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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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If only Legacy could only play Chinese events
Spirit might be the best team in the world, but they’d be f-cked if they came up against Legacy in China.
Also, Valve caused a bit of an issue this week, as they forgot to put out their official VRS update. Cheers lads.
Photo made with Gen AI. Illustration by NovaH
This Monday marked the first Monday of September, which meant three things. Sweden tests its air raid alarm, the US celebrates Labour Day, and professional Counter-Strike gets a new update to the Valve Regional Standings.
Except we didn’t.
The nerdiest corners of Counter-Strike fandom waited with bated breath as Monday turned to Tuesday, and still no ranking had dropped. Already, this was causing problems, as tournament organisers had to scramble to find a solution.
The correct thing per Valve’s regulations would be to use the last official ranking update, which would be an August 3rd ranking, or break the rules to use a more up-to-date unofficial ranking, such as those displayed on HLTV.
Supposedly, some TOs were even permitted by HLTV to use their unofficial, live ranking as the basis for their tournament seeds - a mandate HLTV doesn’t even have, but seemingly decided to take into their own hands.
It was a mess.
The night between Tuesday and Wednesday, Valve finally took their thumb out of their rear ends and dropped a backdated ranking, but even this had issues. They accidentally included results from September 8th, which wouldn’t have been in the ranking had it been released on time.
This required a second fix for a problem that, we’ll remind you, wouldn’t have happened if they’d just pushed the button. We’re assuming Valve were all busy celebrating Labour Day on one of GabeN’s many yachts.
You, as a casual fan, might not have noticed, as luckily no tier one events were set to use the September ranking for their invites. But the fact that a single day’s delay caused so much havoc in the tier two scene shows how dire it would be if Valve neglected their self-imposed duties for a longer period of time.
What if the October ranking is delayed by a week? What if the January ranking doesn’t drop at all? The answer is that it would be pure chaos.
The VRS system is still really fragile, and the pile of evidence that Valve really don’t give a f-ck is starting to get bigger and bigger. Events constantly break Valve’s requirements, and Valve don’t even revoke their ranked status when said event decides literal Major invites. If they won’t even care enough to push the update button on time, why should the rest of the scene care about VRS at all?
We hope this is the only month we have to publish a story like this, and to make sure that stays the same: just push the f-cking button, Valve.
Two weeks ago on Overtime on Inferno, AN1MO and Quacke were weighing up FalleN’s chances of lifting silverware before his retirement. Considering FURIA haven’t defeated a top five team since FalleN’s retirement was announced, the idea of FURIA winning a truly notable event was discarded.
However, after our lovely pod hosts eyed up the attending teams of FISSURE Playground 3, they thought FalleN could at least win a single mickey mouse trophy before calling it a day.
Sadly that has not been the case.
Legacy has been electric since adding try, so it isn’t entirely fair to say FURIA should’ve finished in first place. But finishing as runners-up is a reasonable expectation that FURIA failed to meet.
With Legacy being on the other side of the bracket, only G2 and BetBoom stood in the way of FURIA and the final.
As incredible as Magnojez is, BetBoom haven’t looked capable of upsetting top teams since the Major. In fact, their 2-1 defeat to G2 in the semi-finals of this event was the best they’ve looked this season. If it wasn’t for NertZ looking back to his best on Anubis, G2 would’ve lost 2-0.
BetBoom played some good CS and they deserve credit for that, but G2 digging so deep against BetBoom for a win is more evidence that points towards G2 not being an elite team.
FURIA used to be one of those teams that G2 stood firmly behind, which is why it’s so disappointing that they lost to G2 for the first time in just under a year.
You’d hope YEKINDAR calling on Ancient would allow for FalleN to focus on his crosshair more, but all it did was make YEKINDAR play worse whilst FalleN did his best karrigan cosplay.
After FURIA lost their map pick, they were subjected to being battered by r1nkle on Dust 2, who finished with an 18-6 scoreline. It was his best map of the event, though not enough to repair the hilariously awful 0.91 overall event rating he ended with.
FURIA didn’t need to blitz their side of the bracket, but they needed to handle it, and previously they would have.
From the outside looking in, FURIA seem like a team so concerned with their future that they’ve lost their grip on the present. IGL duties are being split, roster rumours are swirling, and Legacy have snatched FURIA’s chain to become the best South American team during FalleN’s retirement tour.
It can’t get any worse than this, can it?
Everyone loves opening cases, so Valve had to ruin them by making them those miserable terminals. Of course, you could still buy old cases and open those at extortionate prices, but why line the pockets of Valve if they can’t be f-cked to even make a working anti-cheat?
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!
We have no idea how good Legacy are. Absolutely none.
Inside of China, though, they’re the best team in the world. If you were a Chinese fan, and Youtube/Twitch being blocked meant you only saw CS in your country, you’d think Legacy were 2025 Vitality.
Not only that, but you’d think latto was a hall-of-famer, a real f0rest, olofmeister, flamie-at-Majors, s1mple-type. He was absolutely ridiculous yesterday, as he put in what would have been a career-defining performance had it been at an event that people really cared about.
He was the topfragger on all three maps, with the most impressive being his 24-8, 131 ADR showing on the final map of Dust 2 to secure the 3-0 and give G2 the most predictably anti-climactic flight home possible. That org just loves being 3-0’d.
We’re not massive r1nkle fans, and we’re not serial haters either - but this performance sucked allu’s balls. He was the lowest rated player in the server, had the fewest kills, and perhaps most damningly went 5-16 in duels vs try.
If you want a good idea of quite how good latto was, he racked up double figure kills on every G2 member, with none of them getting double figures against him. He was completely indomitable. Unkillable. Unstoppable.
NertZ did what he could, and probably kept the score on the first two maps respectable (13-9 and 13-10 respectively), but it would take some divine intervention to stop latto - and Legacy - in China.
And if there is a God, he ain’t a G2 fan.
The question now is, as it so often is, can Legacy do this again? They’ve had these false dawns before, but they so regularly win tournaments (even if they’re not super S tier tournaments) that they must have something about them that’s genuinely good.
There aren’t many teams who have won more trophies than them in the last 18 months, and yet nobody has any idea if they’re actually a top team or not. You wouldn’t seriously put them above MOUZ, or Vitality, or FURIA a week ago, but we’re starting to wonder if they might just be a top four team right now.
Is that insane?
Probably.
