Episode 21 — Spirit donk’d Cologne!

Banks We are back with episode 21 of the All About Counter-Strike Podcast, and it's going to be a lot about Cologne, going into Blast Bounty. There's so much to talk about with some of the rosters and everything that's been going on. If you can see, I've got a terrible camera again, because I went on holiday, and like the genius I was, I was like, I'm going to pack really light. So light that I didn't take my laptop charger because I'm an idiot. So I borrowed a laptop from my friend, who's one of the Chinese press for 5e play, but he only has one USB-C port on here. So the microphone is in that, so the audio is good for all our audio only listeners out there. But the webcam is from my iPad. Well, the laptop is... Dude, this is such a box setup.

Devilwalk And the laptop was in full Chinese.

Banks Yeah, my laptop is completely in Chinese now. So anything pops up, we have Sarif. Come for a moment. So Sarif is a Chinese commentator host. I've worked on stages with him. Here he is. He is here in case anything messes up. And the poor guy gets to watch. He's just laughing. He has to watch the podcast live while we're on about a thing. He's been at Clode as well. It's great to see him. He actually brought me, Sarif, pass me the little booboo. He brought me two little booboos over. Do you know what they are, Devilwalk?

Devilwalk Is it the small... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, bro. I've heard of this.

Banks Me and my wife are very happy. Wait, look at this one. This is the most gangster one possible. I didn't even know this existed. Look at this. And wait. Ta-da. Yeah, a robot labouboo. Yeah, it kind of looks like it, doesn't it, from Overwatch?

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks But yeah, he came with the Chinese hookup directly, so I don't have to pay outrageous European prices for labouboo. Because we're getting scammed out here because all the kids want them and everyone wants them. But yeah, dude, you know what, I'll start with this. Actually, no, let me ask you how your time was, because I went on holiday, so I was chilling until I got to Clare.

Devilwalk I also went on holiday. I mean, I think last episode, I mean, a little bit of a holiday. We went to Stockholm, obviously. We saw Manchester United.

Banks That's not a holiday. It's the same country.

Devilwalk Yeah, but still a little bit of a holiday. We were there and my brother lives in Stockholm, so we met up with him. I watched, obviously, Manchester United versus Leeds in Stockholm. Did we win? It was an incredibly dry and boring game that ended 0-0.

Banks Oh, no. But you paid for that.

Devilwalk Yeah, but it was still cool, you know? It's still Premier League teams in Sweden. I think it was like 20 years.

Banks Was it better or worse than the Cologne finals?

Devilwalk Well, that's a tough one. But yeah, it was a good time. I never went and visited my girlfriend's parents two hours away for like four or five days. So, still like an energy gaining kind of vacationy couple of weeks. Yeah, so it's been good.

Banks I did like 11 days in Turkey with my wife and my son. And I want to say, right, when you have a kid who's eight and they got energy, like, I can't call it relaxing fully. It was like we had all inclusive, you know, so you don't have to leave the venue, just go and leave the resort. I say venue like we're in an event. I didn't have to leave the resort or anything, but like you're eating buffet food every day. I actually lost weight on holiday because I was boxing, like doing the adults boxing, I was at the resort and then I was in the swimming pool with him the whole time. And dude, he can sit in the swimming pool from like 12 until the pool closes at eight. And sometimes I try to sit down and he's like, Dad, Dad. And you just get back in the pool again.

Devilwalk So you're not like me at like the open bar by the pool. You're just queuing for when it opens.

Banks No, I had my drinks in the evening. I definitely had a few drinks in the evening, but I was not like I was not an open bar. I was not sat in a pool bar or anything like that. There was no options for that. I was throwing a ball around. I was diving for stuff underwater that he was constantly throwing in. It was good fun. Turkey was crazy, good weather. I was actually near Zontaros. Zontaros was like two resorts down from me. He was at a really nice resort, just to say that to be clear. Zontaros is living life. I can say that probably because he posted on his Instagram stories. But yeah, he told me to go to his one next time. I said, I don't have the same money as you as a player, bro. We're not living the same kind of life. Like I might have to wait a few years before I do that. But yeah, weather was sick in Turkey. Then I came straight to Cologne. I'll tell you this, being a talent is obviously such a joy. The first day was so hard for me because I felt so sad when you see other people doing the interviews and other people doing the stage stuff. And then fans are coming up to you and saying like, why are you not working? I'm like, I just wasn't hired. And it's just like, I missed it so much. But by the second day, I felt much better because I just took it like I was doing some video logs, I was doing some content for One Expert. I did a signing session, bro. I'll tell you this, never did I expect. I started the signing session at the end of NAVI Spirit first semi-final. I missed all of Mao's vitality because the signing session was two hours, 30 something minutes long.

Devilwalk Wow.

Banks It was like, yeah. And it just, even there was a small gap where people didn't come. And then I was just signing some more for like giveaway stuff. And then another queue just rocked up because they saw, oh, there's no one here. And then it just, it just got, so there was no, I didn't want to go when people are waiting. I don't want to tell people, no, I won't do it. And then I came back for the final two rounds and I was like, what the hell, Vitality lost. Like I just, I was confused. You know, you come in and you just think, what the hell happened? So I'll be honest, I saw nothing of Mal's Vitality. So you're going to have to fill me in on that.

Devilwalk So I re-watched it actually, because I had actually some stuff to do with my girlfriend. So I actually re-watched it like earlier today.

Banks Nice, so you'll be fresh for later when we talk about that. That's good. But yeah, Clone ended up being fun in the end, hard at the beginning. But my God, I want to go back on stage. I want to go back and do this event. So hopefully not too long for that.

Devilwalk I'll let you know though, my girlfriend, we were watching like most of the event, like on the TV. Yeah. And she's just kind of, she doesn't know anything, and she's definitely not like that into Counter-Strike world. But she did mention when they introduced people on stage that she was a little bit disappointed that it was not a more energetic voice during the call up. So I did hype you up there for her. That you're really good at it.

Banks Do you know what I think? Because like, yeah, people have to remember, some people even tweeted, which is unfair at Shock saying like, your voice blah, blah, blah. And I think, first of all, if you're off of the job, you're going to take it, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, she's got so much experience and skills, so she did nothing wrong. But I feel like, imagine if you put her doing a great wordplay in her monologues into then giving me the piece to do on the hype or the bit afterwards or bringing it out and have like a duo piece.

Devilwalk Yeah, like that would have made it better. Yeah, I agree with that because I mean, Shox is so good. Like, it's unbelievable if you've seen her work, how much prep she does, how much work she actually puts into it.

Banks You got to work with her hands work, right?

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks First hand.

