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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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The era ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings
It’s the opening day of playoffs here at BLAST Open Porto, and we’re buzzing. The food is great, the beer is flowing, and of course, the Counter-Strike is f-cking excellent.
We were promised a Kovač derby in the first quarterfinal. What we got was more or less a slaughter instead.
It took ten rounds on Inferno (which was G2’s own map pick, by the way) to set the tone of how this one was going to go. Falcons had already run away with the CT half with an impressive 8-1 lead when NiKo and karrigan found themselves alone against all five. NiKo was trapped on the A site, karrigan rotating in from long, and NiKo just… suddenly killed (almost) everyone. He took four of them down in quick succession, reminding us that he’s still NiKo, and he’s still good. karrigan, to his credit, contributed by not dying immediately. Oh, and he got the last kill. That was good too.
That more or less sums up the series; G2, to their credit, did eventually remember that they were allowed to win rounds, and MATYS put together a lovely four-kill defence to get G2 their fourth and final round. But NiKo, in the following round, did NiKo things with a Deagle to win a 1v2 post-plant to bring them to match point anyway. As an aside, NiKo is really fun to watch with a Deagle… except for, you know, that one time.
Dust2 was a lot closer, and for one reason: huNter- turned up. He managed an ace in the second round of the second half, a 1v2 to keep G2 alive later on, and for a while, it genuinely looked like the younger Kovač might drag his team into a decider by himself. Unfortunately, he couldn’t. There's only so long one man can carry four passengers.
kyousuke, who was excellent all series and will get none of the credit, closed it out with a 1v2 of his own on the CT side. This felt like the closest version of Falcons that won Cologne, and it arrived at the right moment, because Spirit are up next.
Spirit has looked untouchable since Paris and hasn’t dropped a series in weeks, and Falcons surely can’t nail consistent 1v1s, 1v2s, and 2v5s every round. Although if anyone's going to try, it's definitely them.
One word:
Resiliency.
When people look back on what defined the Vitality era, that will be it. And although people might already be saying the Vitality era is over, this series against FURIA told us all we need to know to say it’s still very much alive.
Starting out on their own pick of Nuke, Vitality were horrid. An eight-round winning streak and a 10-2 lead for FURIA tells you all you need to know about just how bad the GOAT team’s Nuke T sides have gotten.
But it didn’t matter.
Cache, despite a seven-round winning streak from Vitality, was a slog, and despite some shaky rounds leading FURIA to claw back an 8-4 deficit to 9-9, apEX and the lads managed to close it out 13-11.
Resilient.
Then there was Dust2, the map where the series got turned on its head. Gone was the map one shakiness. Gone was the lack of confidence that has plagued Vitality in recent months. This was prime Vitality. And they took FURIA’s f-cking heads clean off.
13-4. With a stand-in. They didn’t just comeback from disaster, they did it in prime-Vitality style - by smashing everyone out of the park like they’re FACEIT level fours.
Vitality, we’ve missed you. Don’t leave us again.
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Fortunately, our friends at Razed have the solution for this, so get yourselves on razed.io by using our referral link and get three free cases upon sign-up!
Welcome to Porto, you made it to the playoffs, how are you feeling?
Feeling good, feeling great. We broke the curse of the BLAST studio, we never qualify for playoffs for BLAST events so we're happy.
You've got a tough quarter-final coming up against Vitality. They've got jL as a stand-in, does that impact the game at all?
I don't think it really impacts anything, he brings so many great things to a team that it doesn't matter they don't have mezii here. jL is a guy who is very energetic, he adds a lot to the vibe and he can shoot hard. I don't think it brings any advantage to us.
You've been trialling YEKINDAR as an IGL, what's your opinion on it?
It's not really a trial. We're just figuring out that he is the most capable IGL we could have on some maps. It's going great so far, I think he is understanding more and more the thing he can manipulate with the system that he likes to call. He's a very organised player, so I think it's a position that suits him, even though it does kind of make him play worse when you consider shooting and playing roles. But the way he sees the game makes it a good fit.
In the long term is YEKINDAR the plan for IGL? If so, you're losing a secondary caller, will you promote from within or sign someone to fill that void?
Our primary plan is bringing another IGL and not having YEKINDAR IGL. We work with the possibility of bringing an IGL to replace FalleN. If because of market opportunity or something that can happen in the transfer window, we happen to bring a guy who is not an IGL, YEKINDAR will do it. Not happily, but he will do it.
With FalleN retiring at the end of the season, is the search for it you and the players trying to find someone who will work, or is the organisation more involved?
I would say it's me and the organisation, the players are not really one-hundred percent involved in the process. Sometimes we do talk to them, we let them know that we're looking at some options and having some talks. Though I wouldn't say it's something they are involved with. It's more between me and the organisation.
We're in Portugal, are you going to treat this event as if you have a home-field advantage?
It certainly feels like home for us, there are a lot of people here who are Brazilian as well. It feels like home. It's my first time in Portugal, I wasn't expecting to meet so many Brazilian people here. Even the Portuguese people have shown a lot of love for us. I hope they have this feeling that we're representing them because we surely feel like that.
📺 Watch the interview on YouTube here.
Spirit and MOUZ have been sitting idle since winning their groups, likely enjoying the amazing food of Porto and soaking in the Portuguese sun, and in Spirit's case, that involved dropping precisely zero maps and dismantling FURIA in the upper bracket final without much difficulty. Spirit arrives to the semis on a nine-series win streak, ranked the best team in the world, alongside a feeling that this trophy may already be theirs.
Falcons had to work for their ticket to the playoffs. They lost the group's upper final to MOUZ, before beating G2 in a quarter-final that was over relatively quickly. If that version of Falcons turns up again, this is genuinely close, because that Falcons beat this Spirit lineup in the Cologne semi-finals.
The veto will be interesting; Spirit haven’t played Inferno once in three months and ban it every time, so that’s out. Falcons do the same to Cache. Both want Dust2, both are excellent on it, and it’ll almost certainly show up in the series. After that, we’re almost certainly getting Ancient - a map Spirit have not lost on all season, and one Falcons keep picking despite winning roughly a third of them. Please, lads. Not again.
Then there's the small matter of donk, who has been the best player alive for three months running and is currently outpacing m0NESY by a comfortable margin over that stretch. Falcons have multiple players who can show up like that, but it’s nowhere near a guarantee. They also have karrigan, so that’s… less scary.
Later in the day we’ll see Vitality take on MOUZ. Vitality opened this tournament by losing to Inner Circle, which would ordinarily be considered a disaster, but they've since gone on to win four separate games this tournament. That includes taking FURIA down in front of a crowd that very much wanted the opposite. Not bad for four-fifths of a team.
MOUZ, meanwhile, went unbeaten through the group. A head-to-head with Vitality is still pretty scary, but this Vitality is struggling, and MOUZ has a real chance of making it to the finals. This MOUZ has been looking strong, though, and both teams love Nuke enough that neither ever bans it. If this goes long, my bet is that it ends there.
Falcons and Vitality are coming into the semifinals after getting some warm-up on the stage (literally, it’s too bloody warm), whereas Spirit and MOUZ have had a few days off to relax. Who knows if that plays a role in the games tomorrow, but they’re likely to both be certified bangers.
G2 were pretty terrible on Inferno, but their absolutely abysmal spacing as they tried to take the A site certainly didn’t help them.
That said, with NiKo aiming like this, we’re not sure it would’ve mattered anyway.
