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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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Don’t worry NAVI, 47th time’s the charm
You may (not) be surprised to hear this, but Vitality have won again.
They dodged the FaZe bullsh-t and lifted their fifth trophy of the year, pulling off a comeback that has only been done once before.
You also may (not) be surprised to hear this, but women’s CS has taken another hit.
We could spend this recap talking about how GamerLegion talked up a big game just to get smacked by Vitality. Or how Astralis suffered an embarrassing comeback defeat to even give GamerLegion the chance to be smacked.
We could even talk about how G2 bottled it yet again if we were so inclined - and we kinda will - but instead, let’s focus on FaZe.
We were pleasantly surprised, perhaps even amazed, that FaZe made it to the playoffs. They didn’t handle NAVI well on day one, and FURIA certainly should’ve had their way with them, but hey, FaZe bulls-t still exists, and we weren’t going to be mad about it.
That bullsh-t, though, should have come to an end when they faced off against G2. But it didn’t.
Instead, G2, as we’ve now gotten used to and even come to expect, struggled to hold their composure when it mattered most, allowing FaZe to win seven 1vX situations (six of which on their map wins) and advance to a semi-final that should have been G2’s before it even began.
FaZe, though, sadly, just couldn’t keep it up against NAVI. 20% of their rounds won in the playoffs came down to clutch situations, and NAVI just aren’t going to give them the same level of opportunities as someone like G2 would.
Ancient might have created the illusion that NAVI vs FaZe was close, but let’s make it clear: it wasn’t.
bullsh-tter, bullsh-tted.
This week’s news that BIG is leaving women’s CS might seem like par for the course to you. For years now - long before ESL hit the killswitch on their Impact project - big orgs have been exiting women’s CS in droves.
In actuality, it marks a very depressing low point in Counter-Strike’s history. As of Friday, every single European organisation that ever invested in the Impact League has exited women’s CS.
We’re at rock bottom.
BIG held out the longest. Despite seeing big success early on, NAVI and G2 left well before the shutdown was even announced. NIP held out for a while, but killed the project along with the league itself. Teams like Spirit, VP and GL left after barely giving the project a chance, and Astralis… well, in their case, they had bigger fish to fry.
The German organisation were one of the first teams to join the league, and despite (ironically) not being as big as some of the aforementioned teams, they held out the longest, in spite of waning financial incentives.
We know that it has meant the world to those players. The championship-winning roster they put together for the final season in 2025 brought a glimmer of hope to the scene as a whole, and BIG set a standard for how to support, promote, and celebrate these players - those who need it the most.
We can’t do anything other than raise our glasses to them for that effort. It looks grim right now - funnily enough, European players looking for a full-time team right now are better off moving to North or South America, but we still have hope that the scene can grow to where it deserves to be.
To all the rest of you, who let their teams go with an off-hand tweet, you should be f-cking ashamed.
Thank you, BIG.
Illustration by Fuffy, Source: Vitality
The Esports Nations Cup is set to be the Olympics of esports, and in this special episode of Overtime on Inferno, Sam got the chance to chat to Jeff Simpkins, the head of Great Britain’s squad for the event.
It’s official: we’ve run out of words for Vitality. And trust us, this doesn’t happen very often.
Vitality are just simply incredible. They were 11-0 down when the final began; NAVI gave them precisely zero opportunity to put together a T side on Nuke.
But that didn’t matter, because Vitality won the map 16-12 anyway.
Vitality then won the first four rounds of Anubis, too, and although NAVI managed to pull it back to 6-6, we still never really expected them to win the map, because at that point, Vitality’s win was never in doubt.
And if you bothered to stick around for the 13-3 decimation on Dust2, you’d know that NAVI felt that way, too.
It’s a run that is now truly indescribable. Since losing the opening map in the Budapest final versus FaZe, Vitality have won 15 grand final maps in a row, and in just three short years on the team, flameZ has won 20 trophies, while mezii is on 19.
That’s more than s1mple and NiKo.
There is no ifs, buts, or maybes, Vitality are the best team of all time.
And we don’t think anything is going to stop them.