Devilwalk Yeah, it was absolutely insane. She was like filming a documentary or some kind of thing at the same time as she was doing the work and she's so efficient. You know, you're sitting on like a big iPad and like scrolling through text and writing normally on like pieces of paper and her prep and post-its everywhere. And there was so much work involved and she would do it 24-7 non-stop. So I have a lot of respect for her and, you know, being able to come into, especially like back then she hadn't done that many CS events.

Banks Yeah, I think this is early start of a CS event.

Devilwalk And like she put in the work, man. It tells like she knew more about Counter-Strike than me after a while. Or like the history. But she really put work in. So yeah, I have a lot of respect for her and her work ethic.

Banks Definitely. Well, let me do my usual thing, my man, because it is currently the 4th of August 2025. It is 34 minutes past midnight for both of us. Because I'm in Germany, Cologne, and you're in Sweden. So we're on the same time zone finally. It does work out sometimes like that. But we are really late because I actually just got back from dinner. I was in dinner with wonderful, his girlfriend. He even brought his mom, which is really nice. She was watching the event as well. Obviously, we'll come on to NAVI later and how well they played and stuff and what they went through. But we started looking at, I guess, the first stage because remember we did our episode so long ago. So stage one, let's look at some of maybe quickly overview of maybe what was to be considered the negatives, the teams that didn't make it through. I feel like Tyloo, I believe so much that they would go through to stage two and they were obviously disappointed.

Devilwalk Yeah, Tyloo, obviously, they only really had a win against what I could consider maybe a weak complexity at this point. They're not looking as sharp as they did a few events ago. And then, you know, obviously falling to a 3D Max was a close game, but they should be maybe taking these kind of games.

Banks I thought they should have beat VP personally, man. I think we both predicted them to beat VP right in that first game.

Devilwalk I think so. But VP is obviously a very hard team to kind of guesstimate where they are at.

Banks Every event is a different story. Every event is a different looking VP.

Devilwalk But they do have Perfecto now. So he did perform.

Banks But they still didn't make it through to the next stage. So I still think anything like that when you have these players is a letdown. Yeah, like it's still not acceptable for a team of VP standard. Looking at pain is kind of funny. You mentioned next as well, because the Astralis game gave me some hope was like, okay, pain can still show up. But the big game, I felt like big probably should have been the teams to walk away with the win. And pain just got some of those key rounds. It's like, okay, you got that one. But losing to Liquid to start off with, when you know how bad Liquid are at the moment is not great. But that was like a game that was almost a must win game and to set them up nicely.

Devilwalk Yeah, and I agree. And I mean, Liquid are in big trouble. I think even after the event, Liquid, when they went out of Cologne, there was tweets from Twists when they lost in some kind of I think it was an online tournament, EU online tournament against VP Prodigy. Or something along those lines. I can't remember exactly what the name was, but it was something along these calibers.

Banks VP Prodigy, I suppose, like Academy team. They never take any players from, by the way.

Devilwalk Yeah. And it's one of those things where there's not many excuses for that, especially if they want to be considered to be consistently invited into these tier one events. That's a really, really bad sign. And obviously there's been some discontent coming out of like twist writing that they're not a team, etc. They're not playing like a team. And, you know, it goes on like you need to be in a very bad place for a player to start lashing out and kind of directing it publicly to the community. Yeah. It doesn't really-

Banks It's not a great sign, especially when they agree to stick with this team, right? Yeah. According to NAV, what he said in these interviews is that like the team believed in him still, and they didn't want to make the change. And then they're still obviously no further forward. They bring Flashy in, which obviously I was very positive about. But like, has he had enough time? No, but still you have enough good players and pieces. And Shu Haines has still proved himself as a good in-game leader again. Because this is now getting a bit worrying, now you're out of mouths and it's not looking pretty at all.

Devilwalk There's also one of these things where at least from the way that I've seen him conduct himself and talk about the way he leads and stuff, he likes to give freedom to players, et cetera. And it should probably come to the point where the coach coming from that NAVI camp, being able to maybe put a little bit more structure into things. That's probably going to be a little bit of an adjustment period, but it's not like they have all the time in the world.

Banks Not when you're a liquid. No way. No, no, no.

Devilwalk So let's just hope this is just kind of where they mark, okay, maybe Clash, you can see, you know, where all the bumps are when they've actually been tested now in a real kind of scenario compared to practice. It can always look way better when you're practicing and things are just running smoothly and things are starting to work. But once you actually get into an intense kind of high-pressure situation, you're going to see the cracks and that's when you're going to learn a lot and be able to kind of sort it out and fix it. So I hope that's one of those scenarios for them.

Banks Another disappointing team for me, at least personally, was Bait. Because obviously, I think you remember during the Austin Major, I predicted them to do pretty well. They went 3-0 in stage one. Could have made it through to stage three even, but obviously, they fumbled against Fury and Limbvision across three maps. But they had an invite to Fissure. They actually put it up to vote with their community if they should enter Fissure, because obviously, it's Russian-owned. And the community said no, declined the invite. So then they came in without playing any officials since the Major, going straight into Cologne, their first Cologne. Losing to Astralis, no shame in that at all. But then losing to FlyQuest is a rough one, because they just added JKS. I don't think Bait should be beating FlyQuest in their current form, I would say. Obviously, both FlyQuest and Bait not making it, but to go out with no wins under your belt, only taking a map from FlyQuest was not what I expected.

Devilwalk But to be fair, I do think that when we look at this JKS, FlyQuest, maybe we're underestimating them a little bit.

Banks You think so?

Devilwalk Maybe a little. I'm not saying that they should qualify to every next stage and stuff like that, but they're still like a dangerous team if they have players that can perform. I mean, even like if Inns is their worst performing player at an event like this, almost, it's like he can pop off and he can actually be quite good, even as an in-game leader. So I think there's still something to it. They can upset the team.

Banks I would just say in the way that Bait is always practicing against European teams, lives in Europe, is getting good quality practice in comparison to FlyQuest.

Devilwalk That's true.

Banks And I know FlyQuest come over to Europe, they spend a lot of time in Serbia, for example, bootcamping and stuff. They're definitely working hard. But I mean, the Bait should have an advantage over a team like FlyQuest.

Devilwalk I agree with that.

Banks And they didn't capitalize on having that advantage, which is a problem for me. Like I expect better from Bait. But that's just, I know the guys, I personally would put them, I have that higher expectations of them.

Devilwalk But it also feels like Bait is a little bit high pressure situation. That's where they fumble a little bit, because when they played with no pressure, they got a couple of best of one series into them in the Major, where they have extra lives. It didn't feel like they fumbled or crumbled them, but when it actually came to the last game, where they could actually drop out, that's when they just look like a completely different team. They got stressed. They were not making the more calculated moves and being as collectively aggressive as they were in the early games.

