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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Turns out he’s really good, actually
Spirit, hear us out - there’s this lurker kid, plays for PARIVISION, really sick aim, we think he’d really help donk not feel so alone. Oh, you tried him out already? And made him entry? Cool… yeah…. cool.
Unlike the 2027 Major locations, which aren’t cool at all, but whether that is a joke about the temperature or the events themselves is entirely up to you.
As the 2026 season kicks into full gear, BLAST Bounty Season 1 continues to deliver some long-awaited debuts following a rather calm offseason shuffle.
To close out the opening round, Spirit, paiN, and PARIVISION all got their year off to a winning start, sweeping SINNERS, BetBoom, and ENCE, respectively.
The real headline of the tournament, however, belongs to zweih. He has slotted seamlessly into Jame’s system, in a move that just feels right after the Spirit detour - something that never should’ve happened in the first place. Across PARI’s first four maps, including their sweep of Astralis to secure a LAN spot, zweih posted a donk-like 1.61 rating.
Word of advice: don’t sleep on PARIVISION in 2026.
Speaking of the devil, the year changes, but donk doesn’t. As usual, he carried a restructured Spirit to a comfortable landing in Malta - albeit without facing the toughest of opposition - following sweeps over SINNERS and Inner Circle.
The other heavyweights also lived up to expectations, with Vitality, Falcons and FURIA all advancing to LAN after wins over EYEBALLERS, Monte and FUT, respectively. The usual suspects - ZywOo, m0NESY, and molodoy - picked up right where they left off to start the season.
Shoutout to EYEBALLERS, who in their first tier one tournament, picked some of the toughest possible opponents. Well, they did pick FaZe, though. That’s some low-hanging fruit.
Other notable results saw new-look paiN being eliminated by the AWPer-less HEROIC. After the Brazilians’ convincing sweep of BetBoom, it feels a bit unexpected, with rookie piriajr the lone bright spot.
Lastly, Aurora turned in an alarming performance against GamerLegion in the qualification match, especially on the Mirage decider. The Turks clearly needed an offseason change, but it wasn’t soulfly. A shakeup in leadership has to be on the cards for Aurora, as MAJ3R’s approach simply doesn’t cut it anymore - and, honestly, hasn’t for quite some time.
When it was announced that B8 would be exploring options for their AWP role, it was hard to argue against. We’ve always quite liked headtr1ck, but let’s face it, he’s not exactly great.
Maybe if he’d have stayed as a rifler and not become an AWPer after m0NESY left NAVI Junior he’d have been alright, but as you’ll see in this week’s Deep Dive, the big green speaks to players like the Green Goblin’s mask.
Either way, he’s out of the team. B8 have explored their options, and that exploration took to their academy team AWPer, segukawa.
Wait, who?
Your guess is as good as ours, seriously. We’re not even doing the ‘what’s a tier two?’ bit this time. We don’t have a clue. In fact, no one does. Even HLTV don’t have a Scooby, their news post for him links to his Twitter page (no, really), because he’s never actually played a game worthy of being recorded on HLTV.
That fact alone makes it an absolutely mental signing, so B8 must be pretty f-cking confident in it, because we just don’t see why they’d do it otherwise.
Let’s hope it works out.
Well done, Valve, you actually abided by your own rules for once.
Well, not really, but we’re feeling generous today.
The rules we’re talking about are the ones regarding announcing tournaments, something Valve doesn’t do for the Majors they sponsor, because they can do whatever they like, apparently.
Anyway, thanks to HLTV, we now know the locations for both of the 2027 Majors. The first will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and be hosted by FIReSPORTS (which isn’t concerning at all), and the second will be another Perfect World Major in Shanghai.
Two rough timezones for European viewers, it does feel strange to have both Majors in a year outside of the EU, and potentially something that won’t happen again in the future. It’s also odd to see FIReSPORTS given a Major, considering their biggest tournament last year was a $100k four-team, South American LAN. Y’know, the one that took place in a subway station.
There’s no way that Major will have any problems, right?
The end of the report from HLTV also said that ESL and BLAST have been awarded Majors for 2028, but that the locations weren’t currently known.
At least we know those two will be well run.
With the announcement that both of 2027’s Majors will take place outside of the EU, we ask you this:
In the latest edition, we asked you: Which team will disappoint the most this year? Here’s what you had to say:
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇩🇪 G2 (6%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇺🇦 NAVI (18%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🇺🇸 FaZe (23%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🇸🇦 Falcons (29%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🐭 MOUZ (23%)
Go on, how many of you expected to see Liquid, PARIVISION, GamerLegion, or HEROIC in the playoffs?
Liquid's seed meant they had a decent shout, and PARIVISION being quite good was beneficial for them, too, but GamerLegion with Snax at the helm? HEROIC without an AWPer? They genuinely surprised us.
It’s a welcome surprise, for what it’s worth, but we think the surprises will come to an end from this point onwards.
Although we won’t know the matchups until the draft is done on Wednesday night, it’s just hard to see how any of these teams can beat the four higher ranked teams in the conversation. And it’s even harder to guess at which poisoned chalice they’ll choose to pick.
We can only assume Liquid will go for Falcons - seeing as kyousuke will be absent in Malta - but we don’t trust Liquid enough to say that will be enough for them to go through. We’d then hope that PARIVISION will go for Spirit, just so zweih can prove his point, but with how donk is playing, who would want to do that?
As for GamerLegion and HEROIC, lads, you’ve been entertaining, but this is almost certainly the end of the line. FURIA looked somewhat slow against FUT, but they’ll surely heat up now, and Vitality? Well, no one is going to be fond of having to play them.
We don’t know which of the big teams will win this, but we do know that one of them 100% will. Each team has had a slow map, each team has had to rely on a star to get through that, but each team also-
Ah, who are we kidding? Congratulations, Vitality.
Guess the player from the following hints:
Find the answer at the end of the Everything else section below!
Trivia answer: MICHU
