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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Regression to the mean is excellent
As it happens, it turns out that zweih CAN’T be good two games in a row. Who’d have thought it? Also, Snax is back… somehow.
Dread it, run from it, Team Vitality arrives all the same.
Team Spirit, built around two of the world's best players (with one in particular being every Counter-Strike player's nightmare), has fallen to Team Vitality in the semi-finals of the Budapest Major.
It turns out that dealing the killing blow to a team of four superstars is easy, but an angry Frenchman capable of pulling his team back from the brink was too much for old chopper.
That's not to say Team Spirit didn't try, though. They were up 12-6 before Vitality remembered how to play, with a combination of ZywOo and beloved British rifler mezii kickstarting the comeback. The French and the English, who knew such a crossover could yield something so beautiful?
With ropz coming alive as well, it seemed like there was nothing Spirit could do.
It wasn't all plain sailing, and a last second bomb plant denial by mezii in round 23 kept the dream alive.
When The Hornets stumbled and the map pushed to a second overtime, chopper somehow managed to pull off a 1v3 on the A site, complete with a bomb defusal. We can only assume that was the product of a blood sacrifice taking place somewhere in the world.
Despite chopper's heroics, his repeated attempts at calling "Split A" and "donk go kill" weren't enough to overcome apEX's band of merry men, finalising at a 19-17 scoreline.
Unfortunately for Spirit, Dust2 had no chopper-based heroics at play. It began as a back-and-forth affair, with a respectable 6-6 scoreline at the half. After that, chopper — and the rest of Spirit for that matter — were nowhere to be seen, and their CT side crumbled. Spirit managed to somehow stumble their way to two more rounds, but Vitality ran away with the rest, and they booked themselves a place in the grand finals with relative ease.
Someone, somewhere, is flying back to Serbia tonight. They'll sniff, cough, and say...
Smells like Team Spirit.
We’re going to be completely honest with you - Snax joining GamerLegion after ztr was benched was the last thing we expected.
But maybe it makes sense.
Hear us out: we know that this core is GONE. Their CEO saying that they’re not only confirms it. Their IGL is also out - what does that leave them with? A Polish AWPer.
Now they also have a Polish IGL, meaning that two out of five potential players will speak Polish… do you see where we’re going with this?
GamerLegion are going to be in the market for a new core, and with it being hard to find a core with strong VRS placing and at a low cost, moving into a new market for national team favour does make sense.
So who can they get? Our money would be on the Venom or Oramond cores, which would see them not only shift to Polish CS, but also refrain from fading away into complete VRS obscurity.
And with that said - GamerLegion, it’s been nice knowing you. We’ll always remember Paris.
We’re lost for words.
FaZe are in the grand final and we’re not entirely sure how.
They were down and out AGAIN, for about the fifteenth time this event, but this time to a NAVI team who looked like they should be able to keep it clean. iM was in sparkling form, w0nderful wasn’t missing and Aleksib was calling rings around karrigan.
And then it happened again.
NAVI were 1-0 and 8-2 up, in cruise control, and by sheer determination, luck, skill and dare we say magic, FaZe BS’d their way back into the game and won in regulation. No overtime here.
frozen, who had been notably absent until that point, went ballistic in the second half, and bought enough time for broky, jcobbb and Twistzz to carry him to victory on map three.
Honestly, this feels like a fever dream. Or destiny - when Twistzz pulled off an absolutely heinous 1v3 to put a nail in NAVI’s coffin on Inferno, we started to wonder if a higher power had determined that FaZe had to be in the final.
Even the Lord himself wants to watch FaZe in a Major final one last time - and he’s got his wish.
karrigan, man. Unflushable.
There’s just too many storylines for this one, but we’ll try and break it down. Ropz has been in EVERY CS2 Major final, FaZe have been in 4 finals themselves, and Vitality have never lost one. Defending champions vs frequent finalists. So many agendas and narratives hang in the balance, and despite the bracket not looking how we’d expected it to (in our ruined Pick’Ems), this might be the most exciting final we could’ve gotten.
Vitality are looking seriously sharp, oozing star power. Even if apEX has been a little slow off the mark, he doesn’t need to do anything spectacular when your other pieces are cooking. mezii in particular has been phenomenal.
FaZe - we don’t know how you do it - but we don’t need to. Podcast listeners will know our thoughts on karrigan, but we are well and truly sat right now. The Nuke against NAVI was pure, old school, FaZe comeback slop - and we are not full yet. It pains us to give props to a North American but Twistzz really is one of the best players in the world, and he’s dragged FaZe kicking and screaming (or wee-wooing) into another final.
The first Major BO5 will be a barn burner we’re certain. Did you know FaZe have never lost to Vitality in Major playoffs? Luckily for Vitality, FaZe don’t play Train, so their sh-tty performances on the map will be excused from the final (unless we get some freaky veto). Inversely, Ancient is the insta-ban of Vitality, which isn’t all that bad, seeing as it’s FaZe’s worst map right now. We’d like to see Nuke, Mirage and Inferno in the first three maps, but it’s reasonable to assume we’ll go the distance in this series. Not because we think FaZe should be beating Vitality, but because the bullsh-t says so. We just love Counter-Strike too, and this is all we’ll have until Kraków.
Whoever takes the crown tomorrow, we can’t say it’s undeserved. Vitality could finally beat a real opponent in a Major final. Karrigan could re-cement himself as the GOAT IGL if he can win with jcobbb. Twistzz could add another really expensive Labubu to his bag too! Whatever the result, we’re hoping for good, scrappy, back and forth CS, the kind of stuff we love the Majors for.