Banks Yeah. Well, then let's have just a quick overview because we're going to talk about some more of these teams.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks The teams that made it through to stage two, Furia Faze, NiP, Gamer Legion, Astralis, 3D Max, Heroic and Liquid. So Liquid survived at least the first stage. Out of these teams, I think the only one that might surprise some people would be NiP.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks Is that fair to say?

Devilwalk I mean, to some extent, even though I think you could mention Liquid as a surprise as well.

Banks Okay.

Devilwalk I think that's fair.

Banks I guess by name value, I always think we should be saying they should go through.

Devilwalk Yeah, but I would put Pain and VP ahead of them.

Banks I wouldn't put VP above them, but I'd put Pain above them.

Devilwalk And Tyloo even.

Banks My stocks are so down on VP.

Devilwalk Okay, but I would still put...

Banks Bro, we went for them so many times and they just get smashed. And then they have one event where it goes well.

Devilwalk You can see there's something in them. In Liquid, I haven't seen that much. I still put them higher in Liquid, even though my maybe hopes for Liquid started way higher than VP. But VPS caught up.

Banks I'll give you that. Looking through on the teams that I would say then disappointed going into stage 2. Astralis, right? Obviously second in Fissure, super solid. You make it through stage 1, only losing to Furia. But then you go against Vitality and Furia. Well, you play Vitality first time, that's always going to be hard, right? It's Vitality. Astralis isn't ready for that test. But losing to Furia again and not growing from it, it's like in the first time they play Furia, I can give them the, oh, it's a different style. Obviously I would say that Fallen's read of the game at times can be better since the rifle has been very impressive. But you didn't learn, you didn't grow. And obviously, Monodore is great, but I'd say Astralis should be fighting closer against Furia. It was 13-3, 13-4. You got absolutely dumpstered. Like, everyone was positive on Furia. No, like, it was an absolute fall off from Astralis. And I don't want to hear anything about pressure or it doesn't matter. Astralis should be at least making it more competitive than that. Like, that to go from such a high to such a low is crazy.

Devilwalk No, I agree. I think, you know, Furia, I rate them actually really, really highly right now. And even, you know, before coming into this tournament, they looked super exciting. But Astralis have some of that aura as well, where they weren't that far off from Furia in terms of, like, a potential of the lineup, especially with Hooksy coming in and them coming to the Grand Final, as you mentioned, and then coming through to that second place again. It's, they have it in them, and they looked like they could be on par with Furia, but Furia was just miles ahead. And they look to be miles ahead right now, especially with this result. But I still, you know, it is tough coming in. I think still Furia is one of the best teams at this tournament. And facing off Astralis and, or Astralis facing off Furia and Vitality in the opening games, in obviously a packed, stacked tournament anyways, it's still a really tough draw. You know, yeah, it's a tough one.

Banks But it is very tough.

Devilwalk Yeah, I don't know.

Banks Do we want to, do you want to touch on the liquid results next? Should we go there?

Devilwalk We can go there.

Banks It's obviously on the same bit of disappointment, because you got beaten by FaZe anyway in the first stage. You play them again for elimination match in the second stage, and FaZe again handle it 2-0. It's just, when you're seeing the score lines, 13-6, 13-2, an ancient by the way, it may be FaZe's pick, but I remember so many rounds of Ultimate, like having good success and doing well as an AWPer on that map. It felt like across this series when I watched it, that Nertz was the only one who could make it, like he was trying everything.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks He was trying whatever it took, whatever he could make a play, whatever he could make to happen. And I'm thinking, someone else help him. Like, please, someone else come alive in this game. That's all they need to just try and make competitive. Because again, I don't mind like the game against Mouz. It would be nice if they took a map, but like they didn't get completely dumpstered. I can say it was less embarrassing than the phase game. But for Liquid going out, you're on the second stage, 13th to 16th. So you're one of the first teams eliminated. It's rough, and that's where the doubt sits in about what this Liquid can do. This would even be like, if they go to Blast Bounty now, and we'll come on to that towards the end of the episode. If they go on to Blast Bounty and they're still struggling, is that where Liquid say we need to make a change? Already mid-season, or do they just hang out until the Major? Because remember, they can afford to at least change one player.

Devilwalk I mean, I think it's starting to look really bad. It's not only that you don't really see any growth in them. If you look at the FaZe game, they had two CT rounds or the total of eight rounds. But playing Ancient, obviously FaZe, they had a great T side, but it felt like whatever FaZe did, nothing is going to stop them. They probably get into this kind of panic mode. Obviously, Mirage having NAF on 2-17 is not helpful in a 13-6 game. I still feel like it's not really one player's fault. I don't really see, like you say, maybe it's nerds that's popping off at times, but we're lacking from Ultimate, we're lacking from Shure, we're lacking from Twists, we're definitely lacking from NAF.

Banks Twists and Ultimate are the ones... People criticize NAF all the time, and he's getting so much blame. He should get some blame, because he's always been a staple of that team, as like someone you can say is always reliable. Yeah. And they made a decision not to cut him, so they've given him a confidence boost. But now his own confidence needs to come through. Otherwise, it's GG, because I'm not gonna put all blame on NAF. Nerds at the moment I have no problems with, but I need an Ultimate and Twists to at least be pushing in the same direction with him, with nerds that is.

Devilwalk I mean, Twists is supposed to be like the star players. He's supposed to be leading the pack with nerds, and posting the 115, 120 ratings in the series, not sitting there with 1128 and NAF on 931 in a best of three. You know that it's not good enough. So it's hard when you can't get your star players to kind of fill the shoes. But I mean, FaZe outplayed them. It looked like a completely different level of, I don't know, teams. They shouldn't even be in the same tournament almost.

Banks Big time. Actually, one of the teams I was going to look at here on the last place positions is GameAlesion. Because we said about them being, you know, this kind of system, it's not Swiss. They should be better for them. That was your go to, right? Your go to was not Swiss.

Devilwalk That's my math.

Banks Going in complexity in VP, stage one, zero problems with that. But then losing the Falcons, also zero problems with that. 3D Max, they should be able to play. I could give that, 3D Max is a good team. So it's like, it's a rough draw when you get into the second stage, right? But it's just, maybe I'm just biased because of Ash, the way he picks his players, the way they use this team. But I feel like they have the potential always to be a team that should be maybe making it to playoffs or being close to playoffs. And this was not even close.

Devilwalk No, not even close. I mean, it was a close game.

Banks They even won 3D Max's overpass, which probably they didn't even expect, you know?

Devilwalk Yeah. I think that's probably the thing that hurts them the most, especially, you know, dust to overtime that went on for ages. And I can't remember if it was Gamer Legion that they have struggled in this kind of overtime situations. I felt like in the past, they didn't. They always seem to kind of climb through it and surprise teams, but now they're in that kind of stuff. But yeah, I don't know. How much did you see of Curzy, the new offer?

