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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Dear lord, what a sad little life, Mathieu
It’s almost time for Counter-Strike to return! Before that, though, were the HLTV Awards, and it’s safe to say the eventual winner of the Best Player in the World is a little bit controversial.
Oh yeah, there’s been a map pool change, too.
Roll up, roll up for the first Counter-Strike of the year!
You better not disappoint us, BLAST, ‘cause this roster season has been a snoozefest.
Fortunately, the signs are good. Bounty offers one of the coolest formats in the scene, and brings us fun match-ups, a wide array of teams and names, and big stakes with a place at the LAN Finals a few days later.
Hang on… did we just say LAN Finals after? Does that mean…
Sadly, yes. While Bounty’s unique format and position as the first event on the calendar make it a must-watch tournament, they ruin it by making it an online event. We wanted to see JW vs FaZe on LAN, and quite frankly, we deserved it, too.
This might be upset central, with teams coming in cold with new lineups, or after a long break, in an online single-elimination format. That could be fun, or it could be a bleeding nightmare.
This will be a fun watch, but don’t go drawing any big conclusions. Just sit back and enjoy the chaos.
Regardless, the full list of games can be found here, but we’ll pick out some of our favourites.
EYEBALLERS calling out FaZe is an obvious hit, with JW playing karrigan for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and that it’s followed up with fnatic vs Astralis makes for a great opening day.
Virtus.pro vs Vitality could be a fun one, but a day later, we get to see NIP vs Liquid. We love this game, because NIP are fun to watch but notorious bottlejobs, and Liquid are also bottlejobs while only being fun to watch from afar.
Any result is a fun narrative.
If you want a good hipster one to watch, OG vs FUT should showcase a lot of upcoming talent, and you can tell your mates all about them when they get big.
Isn’t that what it’s all about?
We all knew a change to the map pool was coming, but Valve, why did it have to be this one?
Mirage was never going anywhere - and we weren’t asking for it to either - but what about Dust2? Or Inferno, maybe? Why did you have to take Train away from us?
Even worse, why did you have to take it away from us for Anubis?
It’s not that Anubis is a terrible map, because it isn’t. Vertigo is. But Anubis is still a bad map. It has a fundamentally flawed design that makes it T-sided, and whilst removing the Rugs section of the map towards A could do a lot to aid that, we still feel like we might still be seeing the T side dominate the map.
And that’s the biggest issue with it - Counter-Strike just isn’t meant to be T-sided. Of course, it’s not meant to be as CT-sided as older versions of Nuke or Train were either, but the game just is better when the odds are slightly stacked against the Ts.
Really, though, we’re just sad about Train. It was quickly becoming one of our favourite maps, and had already had some great games in the short time it was in the pool, so losing that is a shame. Especially when you consider the fact that the map pool now leans more heavily towards puggy maps, rather than tactical ones.
Is that really what we all play CS for?
Oh well, hopefully Anubis is only serving as a temporary change whilst Cache gets tested with the masses.
Not that Cache will be much better, you nostalgic b-stards.
In light of the recent change to the map pool, we have one simple question for you:
~~~
In the last edition, we asked you: Should molodoy be sixth in the top 20? And you answered with a resounding “yes.”
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🙂 Yes (75%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☹️ No (6%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ❓ Where the f-ck is HeavyGod? (19%)
How is tabseN still on BIG?
Seriously. In a world where Krimbo is benched, faveN is on the team, and they’re speaking English because of two imports - how has he survived? We know he’s the franchise player, but come on.
At least he isn’t calling anymore. No, that responsibility will now fall to blameF, who has joined the team after what can only really be considered a lacklustre spell with fnatic. He may have played well individually, but the team didn’t really improve much, which almost suggests that-
You know what? Never mind. We’re not doing this again.
To replace the Dane, fnatic have signed maden, leading to one of the most ironic and frustrating tweets we’ve ever seen. In fact, it’s so bad, we might even call it a Xeet.
That’s right, fnatic have said that they need, and we quote: “to shift towards a more proactive entry-focused and aggressive rifler approach.”
Now, lads, if only - if ONLY - they had previously held the solution to this problem, and hadn’t benched him right before the Major for some undeniable cronyism reasons. If only.
We don’t think either of these teams will be great, but we expect BIG to be the better of the two. Just maybe not for any reason they themselves control.
It’s just hard to see fnatic being competitive when they’ve lost that much of their firepower with blameF’s departure. maden isn’t a star and shouldn’t be considered one, and jackasmo isn’t exactly great either. There’s going to be a lot lying on the shoulders of jambo.
Which is funny, because BIG also hold the better AWPer in gr1ks.
Huh, maybe fnatic are cooked, actually. And maybe that’s karma.
Anubis has just replaced Train in the map pool, but which map did it replace when it first entered the pool in 2022?
Keep reading to find the answer.
Forget the world-shaping conflicts and major events unfolding across the globe. During 2025, only one question truly mattered: donk or ZywOo?
Saturday’s HLTV Awards officially brought the competitive year to a close and gave us the final verdict. The French AWPer was crowned the world’s number one - a decision that was always destined to ignite debate, one way or the other.
The donk stans (and donk himself) asked a simple question: if this is an individual award, how can the player who tops virtually every notable stat end up second? The kid just delivered the greatest statistical season in history, and yet lost out to a player who trailed him in most metrics, but collected significantly more trophies and MVPs.
If deep runs and MVP medals carry that much weight, can this truly be called an individual award? After all, no player competes alone. And in that sense, there was no better ensemble in 2025 than Vitality. If that’s the case, does the debate simply boil down to ‘whoever wins the most is the best’?
Honestly, we’re not sure. What is clear, though, is that both sides have a point. And, perhaps, that is what makes the debate so compelling.
For us, the HLTV Awards weren’t defined by who topped the list. The real outrage dropped about an hour before the show even began.
How the f-ck did the StartLater Budapest Major win Event of the Year?!
Audio issues, on-stream lag, ticketing and seating problems, endless delays, atrocious logistics, absurd humiliation rituals, sleep-inducing playoff games… do we really need to keep going? We’d need seventeen f-cking newsletters just to catalogue every problem. Were they playing League of Legends at the Austin Major or IEM Cologne?
And if you think we’re being too harsh, even StarLadder’s own chief-whatever-officer seemed genuinely baffled by the win.
In other news, Vitality won pretty much everything there was to win. Closer (ropz), Anchor (mezii), AWPer (ZywOo), IGL (apEX), Coach (XTQZZZ), and Team of the Year. Shocking.
Elsewhere, molodoy claimed Rookie of the Year after a great debut season, while BIG EQUIPA and ASTRA took home the Female Team and Player of the Year awards. The highlight of the year fittingly went to the second-best player in the world, who singlehandedly dismantled the best player and the best team of the year. Ironic.
And finally, buried beneath all the rankings, arguments, and outrage, HeavyGod was found in the #21 spot. NAVI’s PR really is unmatched.
