Loading…
GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Where were you when The MongolZ was kill?
In a move that genuinely no one saw coming, mzinho has joined BC.Game to reunite with Senzu. However, in a move everyone saw coming, Liquid have replaced ultimate. Finally.
The worst tournament in CS2 history is also still being played and causing f-ckery, whilst the latest CS2 update also threatens to cause huge changes to the very nature of the game.
Playoffs kicked off yesterday in Guangzhou, as XSE Pro League rolled into the South China Agricultural University Gymnasium. Because the one thing this event needed was a venue change.
Well, we’ll cut them some slack here, as the first day of playoffs saw minimal delays to the first quarter-final and a manageable one for the second.
That’s how low our expectations are at this point.
Anyway, hometown favourites TYLOO were first to step out in front of the local crowd, as they took on tournament favourites turned Swiss-stage disappointments 9z in the inaugural playoff game. Despite the Chinese side’s stellar run through the Swiss group, the South Americans got the better of them when the lights shone bright.
The scoreline read 2-1 in favour of the Argentinian organisation, with HUASOPEEK stepping forward to lead his team to victory.
As the second game rolled around, the pressure was on for both sides. Neither Alliance nor Nemesis have ever gone this far in an event of this scale, and in terms of prize money alone, a quarter-final win would mean a lot.
But it meant more to one man.
We’re starting to wonder what the Swedish organisation is feeding their fifth players, as bobeksde dominated the three-map series, ending with a series average rating of 1.75 as the Russians were sent home.
Seriously - first it was poiii, then MaiL09, and now bobeksde? If you’re a tier one team looking to buy, fix your eyes here.
The Swedes will take on the South Americans for the second time this tournament in the semi-final, hoping to repeat their Swiss stage win even with the added pressure of the gymnasium crowd. No matter the winner, though, they’ll have a rough time in the grand final.
The other side of the bracket is a virtual gauntlet, as PARIVISION will start today by facing BIG, before FaZe step into the ring against BetBoom.
Our eyes will go towards JBOEN and slaxejezzz, neither of whom have ever faced a top ten side, much less played on a stage this big, with a million dollars on the line. Here, their teams will be asking them to deliver with more eyes on them than ever before.
Try to look past the fact that this is a tier one-point-five event in a university gymnasium - it’s the off-season, we need to make the most of it.
FaZe (2.26) clan might be on their way back to being a respectable tier one squad.
JBOEN looks simply incredible, which means frozen no longer has to do all the heavy lifting in the fragging department.
Since returning to their normal roster after making playoffs in Cologne, BetBoom (1.58) look solid. But they certainly aren’t as good as their VRS ranking suggests.
If you want to back FaZe, then sign-up to Razed and play now.
Odds at time of writing
Lord Gaben has finally emerged from his month-long raves aboard his $500 million yacht and, at long last, pressed the button on Season 5 - not after milking the expression ‘last chance’ for everything it was worth, though.
But let’s all be honest here: skins are boring. Real CS degenerates just want to see what devious mechanics the devs cook up next. And this time they definitely cooked… something.
The biggest gameplay change to come out of the update is a complete rework of bomb damage. To be fair, the old system was wildly inconsistent across maps and desperately needed some attention. From now on, instead of taking instant damage the moment the C4 explodes, the blast now creates a shockwave. That means walls block the explosion, so if you’re tucked behind cover or around a corner, you’ll take less damage as the shockwave dissipates.
Valve have also added a preview to the health bar that shows how much damage you’ll take from the blast before it explodes. Some have been labeling this as yet another noob-friendly feature, but we don’t really see the issue. Lowering the learning curve isn’t the end of CS - if anything, it makes the game more approachable for casuals and new players, and that’s always a good thing.
Of course, no CS update would be complete without the shopping list of bugs and exploits discovered by the basement nerds within 15 seconds of the patch going live, but those seem to be mostly fixed by now.
Alongside the already announced arrival of Cache, Season 5 also introduces two new skin collections in Arabesque and Spy Tech that are pretty forgettable - except that red AWP, that one goes hard.
But the real highlight of the whole thing comes from one of the five new community maps. On Shelter, instead of rescuing the generic hostage, you are now able to rescue none other than s1mple himself!
We can finally free our GOAT from BC.Jail.
Overtime on Inferno is back this week to continue discussing all the latest roster moves, and by Gaben does Brollan to HEROIC have us excited. Speaking of exciting, FaZe’s new AWPer JBOEN looks genuinely incredible. It’s just a massive shame that jcobbb is still stinking up the roster.
With br0 departing the team and oSee being, well, rubbish, NRG have decided to roll back the years and become Complexity.
But worse.
They might not be worse, actually; Complexity were pretty bad, but the signing of hallzerk and the return of Jeorge does little to excite us. They’re still the team that managed to lose 16-12 after being 12-0 up, and those two aren’t changing that any time soon.
Their floor will have slightly risen with hallzerk, though. He’s by no means spectacular, but he’s far more stable than oSee, and much better against better opposition, too. So that’s a plus.
It also means Sonic won’t be the only one tasked with having pop-off games so that NRG can actually win against international opposition, so at least there’s a weight off his shoulders there.
It’s the 12th of July, 2024. No one knows it yet, but Liquid have just doomed themselves with the signing of ultimate.
It didn’t take the world long to figure it out, ultimate’s overly aggressive and careless playstyle was soon figured out, and then it constantly became a question of how and why he still had a spot on the team.
However, finally, the ultimate reign of terror has come to an end, and he was benched yesterday in favour of Jorko, who was signed after a spell with FOKUS.
The signing of Jorko is unquestionably a gamble, but a far safer one than ultimate was way back then. Although the 17-year-old is inexperienced, he’s played at a far more respectable level with FOKUS than ultimate ever had, and look - he can’t be as bad as ultimate was.
Can he?
Well, probably not. But there is certainly a small risk of it given the Bulgarian’s age and the higher level of opposition he will now be exposed to. He’s also going to have to contend with Liquid being a vibes black hole, too. So good luck, kid.
At least siuhy will be out. We’re still waiting on confirmation of JT’s arrival, but with rumours being pretty accurate so far, we’d say it’s quite likely.
Where were you when The MongolZ was kill?
We were right here, laughing our arses off.
Not just because The MongolZ are dying, and we’re tired of them being bad, but because of all teams, mzinho has decided to ditch them for BC.Game.
There’s no way this is going to go well.
A Ukrainian, a Russian, two Mongolians, a Dane, and the idiot Polish coach trying desperately to remember how to breathe. It’s going to be chaos, and perhaps even worse than the Portuguese lineup, and we can’t wait to see it.
Seriously, this is going to be a disasterclass in how not to build a roster. This lineup is a cultural nightmare, where two clear duos will break off, and the poor leadership duo will be left figuring out how to get them all to play cohesively on the server.
Spoiler alert: they won’t figure it out.
It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch them try to claw back the ranking spot they bought from SAW at the start of the year, so we’re going to place a bet now:
By the time of the VRS cutoff date for the Singapore Major, SAW will have a higher VRS rank than BCG.
We’ll be amazed if it doesn’t pan out that way.
We’d also like to bet that 910 is currently on the phone to an English tutor, because the poor AWPer needs to get himself very far away from The MongolZ and fast if he doesn’t want to see his solid form disappear into irrelevancy.