Banks I was about to ask you, because obviously with being on holiday, I didn't watch too many games of Gamer Legion, my choice games, right?

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks So Curzy, I was not looking at. I was going to ask you what you thought of him, because I think I saw some clips where I'm like, these are some okay moments.

Devilwalk I think I've seen them a little bit. I can't say I watched all the games, but I remember watching a couple. I think I watched the Nuke against Falcons. And I think he was okay. Sometimes he gets caught in a little bit of a awkward, like how to say it, it feels like he exposes himself a little bit too much, if that makes sense with his body, when he's moving into angles and almost like has to reflex shoot to kill. Instead of being fully intentional, you know?

Banks Yeah, but is that something where like he wasn't punished for that previously, and now he is, and now he's got to learn it? Or is it just a mistake he made mechanically?

Devilwalk Yeah, I think it's not a mechanical issue. It's more like a positional awareness type of issue. And I mean, there's going to be a little bit of talk about stuff like that later on as well, where, you know, we have a lot of new debutants where... Yeah, but it is a different level, and especially like how people are made, what opportunities people take, and how fast they take these opportunities. It's a completely different ball game, because if you're playing in the lower tier, maybe you have four or five extra seconds to rotate into a site, while, you know, against a tier one opponent, you don't have that, so you're gonna... Yeah, you know, you can't stay as much, and you have to be fast with the decision making and be ready for everything possible, essentially. And that takes a while.

Banks For sure. I'm not going to touch on Aurora in any detail, by the way, because a lot of people asked me about Aurora even at Cologne when we were there, and I just said they didn't have Zantaris. So like 9th to 12th is acceptable. You don't have the full team. You're in this situation. There's no need to go into any detail or waste any time on it. It's like 9th to 12th is completely fine for a team who doesn't have one of their, or if not their, like most star player. He's the difference maker. It's going to be uncomfortable.

Devilwalk I mean, I watched the FaZe game, which ended up knocking them out, and they were in a huge lead on Nuke against FaZe. I strictly remember xFloud screaming at the FaZe players, and eventually, after he did, they didn't get a single round after that.

Banks Bro, how did he not learn? He didn't learn from his heroic times. Karoghan literally told him from the video logs to the thing he was like, if you're going to do that to me after a game, I'm going to do it to you, and I'm going to make you suffer. They got punished for that last time. So just because you're on a roll with your Turkish boys, you thought that was going to change?

Devilwalk They had such a big momentum, and I think they lost against a four-spy, and then FaZe just kind of killed it.

Banks The classic FaZe, four-spy win to it. All right, so we've covered on the Astralis situation. One more team to look at them before we get into some of the bigger names is NiP. Because the Aurora one, honestly, I expected more in the Aurora game because Aurora is playing with X-Files. I thought I'd see a better NiP, yeah. They did beat Heroic twice. They beat Heroic in both stages. They beat 3D Max as well, which qualified them from stage one to stage two. And they lost to NaVi, but it did manage to take a map from NaVi. This is honestly, I think I've said this before somewhere, like ages ago, but like this is the most happy I've been about watching an NiP in so many years.

Devilwalk I agree. I think.

Banks Wrinkle is great, by the way, like fully.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks X Kaspersky was a big pick up.

Devilwalk He's the real deal. Honestly, he is the real deal. He looks sharp. I was sitting right here by my PC, watching that like 4K on Train when he went out yard on T side, and he just smashed four people. He like turned around, killed one white box by Olaf, killed a guy electric. I think he killed one back bomb, and back like big, I call it big gap. It's like camera, old camera entrance. And I was actually making noise, and my girlfriend was like, you know, I was like, woo, you know.

Banks You know when you're reacting from your couch, that's impressive.

Devilwalk Yeah, it is. It was dirty, and it was sexy Counter-Strike. I loved it. And I think it's a really, really big difference to the level that NIP can reach with this new lineup, comparably to when they had Aros Dose.

Banks Yeah, who didn't hit when he went to an English speaking team. And also, Rinkle now has some backup, finally.

Devilwalk Yeah, and I also think that it comes a little bit good also, because Ujerks, he can be a bit crazy as well, has a little bit of that X factor, but sometimes shy away from games, and having that a little bit more backed up from a rifler, that is also a bit crazy, I think, helps them have a good balance on the team where they need it. So maybe Snappy doesn't need to do it all the time, where he needs to run in first, etc. It can be more of a supportive in-game leader, and being able to take that step when it needs to be taken, instead of being maybe his prime responsibility. So I think the balance of the team looks great, and I think there is actually a potential for them to break into a more common tier 1 scene. I'm impressed by the progress they've made, and they've fought through hell, as everyone knows, tier 3 and tier 2 scene is.

Banks Dude, they've gone through something crazy. Where are they right now? They're 19th in the Valve ranking, so this event's been good for them. Xizt obviously has been coaching them through all this. All of them, when I saw Shush in Kazakhstan, he was just so happy to be back at a big event. He was so happy to have the interviews and doing the content and it becoming like a normal, what him and Snappy were mainly used to, right? Yeah. So I've got good eyes on them and what they can do, and I think they'll continue to rise. I'll say this now, I feel like they can, obviously they're in a position to do it anyway, but I feel like I don't worry about them slipping out from being able to get to a major again for NIP.

Devilwalk I think they'll make it to the next major.

Banks Yeah. All right, from here, Devilwalk, this is where it gets fun for you.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks Because let's talk about Falcons. So everyone, the whole world, anyone who knows about Counter-Strike and Kyosuke, Kyosuke, however you want to say his name, there's a million different ways to say it, and I'm not going to apologize for any of it. Kyosuke is my favorite because it's the most Japanese I can make it sound, even if he is a Russian player. But for him, right? Cool, we can talk very positively about him. One of the highest rated players of the tournament. But the drop off continues because you go 9th to 12th. Now losing to Mongols, no problem. Losing to FURIA, it's not the end of the world, but we expect more when you have Niko, you have Manasi, you've got Tessis, who has been doing really well. And a lot of the games, we were only seeing Kyosuke be like a driving force. And I guess I have to understand this now in the sense that we spoke about all the positional things, right? We've seen interviews on HLTV about it. They've pretty much given him everything he wants, thrown the kitchen sink at him and said, go, be Donk 2.0. I'm sure we've all seen that amazing ESL skip.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks A kickstand is like, yeah, no pressure. And then, what is it? Manasi comes up and he's like, Donk 2.0, then Janko and Niko are there together saying like, oh yeah, you're going to get the first Major for him. The memeing of him getting the Major trophy and stuff like this finally. And right now, you didn't even make playoffs of Cologne. And yeah, you can say it's the first event and stuff like this, but I'm just going to put it out there that maybe you gave the boy too much. Maybe you tried too hard to change too many things.

