#676: Into darkness (AMERICAS)

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Match highlights

• Did everyone forget playoffs will be played in an arena? Or do they still think MOUZ are the favourites anyway?

• If so, what did everyone take to think that?

EPL S23 playoffs preview

Crowning the prince of darkness

After what seems like endless rounds of online CS, ESL Pro League Season 23 is down to just eight teams.

Eight teams, all who will be looking to crown themselves as the best team to exist within the shadow of Vitality.

MOUZ (apparently) are the favourites to do so, although they do have a harder route to the final than their closest competitor, Spirit. They’ll first have to get past FUT, who are an unknown quantity on stage, and that’s a game that figures like dziugss, dem0n, and lauNX could all very quickly turn on its head.

Should MOUZ win that game, they’ll then face off against the winner of The MongolZ vs NAVI.

Now that The MongolZ have had some time with cobrazera they’ve proven they can still be dangerous, and they’ll be keen to go out on a high before their coach, maaRaa, takes a little break. As for NAVI, yes they suck sometimes, but they’re unpredictable, and when they - and in particular, makazze - are on, The MongolZ won’t stand a chance in stopping them.

Honestly, we don’t have a clue which way it will go, but we know that both teams have more than enough ability to end MOUZ’ tournament with another top four placing.

On the Spirit side of things, their quarter-final sees them face off against Astralis, who, let’s be honest, should be getting their sh-t pushed in.

And listen, that’s not because we don’t like this Astralis, or because we think they’re bad, we just don’t think they’re equipped to deal with donk.

It’s not just that, either - just look at their recent matches. Yes, they may have smacked some teams, but they also frequently get smacked. If donk is firing from round one, it won’t be a long contest.

Facing Spirit in the following round will be either Legacy or Aurora. It’s another hard game to call considering how much better Legacy have looked with arT, but on the basis that a big part of their run has been thanks to overperformances from n1ssim and saadzin, we’ll say regression to the mean gives this one to Aurora.

So that gives us Spirit versus Aurora. We think we all know how that one goes.

As for the final? Well, Spirit versus MOUZ in an arena? We know how that one goes, too.

So, congratulations, Spirit. You’re now the biggest team in Vitality’s shadow.

The crown prince of darkness, but good luck finding the light.

Words by AN1MO

ENCE bench their team

Back to the sauna

Remember when ENCE were one of the best teams in the world? We do, we loved them.\

Still, their team fell apart, and the years since haven’t exactly been kind to the Finnish org. There were some positive signs when the Polish/gla1ve mix began their time together with a playoff run at IEM Katowice 2024, but that very quickly petered out, and the international teams since haven’t got anywhere close.

With ENCE now not even inside the top 50 of VRS, they’ve decided to bench their entire roster, saying that the current “eco-system has made it increasingly difficult for organisations like ours to reach the highest level.”

Except that’s not really true, is it?

The reality is more that their team just wasn’t very good, and they weren’t attending enough of the smaller LANs to see themselves grow as other teams have. As Janko pointed out on Twitter, this decision, in an era where it has arguably never been easier for tier two teams, is almost certainly based in economic reasons.

Don’t worry, though, ENCE fans. The organisation isn’t going anywhere; they’ll be looking to come back soon with a brand new all-Finnish lineup.

Which, to be fair, they won’t go anywhere with either.

Words by AN1MO

Podcast

The ranting podcast

PGL are back in Sam and Jack’s sights, mostly because they’re concerned the TO might be creating a partner system. They aren’t the only people to fall victim to our hosts’ ranting, though; the EPL casters also have the hosts’ aim turned on them and their terrible poop jokes.

• Would anyone even want to join Liquid or FaZe?

• Why are people calling MOUZ the favourites for EPL?

• Do HEROIC even need a new AWPer?

VP announce their roster

You’re not MOUZ, bro

We know you’ve been waiting with bated breath, so we won’t beat around the bush. Virtus.pro have confirmed their full lineup after a complete rebuild - b1st and tO0rO return to the starting lineup, alongside academy players AquaRS and F0R3VER.

We don’t know much about these players, but all four were part of the same VP.Prodigy roster that handed it to Liquid in a BLAST-qualifier last year, which is at least something. That being said, pretty much anyone can do that these days.

