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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
And Falcons pay the price for it
We guess Falcons must’ve been partying too hard over the Summer break - not that we blame them - because their upset at the hands of 100 Thieves was not on our bingo card.
It’s not been the only upset in what has been a surprisingly fun BLAST Bounty, either, so maybe online CS isn’t so bad? Okay, maybe we won’t go that far.
New season. New rosters. Same online bullsh-t.
BLAST Bounty Season 2 has officially kicked off the second half of the year (no, XSE is NOT canon), giving us our first look at the aftermath of rostermania. Sure, you can’t draw many conclusions from a single online BO3… but overreacting is kind of our thing. What’s the fun otherwise?
Let’s start with the good. MOUZ, FaZe, NIP, and paiN all swept past Nuclear TigeRES, EYEBALLERS, M80, and Gentle Mates without much trouble. PR looked right at home on his return, jcobbb actually contributed for once, and for the love of God, someone get yxngstxr on a proper team. You’d think the guy’s earned it by now.
Now for the bad. Despite ultimately beating Nemiga, OG, and Nemesis, G2, Spirit, and Astralis all looked far shakier than they’d have liked to in their season openers. The biggest takeaway is that we can put the r1nkle signing firmly in the flop category. Who could’ve seen that coming?
Spirit, meanwhile, came dangerously close to the ugly territory. Somehow, donk and friends needed double overtime on the Ancient decider to scrape past cadiaN and pr1metapz in the big 2026. Seriously, what the f-ck is a pr1metapz?
Speaking of the ugly… oh, Falcons. Fresh off their well-earned post-Major vacation, the Cologne champions stumbled at the very first hurdle. 100 Thieves lived up to their name, stealing the series after a sick comeback from 3-9 down on Anubis. Want to know why Gizmy is the truth? Keep reading.
After surviving the absolute hell of online Russian opposition in the StarLadder Closed Qualifier relatively unscathed, new-look Aurora slipped where we least expected them to. Fresh off an offseason with two roster changes of their own, FOKUS managed to pull off the 2-1 upset. For a team with Aurora’s ambitions, that’s a match you have to win. Then again, we’re pretty sure this doesn’t happen on LAN.
Two days and twelve matches in, the opening round is still going strong. Stage 1’s final four series wrap up today, with HEROIC versus The MongolZ the one we’ll keep the closest eye on.
100 Thieves have taken down the reigning Major champions, Falcons.
And as big device and even bigger Gizmy and poiii fans, we were absolutely ecstatic.
Or we were, until we remembered they also lost to NIP and Nuclear TigeRES **in the same 24-hour stretch.
Now, we’ll cut them some slack; they do have a new IGL, and online CS is always a bit of a coin toss, but this kind of inconsistency plagued them all throughout the first half of the year, too, and it needs to stop now if they have any chance of making the Singapore Major.
Fortunately, though, now that they have a real IGL in Gizmy, we believe it will.
Not just because in poiii, rain, device, and Sirah, Gizmy now has a better group of players to work with than he did with Monte, but also just because it’s Gizmy, and given the Monte team he dragged to the Major, we’re pretty sure he could get us there, too.
Having watched them play, once they get to that beautiful promised land of LAN CS, we don’t think they’ll have anything to worry about. They have an incredible amount of experience in rain and device, and the firepower potential from Sirah and poiii is insane. This is a team built to thrive in Counter-Strike’s toughest environments.
They will get there, too. There’s no doubting that. The only question is how they react to not getting there by the end of the year, which surely must’ve been the expectation when the team was signed.
We hope it doesn’t lead to any rash decisions; blowing up the roster would be a huge mistake, but maybe they are one more roster move off making it to the top, and maybe that’s okay.
Maybe that’s the reason why they’ll end up with a better team when they do make it.
Because they will make it. Because Gizmy is inevitable.
This week on Overtime on Inferno, Sam and Quacke are joined by special guest spray. Up until recently, spray worked as the assistant coach for NIP’s main team, and was kind of enough to give his insights into the teams 2026 struggles this episode. Oh, and because he’s such a legend, he stayed to tell you guys what teams passed or failed the recent rostermania exam.
At the end of every rostermania, there’s always a conversation about which players still remain without a team.
Normally, the conversations go a little bit like this: “Bad. Bad. He should be on a team. Worst player I’ve ever seen. Should be [insert tier three national team here. Bad.”
This time, however, there’s actually some solid names still available.
SunPayus, CYPHER, lauNX, Krimbo, jL, chopper, siuhy, MAJ3R, Perfecto. kl1m. broky. degster. ultimate. Ag1L. FL1T. nota. yxngstxr. soulfly.
All of them are available. All of them are talented. One of those statements is a lie.
If we look past the lie, though, it’s actually easy to see a genuinely good team in there. And we’d like to put it together now, just so the mildly ambitious org owner who is reading this great newsletter can take our ideas and start making some phone calls.
Let’s start with the AWPer. kl1m has the highest ceiling, but he’s a bit of an idiot, so he’s out. degster should be on a team, but we like players who actually get visas, so maybe not. broky and ultimate are, well, broky and ultimate, so our choice is SunPayus.
As for IGL, chopper and MAJ3R both feel like poisoned chalices. Given that siuhy worked with both ash and sycrone before stinking up the gaff on Liquid, there’s reason to be concerned about him, too, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt so as not to f-ck ourselves from the get-go.
That leaves us with the rifle core, and for us, this is where the potential of this team really starts to shine through.
There’s a conversation to be had about CYPHER vs lauNX, especially with the comments made by coolio on the BLAST stream yesterday, but given that lauNX just has more top-level experience, we’ll go with him.
We could debate between Krimbo and Ag1L, too, but we want to see Ag1L back with the rest of the Portugeezers, so that debate is over.
As for the final piece of the puzzle, who else than jL? He’s a Major winner, and an MVP at that. He’s also going to bring the vibes to this roster, and they might need that as they battle their way through VRS in the early stages.
Finally, we’ll give this bunch of misfits a coach, and that coach will be sprayxd.
Is it because he came on the podcast? Partially. Do we think he’s good anyway? Yes we do.
So, org owners out there (especially you H3CZ), who like the look of this team, it will get you to a Major. You can thank us by putting our logo on your jerseys. Thanks.
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