Devilwalk There is definitely an element of that, because they, as you say, the men... Like, I think of the maps they played, we haven't seen all the maps, obviously, because we don't have that data yet from every single map. But from the maps they have played, I think there is only one position on one side that is unchanged for Kyosuke in terms of his old roles in Spirit Academy. So that is ramp on Nuke. That is the only thing that is changed for him. And it's not, like... I think everyone can play ramp to some degree on Nuke if you just know the basic rules of what you want to achieve ramp. It can be different for different teams, but I think it's not a very difficult role to play. So I think it's a good middle ground for him to, like, kind of ease into a role like that. And also, Niko is, like, heavy communicator in the team and playing on the outside, which is obviously him running a CT side would be probably a bit too messy for them to kind of change that whole dynamic on the CT side. But I thought that we would go into a little bit of a segment showing a little bit of what the impact of Kyosuke has been, or how it has impacted other players on the team, and see how different does Kyosuke's Falcons look to Magisk Falcons, as I've named it.

Banks So we'll officially get into it. We've got a devil walkthrough for you. The first of two in this episode of All About Counter-Strike, and this one's the Falcons of old versus the Falcons of new. And I'm just super interested because I threw a bunch of questions at you about this and you've been doing some research. You've been cracking on for me. So I'm going to hop on to what Discord now, right?

Devilwalk Essentially, we have here a little bit of a skybox. I have a bunch of different tabs open right now, so I can a little bit draw and see, you know, what has changed essentially is the big question. So if we go through on the CT side, we have Kixxon. He's moved in to the B anchor role. Kyosuke takes that middle, but the rest is relatively unchanged. You know, Niko and if we move Monaz, he would be the support flasher for Niko and Tessis to take long. Niko is the short player, but here we're just seeing a little bit of an anti-Eko, and you can see Kyosuke is a lot more aggressive than Kixxon used to be. He's staying that mid doors, having that support, Niko kind of holding lower for him, so he doesn't get popped off. So that's the only real change for the CT side. I mean, we're going to see rounds where you obviously have four men long and stuff like this, but he's the outside B player and Kixxon is the anchor now. That's one change. So if we just talk about what does that imply for an in-game leader to be stepping in to an anchor role. Now, the thing with Falcons is obviously Niko is running a lot of the show on the CT side. They've mentioned that multiple times in the past. So maybe that's not a big difference. But Kixxon obviously being more used to being supportive and maybe used to having that kind of information flow that he can here in the middle to be able to direct his team a little bit more is lost and put a little bit more responsibility on Kyosuke, right? So that's where I could see, okay, this could be a difference. This could be, I mean, it could be good, it could be bad. We will see. Right now, they still look very, very positive on Dust2, at least on the CT side. Now for the T side, we have Niko moved into Dark. This is Tess's old role. And we have Tess as being more of actually outside long. Now on this, they have, you see here, this is his responsibility. It's just taking it from different position. We have Kiyosuke is on Niko's old role being the more active pressuring middle, taking short control, that kind of good stuff. And really what I want to do is just, I can show you a little bit here, a video of what Niko does in this round, essentially, and how this impacts Niko's performance, because you can be critical of Niko not posting the same numbers as he did before, but just imagine how big of a change this role is for him. He's holding upper-dark and the amount of opportunities and impact you can have is you can pressure with a little bit of a lurk smoke in a good timing. And he's being pressured here. He's doing a really good job here, to be fair. See, Kaizuki's out middle at this point. It's just pressuring, but you're not gonna get that many opportunities as the previous playmaker of the team in a spot like this comparably, right? You're gonna be there in the executes, perhaps go for a lurk kill in middle, etc. But you're not gonna have the same impact as previously, if we just jump into the old one with Magisk here. So here we see a normal standard round with Niko being active here, Magisk outside long. Kicks out and test this, has some kind of bait set up. Maybe if someone goes aggressive. But here you see Niko, what he does is super, super smart. I'll actually go back here and show you why it's so smart. So he gets naded in lower here. He falls back, he plays a bit safe, he molo's, flashes short. The CTs then proceed to molo themselves and nade. He instantly runs up to take short. He knows no one is playing close. I can take this safe. He's already put up a lurk smoke here. Now, he will get a lot more opportunities by doing this. He's in a more central position. He can choose to go out middle. He can choose to poke out short. If they're doing some sort of B split, he can drop CT and help his team that way. But when you're isolated in dark, the only real thing you can do is you can help your teammates hold mid so they don't get flanked but they are short. Or you can hold that dark spot, wait for them to kind of overwhelm middle and go in on the last second on B and a B split. That's what you can do. But otherwise, you're basically just holding the map control, and then you're rotating to whatever call it is. You can see Tess is here, for example. It's moving down lower, grouping up with his team in the right timing, and rechecking dark, and then, okay, we don't have the timing now. Then essentially what I said, he will be a little bit passive, stay in that dark position, spray a little bit, and jump through the smoke when the timing is right. His job is just to hold this, make sure the CTs don't push in when they do the b-split. So you don't get-

Banks Because he's got control of it the whole time.

Devilwalk Yeah, but as Tess is playing this role here, in the old, you don't get as much opportunities. But if you see Nico here, he's the first one running up here, into B, getting flashed in, bam, bam, and he gets a kill back plat. And he has a lot more actions to obviously fail, but also to do good in, to gain that impact. So that's essentially what I wanted to go through on Dust.

Banks So it's a lot though for Nico, who was always the star, always set up to have these plays, right? That he will be now in a position where he's not just given up all of this, but he's learning something new later in his career. Now, definitely very experienced, an amazing player. He can adapt to this, but it's like you're giving up everything you used to do it. And people are going to look at the numbers, right? They're going to focus on the stats and say he's not doing this. But he's now not in a position to do that.

Devilwalk No, now, you know, if you would just take it in, if you would play dark every single round, obviously a Counter-Strike team doesn't really... This is not the round that's played every single round, where he's always dark. But there are things where he's not going to have as much impact, but it's also going to affect the team when they want him to have impact. One example could be... Let me see if I just find it here a little bit quick. So I think it's a little bit earlier. Here. Here's a good round. Good example of what can happen when you want him to have a lot of space taking. He's holding a little bit upper dark. They've lost an entry in top middle. They want to group up here and lower. What happens here is like you've left a lot of space to get flanked when you've lost this entry. Where maybe in the past, you would have a Tessis holding lower, but they're staying very, very group. Very, you know, there's like a 40 second margin of they could push. Now they don't get punished for it in this round, but there is a sense where with the new roles, you're not as aware. Like, I don't think they ever even checked behind them for a long push. Here is the last time and that's probably a 25 second mark where someone could have pushed and shot them in the back. These are small details that you're not used to having this responsibility and it creates gaps in the way you play, even if it's not intentional, it's something that they will learn and that it will iron itself out a little bit. But they're definitely not used to it yet and it's going to make them, even though you have a very good Kyosuke's momentum base, he gets frags and he wins your rounds on his own, if the rest of the team isn't really following up and isn't, you know, load all the intricacies of their role.

