Loading…
GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
And they’re absolutely STACKED
The Major playoffs are always special, but they’re a lot better when all of the favourites make it through.
Most of those favourites look set to make it to the semis, too, although one of Spirit or Falcons will see their year come to an abrupt end.
What do you get when you cross an insanely talented young opener, one of the best AWPers of all time, and an org with unlimited aura.
The answer is Team Spirt, but also Falcons, depending on if you know ball or not.
The opening quarter-final of the Budapest Major pits these two against each other, and it’s looking like a banger.
Spirit coasted through Stage 3 without losing a game (which conveniently puts them on the opposite side of the bracket to FURIA), while their opponent scraped through 3-2, even losing their map pick of Ancient, in their 2-2 game against G2.
On paper this looks to be a pretty easy semi-final spot for a Team Spirit who have looked really solid so far at the Major, but we’d be remiss to ignore the fact that donk tends todisappear when he plays NiKo, for whatever reason.
In fact, Spirit really don’t have a great head-to-head against Falcons, losing 6 out of 7 maps in their previous outings. Their sole victory at least was a 13-4 Mirage at Blast Rivals Season 1, in a series they then lost 1-2.
There is a counterpoint however, and the counterpoint has a name. Danil “donk” Kryshkovets. donk currently has a 1.73 Rating throughout Budapest, that number is f-cking ludicrous. His CT side is even more ridiculous sitting at 2.09. If there ever was a reason to back the dragons, he’s certainly it.
Not to say Spirit are a one-man-army, but if they were, he’s the man we’d bet on.
When you hear that a quarter-final is a rematch of last Major’s final, you’re expecting that to be pretty Earth-shattering stuff. Like, what has gone wrong with seeding, ‘the real final was the quarter-final’ stuff.
This is not the case.
Vitality are no longer the de facto best team in the world, and The MongolZ no longer look like a team who can make the final; but that doesn’t stop this being an important and intriguing game - because when you’re in the top eight, all of a sudden it becomes very real.
The MongolZ have looked miles better with controlez than anyone could really have expected, and actually might pose something of a threat to the top four if anyone has an off-day. We, as most of you did, expected the loss of Senzu to hurt them tremendously, and it sort of has, but…
Well, they’re still top eight, and they’re still winning games, and controlez is kinda frying. How he had a 1.06 on Chinggis Warriors is beyond us.
Vitality on the other hand are still there or thereabouts. They’re still a contender, they’re just no longer overwhelming favourites. They’ve lost to FURIA, G2, MOUZ and funnily enough The MongolZ in top fours in the last few months, and they have a soft underbelly nowadays.
That said, they’re still bloody good. They are better than The MongolZ. They can win the whole thing if they turn up. ropz/ZywOo/flameZ is still hilariously overpowered as a trio, especially when mezii is your fourth best player.
The MongolZ couldn’t dream of Vitality’s firepower (check out the Deep Dive from yesterday for more on that!) and are not as consistent a top team either. Their system is easier to punch holes in, and they have the worse AWPer.
This is one that should be a Vitality win - but they are not as unbeatable as they first appear.
Elliott is back this week, and therefore so are the horrible takes. You know, stuff like “Team Spirit are the best team in the world” and “JT is bad”. Laugh at this user!
It’s always been the case that FaZe were the big brothers, or abusive fathers, of MOUZ. A bigger organisation that would happily snatch away MOUZ’s players once they’d done the hard part of turning them into tier one talents, and then use those tier one talents to win trophies that MOUZ could only ever dream of.
Until now.
Well, it’s been a little longer than right this moment, and we guess MOUZ are still dreaming considering the fact they can’t get past semis, but you get the point.
Nowadays, MOUZ are simply the better team. They may still lack the aura-farming stars, they don’t have a Twistzz (who has sneakily been the second-best player in the world this year) or a frozen, but they do have an xertioN, and a Spinx. And in torzsi, they have an AWPer who, unlike broky, actually understands that he is using a scoped weapon.
They’re just the better team.
jcobbb has, of course, thrown that into contention at the perfect time, but look: you’re all going to look really silly for overrating him now come January. Regression to the mean is going to hit that boy like a high five from degster, and we’re going to have great fun telling you all “we told you so”.
“But the FaZe magic is back!” We hear you cry, but no, dear friends - FaZe have already used up their magic for this event, the bottle is now empty. The amount they had used was found in the back of a dusty old cupboard anyway.
Now it’s time for the Hungarian crowd to get behind it’s boy. Now it’s time for boys to become men. Now it’s time for the students to become the masters, and, just like in any great story, for the old master to head to the grave.
R.I.P FaZe, we truly will miss you.
We know Spirit vs Falcons might look like the headline act, but hear us out: What if it’s actually molodoy versus w0nderful? Seriously, stay with us.
As we all know by now, molodoy is exceptional at making other snipers’ lives hell. He seeks his targets out like a priest in an orphanage, and more often than not, is successful in catching his prey.
But w0nderful is also pretty good at dealing with enemy snipers, too. Unlike his opposite number, he doesn’t go hunting for them, he let’s them walk into his crosshair, punishing them for daring to fight as he supports his teammates.
For most of the year, we would have said molodoy would just straight up win that fight regardless - and in fact, he already has done in a Grand Final - but this is w0nderful in much better form, and that could just make him the difference maker against FURIA.
Of course, NAVI will have to avoid Nuke, FURIA made them look like FlyQuest on it in Stage 3, but that decimation doesn’t mean that NAVI are hopeless. b1t can match KSCERATO, Aleksib can match FalleN, and although you’re still going to be shaking your heads at this, w0nderful absolutely can match molodoy.
This isn’t to say we don’t have faith in FURIA, we still think they’re going to go on and win the whole thing, but we just don’t think this will be as easy as it seems on paper. A favourable map pool will definitely help them, but again, that doesn’t mean that NAVI will let themselves be walked all over.
Besides, we’ve seen them do crazier things before.