Yeah, we’re not particularly excited. Add that the academy team was led by AquaRS, who now will hand over captaincy to mir - for whatever reason - and we don’t see why this lineup would become very good.

Not that it matters, for now. The academy team had a VRS-rank - probably part of why they decided to go this route - sitting pretty as the 78th best team in the world. Quite far from tier one events, to say the least.

Defenders of this move might point to MOUZ and NAVI’s previous academy teams, that have become tier one competitors after being promoted or sold on, but for VP that’s a line of reasoning we can eliminate entirely. Most of you may not even have noticed, but VP have been running their academy team for six years at this point, and have thus far produced no player better than r3salt. That is to say, nobody who stacks up to FUT or xertioN and co.

We might be wrong, but for now it’s sayonara to the polar bears in any notable tier of Counter-Strike. See you in LanDaLan!

Words by quacke

quacke’s LAN experience

Tier two Counter-Strike is back

I have missed tier two Counter-Strike.

That phrase might mean different things to a lot of people, so I will clarify what it means to me.

I often reminisce about the lower-tier landscape of 2018 and 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic. Smaller LAN-cups breaking up the monotonous online competition. Events where the big dogs get shown up, future Major champions get their first feeling of losing on LAN, and small, local teams get a shot at the big leagues thanks to the simple fact they live nearby.

For a long time, I thought it would never return. Today, I am very grateful I was wrong.

I got the chance to join the second edition of the Parken Challenger Championship as one of the casters on the main broadcast.

100 Thieves more or less needed to go through as undefeated champions, as any match loss would tank their VRS to a significant degree. Lo and behold, after dominating the group stage, they get shown up. By Johnny Speeds and AM Gaming.

There’s something truly, truly special about hearing coach friberg shout at the Major champions until they shiver, watching forgotten players like Sapec and HEAP out-aim some of the hottest prospects in the world, and seeing Lekr0, in 2026, completely outplay a gla1ve-led team.

All this action culminated in Betclic Apogee taking a first LAN title, sending them into multiple larger LAN tournaments later in the year. Drinking beers and playing foosball with the largest and loudest man in Copenhagen that Tuesday evening is an experience I will never forget.

Really, there are many people and experiences from these three days I will never forget, because to me, events like these are what Counter-Strike is all about. Events where you will watch the matches together with the managers of the teams in the server. Events where those who are truly passionate will fall in love with teams most people don’t even know exist. Where you can accidentally find out which players don’t wash their hands after using the urinal.

Most of all, events where everyone is welcome.

Weekends like these are those that make me forever thankful this game exists and allows me to do what I do, and if you ever get the chance to visit an event at this level, you should not hesitate to make the trip.

Tier two Counter-Strike is truly back.

Words by quacke

Your opinions

In the latest edition, we asked you: What should we do with FaZe’s roster?

Here’s what you had to say:

👹 Throw them into the depths of Tartarus 🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 (12.5%)
😂 Nothing, it’s too entertaining to watch them fail 🟩🟩🟩🟪🟪🟪 (31.3%)
☢️ Have you heard of Hiroshima? 🟩🟩🟪🟪🟪🟪 (18.8%)
⚔️ Five-man Hunger Games🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪 (37.5%)

Everything else

🌬️ So much sucking it’s like a vacuum

• Here at tl;dr we like to keep things short, so we’ll definitely still tell you to watch the entire video, but basically: Falcons suck. Objectively.

• Something else that sucks (aside from your mother)? BLAST Rivals Fort Worth, according to MOUZ, Parivision, Aurora, Spirit, Falcons, and The MongolZ.

🚪 The Doors (but not the band)

• You know what they say - wherever a door closes, another one opens. We have no idea what that means for this Doormania Inferno map ESL made, but it sounds right.

• Speaking of doors, poii was kicking at the one leading to the record for most regulation kills, dropping 37 against FaZe during EPL. device probably stole an eco kill somewhere, that bitch.

😅 The wrong kind of rivalry

• Aleksib’s got the Finnish tax bear chasing after him, and just like most Finnish things - they don’t joke around.

• When it takes you five years to beat your nemesis, you know there’s something wrong.

Words by napz

This TL;DR was written by quacke, AN1MO and napz.
Welshy coded the email and Crash_ copy edited.

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