Banks That's correct, yep.

Devilwalk You're still going to leave gaps and you're going to be punished for them, especially when you're playing a high tier tournament like this. And swapping a role from a playmaker to a passive role is an extreme change, even though he's a great player, but he's great not only because of his high mechanical skills, but because he's smart and he takes fast decisions when he gets the correct information. And you're not going to get that much info in these roles that he currently has.

Banks And for that, obviously, Niko is going to be affected mostly, right? But am I right in saying that Niko is affected as well? But it's also, yeah, there's more players that are going to be hit by this, right? Which is why the team looks so less synergized now.

Devilwalk So even if we're like looking at like most of the maps, it's actually like the one that is changing the positions the most is Tessis and like Niko and Kixxon together, but Tessis and Kixxon, Tessis is taking the brunt of the changes.

Banks Okay, so he's the one who's going to suffer the most.

Devilwalk Because it's a lot of the things where if we would move on to more maps, we will eventually see it. Like if we take a look at Mirage now, for example. So previously, we had a Niko being under or top mid in more of a playmaking role. Now we have a Kyosuke here, a Magisk, Niko position or however you want to call it, but Magisk's old position here on T side, Niko is taking. Now this is a role where you can be very smart. You can find opportunities to take that one on one duel, but you're usually going to be traded, but you have more opportunities than a B site.

Banks Yeah, like a double push, a ramble, something right coming down.

Devilwalk Multiple opportunities to do something and link up with your team. So here on the T side, it's just a straight swap in Kyosuke to Niko and Magisk. If we look at, this is the old. So Niko was the playmaker here. Tessas has the same role here, but yeah, they are supporting. So it's not that much more. If we look at CT side, we had Magisk here, we had Kiksan here, we had Tessas on short, but in the new one with Kyosuke, Kyosuke is taking Tessas' spots. Tessas is moving to B anchor and Kiksan is moving to A anchor. And Niko is still in his CT spot. So I think what they've tried to do is like, okay, Niko is used to calling CT sides, so therefore he will be a little bit more untouched on the CT side. And try to move other people around, but it's also Kyosuke was a short player before, then they've done this kind of Rocado or so to speak. But yeah, it is a big change for especially Tessus here, being an active player to jumping B apps. He's kind of taking a step back, and you're going to see that on other maps as well. Nuke, essentially, a good example of that, where you have here Tessus, this is the old one with Magisk. So you have Magisk here in Lobby, you have Monacy kind of filling in if they want to do any ramp pressure. Tessus is in top silo, and Nico is on the yard here, like the playmaker, once they do the smoke and keep on supporting him. So in the new one, it's Kyosuke is actually lower yard, Nico goes top silo, and Tessus is moved into Lobby lurk. We'll see that, for example, here. So it's essentially the same play style, they've just swapped a little bit of positions, but there's still three new positions on the T side. It's like more than half the team is changing their roles in some sort of way. Even if Nico is used to yard, he's used to being the lower yard, that kind of takes the space and kind of creeps around in the smokes. Maybe isn't as used to maybe looking at an AWP when you jiggle the silo corner. But when it comes to this also, I think one thing that kind of takes a little bit of time when you're changing the playmaker, especially on a map like Nuke, is along the sides of this just, so actually I forgot to show that. Either way, we're going into this. So this is the same round where we have kind of Kyosuke in the aggressive form here, where you have the smokes. Something that happens when you change players is like, it can be hard to find the right way to condition the CTs, because you're not used to what conditioning is, and how do you condition in Counter-Strike. Essentially, try to utilize this name smoke pattern, same kind of pressure, kind of trick the CTs into reacting or trying to figure out how they react, or try to solve a problem. This could be, for example, here, the CT solution was to push for the smoke, and try to challenge them before. And you see the rest of the team are essentially, they're ready to go for some kind of rampage. But just doing this, applying the same pressure, like next round, I'm sure that he wouldn't push through the smoke, so they kind of had to try to figure out a little bit, okay, what's the next solution? Maybe they're nailing smokes or putting the AWP out here, maybe three or four or three CTs are ready when they break the smoke. Try to figure that out and find the right timing. Now, if you're consistently changing personnel and you're used to a certain way of calling and a certain pressure to be applied in a way, or a certain way of communication style in that to figure out information, that can be way harder to do with a new player. You need to learn what information is actually important to convey when you're being that playmaker and solo player, something that Niko has a bunch of experience in.

Banks What I was going to say that we always talk about Niko's style of being a captain, not a young game leader, but a captain, a leader of men, and his voice is so important. Kiewski is coming on to his first attempt of speaking English in a team, right? He's playing his faces. He can do it. But do you also think that that synergy with the team is also going to have taken a hit? And then also the communication is not going to be on point, which is going to make it even harder for them to know what might be needed or what be done, because what might have been natural to him in Spirit Academy, and his team know exactly what to do, is going to be non-existent right now.

Devilwalk Yeah, absolutely. But it's also not... Even though it's like Tessis, Monaz, and Niko, they've been in a team together for a while, they kind of synergized with the players they played with. So for example, Niko and Tessis have had a synergy on Yard with Monaz or Kicksun who's supporting them. And then when Monaz is going into... When they're playing 3-2 on outside with 2 Lobby, Monaz is playing with Magisk. They're used to a different kind of tempo. Maybe they swing different, clear different. And you're used to like a different shift of movement together. And these are some things that you maybe don't necessarily voice everything, how you're moving and how you want to react. But you maybe have things like you want to clear this corner, I'll clear this and I'll push forward. But maybe he's still holding from a longer away angle and he's not ready for the trade when he pushes forward, etc. These are like small details. It actually does take a little bit of time for players to learn, even if you're doing it with the same teammates, essentially. But these things, let's just say like the best team is the one that makes the least mistakes and the more gaps you're going to give for you to make small, even micro mistakes or macro mistakes, you're going to have a higher chance of losing. I mean, simple as that. And it's going to take a little bit of time with people having three new roles on T-side for them to get to know that player in that situation again. And they're going to have to talk things through. Yeah. And it's going to take a couple of months because even though we say, yeah, it's magics versus, you know, miners and plus kiosk, it's not as simple as that because a lot of moving pieces is being placed in different positions. And they need to learn. It's not like Tess has been lobby lurking for his entire life. He needs to... It's hard to get to know these timings. You need to... It takes a while. It's like we talked about rain becoming an anchor all of a sudden. It takes time for people to learn these new roles. Yeah, they might have a good idea of it, but a good idea is not enough to play in the best tournaments in the world against the best players in that positions. So we're going to see a little bit of an off time where people have to figure out a little bit more of how can I regain the impact I had in my previous role in my new one.

