It’s spooky season so Bucharest is the perfect location for Counter-Strike to head to next - and NAVI have a point to prove there.

Evil Geniuses are also finally dead, but Snax might be about to reitre, so it’s all swings and roundabouts in Counter-Strike this week.

FaZe

0·2

BC.Game

PARI...

0·3

MongolZ

MOUZ

1 day

Liquid

G2

1 day

NAVI

Vitality

1 day

9z

Spirit

1 day

BetBoom

• Can you believe that s1mple has now only played more matches for NAVI than any team other than BCG? What a set of matches.
• BCG did damage FaZe’s Major hopes at DraculaN, though, so we have to give them some credit.

Vampires, castles, werewolves, and Counter-Strike

Vampires, castles, werewolves, and Counter-Strike. Mix it all together, and we have PGL Masters Bucharest. Sure, we don't have real vampires and werewolves, but we do have one B1ad3 and high-quality CS (arguably).

The event, originally scheduled to be held in Belgrade, has the top teams in the scene invited by VRS - except Falcons, who declined - and four underdogs who made it through regional closed qualifiers.

With the VRS race reaching its final stretch, this is an important event for the teams still fighting for a spot, including the one led by B1ad3. Who could tell that by mid-October one of the greatest organizations, the only one that never missed a Major, would be fighting tooth and nail to make it to the second one of the year, after not making it to the playoffs in Cologne...

So, yes, this is a big one for NAVI. Not only is it their chance to bounce back and prove to the fans that they are not going down the same road as Astralis and NIP, it is also iM's chance to win a trophy on home soil.

Yeah, yeah, we know: it's gonna be a studio tournament, they don't have the firepower, Vitality is there... But imagine how nice it would be to see the only Romanian player in the tournament end up winning it.

lauNX did it earlier this year and he's way younger than you, Mihai, just saying…

Other teams also running for the Major are BETBOOM, Nemiga, TYLOO, and Dendele. But if we're being realistic, only BETBOOM has good chances to go deep in the tournament.

After beating Falcons and playing a nail-biting BO5 grand final against FURIA, Boombl4's squad is getting into strong shape for the Major. Or perhaps it's just a fairytale run - time will tell.

The first-round matchups are already set up, and if everything goes as planned, all four of the underdogs are going to the 0-1 bracket; once there, it will be a blood bath to join the big dogs in the playoffs.

But, who knows? Strange and mysterious things tend to happen in the land of Count Dracula.

We aren’t the only ones with cool games to play

You might have seen that we launched our sexy new website recently, and if you haven’t, go check it out.

One of the best new features of the site is our mini-games, and we’re already seeing a whole bunch of you enjoy the Crossword, Wordsearch, and our personal favourite, the TLDR Ten.

But we aren’t the only ones with fun mini-games. Our community server partner Wideswing have launched a mini-game of their own, a genuinely difficult Higher or Lower game that we’ve been addicted to for the last few days.

Try it out and see if you can beat our high score - 19.5 btw - and let us know what your score is in the mini-games channel of our discord.

The 27 Club

Avid readers of the TLDR newsletter will remember a special story I wrote a few weeks ago. It was a story of self-discovery, as I didn’t really know how much Complexity meant to me until they shut down.

We had similar news to that this week, but for this one I’m not sobbing - I’m grinning ear to ear.

Evil Geniuses, one of Counter-Strike’s, and even esports’, most storied organisations announced this week that it will shut its doors on November 2nd, after a whopping 27 years in the space. Not a day too soon as far as we’re concerned.

From absolutely gutting the NA ecosystem by purchasing every single talented team in the region, then running them into the ground under a “talent pipeline” moniker, to literally pushing an 18-year-old team member to the brink of suicide, the org really lived up to at least half of its name.

Oh, and I don’t caaaaare that LaPointe quit as CEO years ago. This runs so much deeper than that. And you know what? I could maybe even look past all that if they weren’t such. F-cking. Bores.

Yesterday, their most successful year in Counter-Strike was the subject of the TLDR Ten. Can you guess which player in the top 10 was forgotten the most? Brehze. That’s how forgettable their five minutes in the sun were.

Remember the years they spent being the token invite to every BLAST event, every ESL Pro League, just to eternally finish last place while other teams were begging for an invite?

As far as I’m concerned, they’ve been on #PACKWATCH for the better part of a decade, and I’m more than glad they’re gone. You won’t be missed - by neither me nor AN1MO.

He’s got to go blud

This week on Overtime on Inferno, we really thought we were being spicy by saying Falcons need to boot karrigan before the Major. Though it turns out we’ve been outdone by Pimp, who suggested Falcons would be better off without kyousuke.

Falcons discourse has gotten so out of control, that somehow, we’ve become the voice of reason.

In this episode, we get into:

• Falcons MUST pull the plug on karrigan
• FURIA win the event of all time
• Aurora are dark horses for the Major

Skins = wins

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!

The Big Apple is tired

In mid-season rostermania this week, GamerLegion opted to place their in-game leader, Snax, on the bench. This comes after a fall season to forget, and with constant roster turmoil due to logistical and medical reasons, their chances of making the Singapore Major had largely faded after an elimination loss to EYEBALLERS just last week.

With this in mind, AN1MO was quite a downer on Snax’s second stint with the team when he wrote about the news on our brand-spanking-new website. However, new information has since come to light.

The Big Apple himself clarified the move on Twitter, explaining that he had himself initiated the move. With just two months left on his contract, he felt there was very little energy left in him to keep going, so asked his team to begin looking for a replacement about a month and a half prior to the move being made.

That’s actually a move we can respect quite a bit. It’s fair to assume Snax wouldn’t have been doing the team any favours if he stretched himself for the rest of the season, only to burn out hard doing so. What we don’t understand is how they landed on his replacement.

They mean to tell us that after a whopping 45 days of scouting, negotiating, testing and evaluating they landed on… shalfey? Look, the dude’s alright as a player, but from what we’ve seen and heard, he’s an aggressively mid in-game leader.

That being said, two of the bigger brothers to GL have recently managed to do the impossible, by turning a star rifler into a successful in-game leader. Replacing your traditional IGL, playing the tough, self-sacrificing roles to the benefit of their teammates, with a higher firepower rifler seems to have worked wonders for MOUZ and NIP.

If GL manage to do the same with their newest Russian signing… are we looking at a new meta developing? If we are, what does that mean for NAVI? For FURIA? For Falcons?

🎥 It’s all about pointing your camera at the right thing

• For the non French or Germans under us - so the non stinky Europeans - you might not know arte, but it’s crazy to see such an icon of TV release an actually good documentary about pro CS.
• Seems like YEKINDAR perfectly understands why apEX is working for Vitality, even though on paper he should as much of a liability as karrigan or Fallen.

✨ Check out my shiny new skin

• AWP Lightning Strike, but make it scientific. Yeah boy.
• See this is why we need more “classical” art inspirations for skins. That and more interesting black themed skins.

❓ Who?

• In the category of “players you probably forgot”, Qikert is now Head Coach of Spirit Academy.
• Additionally, in the category of “players you definitely forgot”, nin9 thinks he could be the spark to relight The MongolZ’ fire.