope to lead his first team with. All three of those riflers are more than capable fraggers, and PR has the potential to go on and win the Major in the future.
It does leave the problem of finding a strong AWPer, which GamerLegion themselves have struggled with this year, but at least 100 Thieves should have some money to throw around in order to buy a good one.
Or they could just take a gamble on any random Russian 18 year old, which is probably a safer bet than any of the predictions we made in our Chengdu story.
In the last edition, we asked you which AWPer will eventually replace nawwk on Metizport? Here’s what you said:
Trivia answer: plopski