Banks So I said this, right, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it. I said that with this new Falcons team, I think it will take three plus months for them to get back to even have a chance being at the level they were when they had the old team. And people were complaining about like our Magic's this and Tesla's this, whatever else, but they were still placing well. The Major was embarrassing. That wasn't good enough, right? They knew these changes coming in. Magical really knew is being kicked. So there's a lot of factors in this, but now people expect because Kielski was what? 1.5, 2 million. We don't know what the rumor is, right? To take him more money spent Falcons being such a team that everyone loves to hate and meme on. I just think if you just look at the players and you look at the ability that's there, if we're being realistic with all these changes, you're talking about the positions, the new way they have to get used to everything. It's three months. You think it's like a fair time. Is it like when we're starting fresh?

Devilwalk I think at least on maps and sides where they have positional changes where there's like three players that kind of have to do like a chess rocade, or I don't know if that is the word, but either way...

Banks I don't play chess, so I don't know.

Devilwalk But it might be the Swedish word, but either way, like they're shifting three people to different roles and spots. There is a relearning experience because it's a lot. It's like changing... Like you have to change your whole T-side to some degree. And you're probably gonna first, you know, month, probably just rehash how you played before. And then maybe this style doesn't really work with Tesse being lobby lurk compared to Magisk. Maybe he needs more help or more support, or maybe Kioski needs more support and need to shift more people to playing heavy outside on the T-side. There's a lot of these small intricacies that some rounds will work with different players and they will not work with a new one, even though he might be a better player, just because they think differently, they approach things differently. Maybe one guy is more of a lurker and tries to bait and gain information, while the other one is aggressive and takes the entries. So these things can have a huge impact in how the round is being developed.

Banks And does that mean everyone is calling already that this is such a disappointment? Obviously, I think even Niko, let me check. He tweeted like, it's embarrassing or something.

Devilwalk Yeah, it's something along those lines. I think it's embarrassing.

Banks Which by the way, doesn't help. He goes, embarrassing, sorry. Like, first of all, it's bad, but is it really embarrassing? Like, I know the individual performance he won't be happy with, but if you're being fair with all the things we're talking about and looking at in these changes, I wouldn't call it embarrassing yet. The Major was embarrassing.

Devilwalk I think we can even reference Vitality to this point. If you looked at the Bounty, the Blast Bounty one in the beginning of the year, they obviously did really well in the online phase and then went to the LAN event and actually crashed out completely. And it was noticeable that they were not ready yet. They did not have figured out all the minor details for how ROPS is going to gain impact. Now, obviously, they figured out Kjorske, how he's going to get impact, but it's affected a lot of different players and they'll need to rethink the whole model in a certain sense. Now, we can look at Train as well, just quickly. So, here we have a little bit of change. This is still like a big change. So, Kjorske goes front yard. Let me get my drawing out. So, Kjorske is here on front yard. We have Kicksum actually being the Ivy player now, which was Tess's role before, and Tess goes inside to take Magisk's anchor role. So, you're essentially seeing it like this. And in this, Kicksum was before, he was a very front yard heavy player going into pop, taking T main. Niko is kind of unchanged in his position a little bit. I think only a little bit stylistically, they were a lot more to front yard when they had Magisk compared to how they are playing now. Now they're playing a little bit more one forward, one back, with Monacy obviously being that rotation player. And also like on the inside, I think that Tess is a little bit more aggressive trying to play this upper position compared to Magisk, who was playing very info-based in these sorts of positions. So he's a little bit more aggressive, tends to like this position and taking some random timing duels comparably. But they look solid on the CT side again with Nico, and this shift hasn't really done that much. And on T side is essentially just a straight swap for Kioske. So before it was Nico and Kioske going inside together, and kind of clearing pop, and then going into, you know, holding brown holes. I don't know what everyone calls it, but I call it brown hole. So essentially, here there's not much change for them. On train, they're pretty much just a straight swap with Kioske for Magisk on T side. Tess is still being...

Banks So that's not a huge role now.

Devilwalk They're holding alley, Kicksun likes to be here around supporting, holding T mid a little bit, and Monazzy floating a little bit more depending on where they want to apply that extra pressure. Sometimes towards inner, sometimes helps Tess take that peek IV. So there's not much changing. Here they actually play pretty much identical to what they did with Magisk. And, yeah, this is just to visualize, they played a little bit more front yard heavy with Tess as being the guy coming out, but not much of a big difference. I think this could be essentially a meta change rather than them changing personnel, if I'm completely honest, that people have started to figure out, train a little bit more.

Banks Okay, so it's just an updated playbook more than anything.

Devilwalk I think so. Yeah, so yeah, that was essentially it for showing you a little bit on the maps that they have played.

Banks Well, it was a very detailed DevilWalk 3, which I appreciate, because they were trying to understand this, right? And obviously on the broadcast, there's only so much they can do in timing to show any of this, but we can really deep dive into having a look at what's possible, what the reasons are, because I think there was quite an overreaction of like, oh, Kioski played really well, everyone else on the team failed, like, what are these people doing, you know? And it's like, that again comes down to these people that maybe don't understand Counter-Strike to the right level, because there's so much more in it, especially in this one.

Devilwalk Yeah, but I think it's important also, it's not Kioski's fault necessarily, but more in the terms of, you know, we're going to have to be a little bit more patient, we can't just say, oh, they've thrown five millions to this project, and it didn't work out, they, Sonic should be fired, everyone, you know, it's a bit of a, you know.

Banks The usual.

Devilwalk Yeah. Like, it still needs a little bit time to gel and grow before we can be too harsh and judge, because if we did that, we would say that Vitality, Robson will have sucked if we just judge them on the blastbound. So.

Banks Exactly. Give it more time.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks Wait and see what happens with the rest of it. So, overall, there's the reasons as to why they struggled so much. They're not happy with it. I can understand Niko's frustrations, but like you lost the Mongols. Yeah, that's not that bad. Losing the Fury, you probably could have taken it, but there's so much happening that let's see what happens at the next couple of events. They're skipping Blast Bounty. They said it was about visa issues to be fixed for Kielce, because he's never traveled. And by the way, for some people I saw saying like, oh, it's an excuse, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, they need to understand. For him, if he's never had his Schengen visa or he needs to get his things correctly, there's no guarantee he'll get it in time. And if they mess it up, he might have to skip other events. So, might as well skip Blast Bounty, which we already spoke about, has a kind of not positive impact overall on the VRS until you get to LAN. Remember, the first games are played online. It's only eight teams going to LAN, so it's not a huge one. And then make sure he's at all the important events going forward and make sure he's there and ready. And also, it gives you more practice time at the same time.

