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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Major pressure is real
It doesn’t matter if you’re the best team in the world if the choke gets to you.
Do you believe in fairytales, reader?
Santa Claus is coming, and he’s flying around the world carrying a sack full of pure, 200 proof FaZe fairydust. He sees you when you’re 1-2 against RED Canids, he knows when you’re playing Fluxo.
But he also knows that FaZe, in the playoffs, are on the nice list.
broky and jcobbb heard you were talking smack and have decided to just become Curry and Klay overnight. broky in particular has just re-found his form from a few years ago out of absolutely nowhere after being complete dogsh-t for about 12 months.
Just the funniest player alive.
FaZe raced into a massive lead on map one over a shellshocked MOUZ, but MOUZ pulled it back from 9-3 to 9-10 and seemed to have flipped the script, but you have to remember that they are Spursy. The joke is always on them in the playoffs.
MOUZ crumbled, and FaZe took map one - and that turned into a total capitulation on map two. FaZe absolutely fingerblasted MOUZ 13-2 on Inferno, with broky ending the series 40-17. torzsi tried in front of his home crowd, but he was let down again.
It was fine when MOUZ were losing playoff games to the best teams in the world - but to lose to this version of FaZe?
Questions might need to be asked.
And we don’t mean ‘how do you feel after that game?’.
Did you ever hear the tale of the team who reached to the stars and then came crashing back down to Earth? They didn’t do it in a blaze of glory, no, instead it was done with a string of questionable roster moves and disappointing tournament placements.
That team, Astralis, will now be in a horrible position as they head into the off-season. Not only are they set to lose device to 100 Thieves, but they’ll also be saying goodbye to Magisk for the second time as his short-term deal is set to expire.
There’s no clue yet as to what they’ll do to replace their outgoing stars, but Dust2dk have also reported that stavn won’t be returning to the lineup in the new year.
Well there goes our stavn AWP agenda.
Given the fact they can’t even pay their players, though, we think they should just probably blow it all up at this point. The talent pool in Denmark is slim, and no one needs to see nicoodoz “AWP” in tier one again.
Just pack it in, lads.
Now that was a Major Playoffs series.
After three underwhelming quarter-finals, we finally got something worthy of the stage. Well, Inferno, at least.
Can we all, as a community, agree to forget Mirage and Train ever happened and focus solely on the absolute banger that was Inferno? Because for 30 whole minutes, this single match of Counter-Strike genuinely convinced us that the map isn’t terrible.
We came back to our senses right the moment it ended though, don’t worry.
Down 3-10 after a disastrous T-side, we honestly thought vintage FURIA had returned, but FalleN had other plans. Unc single-handedly dragged FURIA back into the map, delivering round after round of massive impact - including a ridiculous last-second 1v3 clutch. How does he keep doing it after all these years?
Alright, we do have to talk about the demolitions that were Mirage and Train. NAVI clearly managed to force FURIA into a far more passive style, never giving space for their stars to shine.
In the end, the pressure of the stage seemed to catch up with molodoy specifically, who couldn’t find the impact we’ve seen from him before.
On the flip side, NAVI’s rookie contributed consistently throughout the entire series, culminating in a 2.23 rating performance on Train.
This is a statement win for NAVI, and we’d be lying if we said there’s no chance of a Copenhagen 2.0. Do we think it’s going to happen? No, but then again, we didn’t think they’d be able to beat FURIA either.
But this isn’t even the craziest part. The truly wild fact is that either NAVI or FaZe will be fighting for the Major trophy in the Grand Final.
Definitely not something we had on our Budapest bingo card.
A rough end to the year for GamerLegion has just got rougher.
First off, their coach, ash, decided that he’s going to take a break due to burnout, and who can blame him? If we had to coach Kursy and hypex in the same year we’d be taking a long walk off a short cliff, let alone a break.
That news was followed by the announcement that they’re benching their IGL, ztr, who really lived up to the “zero T rounds” sticker during the Major. A poor event from the team overall, it’s no surprise that they’ve chosen to move away from him ahead of next year. Who could’ve seen this coming?
All that remains to be seen is if they’ll be bidding farewell to any more players. The 100 Thieves rumours are still circling, and as the Nadeshot-owned org looks to bring their average age down from 97, the GamerLegion core will look especially tasty.
A Katowice final rematch kicks-off Saturday, though not for gold this time. Vitality don’t look as invincible as they did in the first half of the year, and this version of Team Spirit have two entirely different players. That said, both teams can be considered favourites for the whole event.
Spirit have looked the better team so far, having a flawless run in Stage 3, and a pretty impressive 2-0 over their rivals Falcons - largely in part to a great Nuke and even greater performance from rookie zweih. We’ll be calling him zwei-ce from now on.
Vitality are still an incredible team though, and dispatched The Mongolz without even giving them double digit rounds in the entire series. That was mostly down to ZywOo going crazy, dropping a 2.18 in the series. Nuts.
apEX’s unit have beaten Spirit in every one of their matches this year - which doesn’t give us a load of confidence for Spirit - but they did take down their kryptonite-team on Thursday.
Perhaps history doesn’t matter when it’s a Major.
B1ad3 & Bullsh-t
Copenhagen. Is it happening again?
We knew NAVI looked good in Stage 2 and 3, but dismantling FURIA the way they did is seriously scary.
They’ve had a tumultuous 2025 but now are heading into the semis to face a familiar foe in FaZe. The last time these two clashed at a Major was in Copenhagen, and we all remember how that ended.
Both teams have been on a downward trend, and both teams have reinvented themselves through the course of the Major, and both are in with a chance of winning it. These semi-finals are SO stacked we can’t pick a favourite (well, I can, but I’m not allowed).
The combination of FaZe bullsh-t up against Aleksi-ball with w0nderful in prime form is setting us up for an incredible series, and we really hope it delivers.
Veto wise, NAVI have the stronger map pool, but does that matter when Frozen and Twistzz are ripping heads before you get a chance to execute? Even then, broky has hands again and jcobbb is actually good now?!
This is too tough to call, so we aren’t going to. No logic or analysis can account for the things Karrigan makes happen at Majors - they were half a second away from being knocked out in Stage 1 for God’s sake!
The only prediction we’ll make is that Saturday will be a day of brilliant Counter-Strike, and one of the semi-final winners will win the final as well! That’s usually how it works!
