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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Did you know FaZe Clan choked a 15-11 lead?
It’s been eight years since FaZe choked in Boston. EIGHT. YEARS. We don’t know where the time has gone, but it still somehow feels more recent than the last time electroNic was good.
One era has ended, and another has begun, as ESL have said goodbye to IEM Katowice and hello to IEM Kraków, the first prestige event of 2026. We have already seen some teams go through to Stage 2, but we’re convinced some others must have fallen back into old habits and travelled to Katowice instead – because they definitely didn’t show up.
In the undefeated group are BLAST Bounty Champions PARIVISION, 3DMAX, and G2, while we wait to find out who will be the final undefeated team to come out of the Astralis vs NRG matchup set for today.
Despite looking a bit shakier than in their championship run at Bounty, and against significantly worse opposition in still AWP-less HEROIC, and Aurora, Jame’s boys continued to put on a strong performance.
Aurora took revenge on GamerLegion as they schooled Snax’s team in a comfortable 2-0 victory with an unusually weak performance out of PR, only finding eight frags in total, in what is no doubt his worst professional series thus far.
NIP, FUT, and paiN didn’t get off to the best start in the competition, with their opening losses to Liquid, 3DMAX, and Astralis, but still managed to come back in the lower bracket. Passion UA put up a good fight against NIP, losing 2-1, but in the end, Grim was barking up the wrong tree.
Legacy and B8 got sent home without wins, and we can’t say we were surprised by either.
B8’s new supposed AWP-wonderkid, segukawa, made his debut for the team in a 2-1 loss to NRG and an elimination loss against paiN, this time in a close 2-0 affair. Our eyes can’t help but wander towards the 0.54 rated 16-year-old at the bottom of the scoreboard and wonder if a few more frags would have made the difference.
Well, at least it can only go up from here.
Legacy have been on a steady downtrend ever since their crash at the Budapest Major, and Kraków was just another nail in their coffin. They left Kraków without a single map win, despite leading 11-2 on Overpass against BC.Game, before getting run over on Inferno.
You know you’re f-cking doomed when you’re getting trashed by a f-cking crypto casino.
While on the topic, one of the teams we were very curious to see the real debut of was BC.Game. And with their win against Legacy, followed by a complete destruction at the hands of 3DMAX, we were left with more questions than answers. Are BC.Game that terrible, or are Legacy even worse? We think it’s the latter. And no, we can’t admit that the French are good.
Yesterday ended with an outright banger of a series, as G2 and Liquid squared up over a spot in the tournament’s second stage. A thrilling third map of Anubis would decide the series, where ultimate and malbsMd battled it out over 30 rounds of play, culminating in a slim G2 victory.
Yes, you read that right – “Roland from Poland” was a god on the server last night. We’ve only just moved out of Katowice, and already everything feels so wrong.
The action of stage one is set to finish today, as only five spots in the next stage of the tournament remain. s1mple’s hopes of extending his return to tier one play hinge on a series against Snappi’s NIP, while two teams will be faced with the endurance task of playing two best-of-threes in the same day with elimination on the line.
Right, now that we’ve gotten the dross like Legacy, Passion UA, and most likely BC.Game out of the way - it’s time to watch some real teams play CS.
Joining the already advanced G2, 3DMAX, and PARIVISION (as well as Astralis or NRG) will be Vitality, The MongolZ, Spirit, NAVI, FaZe, MOUZ, Falcons, and FURIA, and we might go out on a limb to say one of those teams will be winning the whole thing.
In fact, we’ll go as far as to say Vitality will win it.
Their exit from Bounty may have been unimpressive, but did the Major teach you nothing? These guys are still the best team in the world, and for as long as hally is the coach of Team Spirit and Falcons keep plugging away with TeSeS, they will be for a while.
There will, of course, be plenty of intrigue surrounding Falcons, who will be expected to perform even better with kyousuke back in the team. Likewise, we’ll all be expecting more from FURIA and Spirit, who both probably should’ve beaten an inexperienced team like PARIVISION in Malta.
We’re pretty excited to see MOUZ, too, because we’re pretty sure they must’ve been cooking a michelin star meal if they were going to miss a tournament as important as Bounty.
No, but seriously, though, this is a big event for MOUZ to prove they mean business after a disastrous end to 2025.
Other than that, The MongolZ with cobrazera will be interesting to see, and FaZe being bad will definitely be delightful, but we don’t expect much to change from the end of 2025. NAVI should be better, but that’s not saying much, and PARIVISION in a real environment will also be interesting. The rest of the Stage 1 teams, though? Well, they'd better start eyeing up the flights home they’re after.
As we said in this week’s Deep Dive: Counter-Strike is a simple game. 10 players run around a map headshotting each other for 45 minutes, and at the end, Vitality always win.
You’d do well to remember that.
We've had our first tier one trophy of 2026 and Jame's group of toddlers has somehow taken it. While Jack is off getting a back, crack n' sack in Kraków, quacke takes a crack at what he has a knack for: very long podcast episodes.
Eight years and two days ago, FaZe Clan choked a 15-11 lead in the grand final of the Boston Major, gifting NA its first, and only, Major trophy.
That game came in the middle of an otherwise meandering career for everyone’s favourite variety streamer tarik, who would have been lost to the annals of time were he not a. American, b. extremely funny, and c. a key part of Rank S compilation videos.
Fortunately, he’s all of those, and CS can forever remember one of its strangest, most unlikely heroes - and an even more unlikely leader.
tarik’s ‘illustrious’ career began on NetcodeGuides.com, which was the actual name of the team. A bit like when Welsh team The New Saints were called ‘Total Network Solutions’ because of a sponsorship deal, except somehow less important.
To be fair, tarik started very well, dropping a 27-17 scoreline in a big win over savage; a team that included his coach during the famous Major win, valens, as well as Relyks and hades (Canadian, bad, not to be confused with hades, Polish, decent) who you might know.
NetcodeGuides went on to become CLG, so it had FNS, jdm, retluC and hazed, all huge names. We jest, but FNS is a pretty good IGL to start your career with.
Not as good as FalleN, though, whom he ended his career with. Not on that cursed, Satanic, ill-fated MIBR team (shudders), but on Kings of Content. How fitting.
FalleN, tarik, Stewie2k, Brehze and RUSH made up Kings of Content, which is quite a dismissive name for a team with a combined five Major trophies. Though perhaps it was deserved, as in tarik’s final game they lost 1-2 to MIBR, which is quite embarrassing for both teams, really.
MIBR are supposed to be a real team and they dropped a map, whereas losing to WOOD7 as FalleN has to sting a little bit.
tarik finished second on the team, going 41-55, before fully retiring to become a react YouTuber or whatever. FalleN somehow went from here to winning trophies again.
Maybe tarik could still come back after all.
