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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Bad decision after bad decision
Valve are making a real mess of VRS, and it could get really messy if things aren’t careful. Speaking of messy, Astralis’ team is about to look very bizarre, and we think the late-stage international team meta is now very scary.
We’re also in Katowice for ESL Pro League Season 24, so we’ll have lots of coverage both here and on YouTube all weekend!
You guys remember when Danish Astralis were the best team of all time?
Remember when the Danes that followed them were middling, but still had national identity?
Well, those days are gone.
Astralis, who have remained middling following their transition to an international roster at the start of the year, are now going even further, and the result that they will be reduced to just one Dane in the team.
If rumours are to be believed, jabbi and HooXi will soon be departing the team, with their contracts set to expire imminently.
Their replacements are… questionable.
In the IGL department, siuhy is expected to be the one to come in to replace the Gigachad, which is a truly terrifying prospect. And not for the teams Astralis will be playing.
siuhy has always needed a master tactician alongside him for his teams to have any hope of success, and given the fact that Astralis have NEO, we don’t think it’s going to go well.
As for jabbi’s replacement, Astralis are set to sign cmtry on loan from FUT. You know, that AWPer who can’t AWP and therefore won’t be AWPing on Astralis, and the team will have to instead hope that he can kill people with a rifle…
Yeah, it’s f-cking bleak.
To make matters worse, they’re always expected to lose Staehr next year, too.
Well, Astralis, it was nice knowing you.
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!
G2, NAVI, FURIA - what do all of these teams have in common?
They’re as dead as Dolly Parton.
But at least we feel bad about that one.
G2, frankly, are f-cking awful. huNter- is an absolutely horrid IGL, HeavyGod has stopped fragging, and r1nkle might have as many brain cells as frags he gets in a game. Which, if you haven’t been watching, is a very low number.
NertZ might finally be back, but it doesn’t even matter anymore. G2 limped out of Katowice with a 1-3 record, having only managed to win against Shinden.
As for FURIA, there’s just no excitement around them anymore. No hope for FalleN to get another trophy before he retires. It’s just bleak. The reality is that they should’ve made moves months ago if they hoped to win anything this year, but they didn’t, and that will probably cost them more than just FalleN’s retirement come December.
FURIA made it to playoffs in the end, but it just doesn’t matter. They aren’t winning.
NAVI, though, NAVI is the really dark one. NAVI absolutely battered G2 in their opener, and we thought they might be back. We were wrong.
We can excuse the losses to Vitality and Falcons, but not PARIVISION. Not the way they lost. This is a Major winning roster, and they play like FUT did when they couldn’t close out a game. There’s no bite left, and it’s just sad to watch.
NAVI is a dead team that needs to make at least two changes, but making two changes and it going well is a very, very hard thing to do.
We’ll be seeing them in the NIP and fnatic tier soon.
This week on Overtime on Inferno, Sam and Quacke scream at Sashi for somehow being even more desperate and scummy than BCG. The episode was recorded hours before Valve eventually brought the ban hammer down upon them, so tune in for part two next week where we laugh at them instead.
Lady and gentlemen, we finally have a good bracket on our hands.
Sure, Falcons and Spirit might be playing each other in the quarter-finals, but with Vitality on the opposite side it means one of them is highly likely to be playing them in the final, and we couldn’t be happier about that.
Vitality kick off their time in the Spodek versus PARIVISION, a match we expect will be fairly easy for apEX and co. This event has been a nice mini resurgence for the PVISION boys, but come on, this is Vitality we’re talking about.
They’re then set to face off against Aurora or 1win (sorry, ‘The One’ - thanks gambling laws), which is a match we can’t help but be excited for. We expect Aurora to take it, but 1win are a surprisingly fun team.
Five lads on a redemption arc? That’s something we can get behind.
The other side of the bracket kicks off with MOUZ vs FURIA, which is a must-win game for the German organisation.
They slipped up in StarLadder, but their group stage 3-0 has been a return to form for them, and given how utterly rubbish FURIA look right now, losing it would be a travesty.
And that brings us to Spirit vs Falcons, the quarter-final that we’d be buzzing to have as a grand final at any other event.
Because there always has to be one.
We genuinely can’t call this game. At all. Spirit are a far cry from what they were in Porto, and once again, a break seems to have hurt them. That said, Falcons aren’t the team that lifted a Major in Cologne, either, and their map pool problems may cause an issue against the unstoppable force that is donk.
One thing we know for sure is that it’s guaranteed to be a stellar game, and a perfect way to round out a day of four BO3s in the Spodek.
We got our wish. As it often does, the monkey’s paw curled.
God, I’m getting tired of using that opening.
We’d like to be perfectly clear: f-ck BC.Game and fuck Sashi. And after Wednesday - f-ck Valve.
If you hadn’t heard of Sashi before this week, we wouldn’t blame you. It’s the son of a Danish meat importer of the same name, poorly running an aggressively mid Danish Counter-Strike team. Apparently too mid, it seemed, as they decided to stop being Danish on Monday.
Instead, two Aussies in TjP and Hatz joined the team, and Anlelele decided he was now more Vietnamese than Danish. It would turn out later, he was never Danish, and has actually been fakeflagging this entire time. We imagine you hear us rolling our eyes right now.
It seems Valve agreed.
Tuesday killed the hopes of making the Major for three teams who we met at a veeery Chinese time of their lives. Chief among them was BC.Game, meaning s1mple was now banned from the Major.
Look, we love the GOAT, but we think it was good riddance. We’ve been saying for weeks they shouldn’t be let into the Major.
But just as we went out for celebratory beers on Wednesday evening, Valve decided to absolutely kill any hopes of us having a good week, and granted an exception specifically for everyone’s favourite crypto-casino.
It seems Valve have little regard for the future and safety of the Asian scene and their teams appearing in the Major, but rather just hate fakeflaggers. As BC.Game were allowed to participate, this rule change now exclusively affects Sashi.
Which is bullsh-t.
This might be the biggest hit Asian CS, a region already underdeveloped compared to the rest of the Counter-Strike world, has taken to date in terms of relative competition.
Valve not only decided to make them take that hit, but decided to be yet more evil and gave them a sensual tease before ripping away the chance for the teams actually grinding in the region to make the biggest tournaments of their lives. It’s wrong on every level.
There’s no funny ending to this story; this is a sad day. Genuinely, f-ck Valve.