Devilwalk I think it's a great time as well for them to actually have this little bit of break. Excuse or not, it's a good timing for them to kind of iron out, okay, here we can see where things went wrong and how can we maybe even then incorporate Niko to have more impact in the rounds or how can testers get more comfortable in the lurking or anchoring or whatever it is, they're feeling that they are struggling with. This is a great time to see, okay, this was flawed. How can we fix it?

Banks And also, I watched some of these Falcons games and just to say about Kiyosuke, it's only seven maps in comparison to teams that obviously made it through playoffs. But we hit a 1.39 rating.

Devilwalk He is as good as people were saying.

Banks Donk had a 1.50 rating, obviously played playoffs, went a lot further. But the next closest player to him is Shiro at 1.22. Frozen, who had nine maps, not too far away from Kiyosuke, 1.20 rating. So he legit put up the numbers he needed to. And if he can have that while the rest of them get to their level, get comfortable again, then that's when we get the scary Falcons that everyone's looking for and wanting to see. It just didn't have that same wow effect as when we first saw Donk, because of all the reasons we've just gone through in the explanation, you know? Donk fitted almost perfectly in and was doing things no one had ever been able to do in Counter-Strike before, because the rest of the system was already set up.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks And I mean... None of the system is set up here.

Devilwalk And it's also like, you know, Donk is an aggressive player taking an aggressive role. And now we're looking at Falcons, you know, Niko, he's an aggressive player taking a passive role. And that shift is, it's a big shift. And this test is coming from being more of an X-factor player into a more lurking position and anchoring. It's a huge difference, you know, from being also in playmaking roles on CT side to taking a step back.

Banks Definitely. Definitely. All right, well, let's move away from Falcons. I think we've done enough touching on them. Let's go on to G2 next before we get into our playoffs teams. I think we got G2 and FaZe to look at here as notable ones. For G2, right? Some players, obviously, I hold in pretty high regard. I think he can do some good damage always. Sometimes he's been a bit off, depending on like when he gets going. Actually on stages, he performs better than he does just in normal group stage games. Obviously, Saw, we're rating very highly overall because of how he's been able to do things with the projects and the players he's had. Look at the end line up, look at the heroic line ups. He's constantly been able to go above what people expect of his teams. But I didn't check the actual rating. So let me bring this up now before I get to it. Because I just remember Matiz, obviously, he comes from Fnatic. But he impressed me. Like he ends with a 0.99 rating. No one really other than Malbz had like a great rating. Sumpires had an awful tournament considering obviously he's coming in to this new team. But G2 didn't play bad. Like everyone's talking about Hunter leading. They lost to Vitality, they beat 3D Max 2-0, they beat FURIA 2-0. But then they lost to FURIA in the lower bracket elimination game. But they could have been in playoffs.

Devilwalk They could definitely have been in playoffs. I mean, as you said, they lost overtime against FURIA. And they beat FURIA in the previous one. They stayed close. I think, you know, they're also going to have a lot of, like, kind of some players getting open with completely new teammates. And probably, I think there's a lot of shifting for him, because he was the big star in Heroic. And I'm not sure you can really say that he's like the big star in IG too. He's more going to have to get in with the common folk, I will say.

Banks That's a way to put it.

Devilwalk Yeah. But yeah, but something along those lines, you know, he can't be like, I'm going to do everything exactly like I did in the past.

Banks So I'm happy with it, though, for Hunter's first in-game leader run with it, you know, getting to work with Saw as well. I'm sure there's even more changes Saw wants to add into it. This is not a team maybe to get excited about yet, but they put up a good placing, not a great placing, but a good placing for the new team when everyone was kind of down on out on them because they lost Niko and they lost Monacy. And it's like, oh, you can't recover from that. And then a lot of people I saw saying, well, they have no star players now. Well, maybe give them some time to cook here.

Devilwalk I mean, I'd say so. And I mean, they did place above Falcons in the tournament.

Banks That's even more funny. We took all Falcons' money and we placed higher than you and got more prize money than you.

Devilwalk Yeah, so like you have to say it's acceptable, especially, you know, it's a huge change for them, changing like converting to an IGL, for Hunter. Yep. But I'm happy to see like Mabz really getting in form again. He was devastated when the lineup kind of was over.

Banks Yeah, and he was so harsh on himself when he didn't perform.

Devilwalk So that's really nice to see. Yeah, it's an exciting G2, to be honest.

Banks And then we got to look at FaZe because Broky was back, yeah? And I loved how Carrickon gave away in the interview that like, I don't know, this is kind of awful in some ways, but he said that they were already talking to Broky and telling me he could come back while they were playing the Major and Simple was there. Like, so any chance and hope that people said that Simple would stay on FaZe seemed to be already out the window before they even got to the playoffs, when obviously that's why Simple didn't perform as good as what was expected of the GOAT. But Broky basically got just an extended holiday and a bit of a kickback in the sense of, go fix yourself, go get some extra time you need. And I think Carrickon described it as a punishment, you know? And sometimes you need to kick in the balls every now and again or a slap around the face in order to realize that you know, like, you need to try hard, you need to work hard, you need to do more, you know? You need to get back into it because it's not an easy game where you can sit back and just rest, especially if you're on phase as well, you know?

Devilwalk Oh, but I mean, we can reference even when we had the conversation with Hooksy, and he was talking about, like, he likes to have the pressure that he's not safe. That's when he, like, kicks in and works hard and likes to perform in. Even though it is sometimes it can be overwhelming, obviously, but having a little bit of a reminder, okay, I'm not immortal in this lineup. I can't just do whatever I want. I have to actually also step up on the server and perform, which, to be honest, Broky looked a lot better than the last time I saw him, which is- Definitely.

Banks By the way, physically looked better. I didn't see him in person because he'd already left by the time I got here, but just from the pictures, it felt like, I don't know, maybe he'd gone, I'm just guessing, but maybe he'd done some gym or something else, you know? Like he looked a bit physically better as well, which obviously, that's always going to be a positive for him. Looking at the results for FaZe though, it's like, first of all, Rain had one of those events where, I don't know, maybe he's just happy to be back with Broky, maybe he just felt like something was clicking for him. But never count Rain out, just never count him out. This guy can do almost anything, he can hit this form. I think it was the Aurora game, they got the 13-1.

Devilwalk Yep, on Mirage.

Banks Yeah, it was that game. And then, so they dominated Aurora, they dominated Liquid. Aurora, again, we come back to that, they played with a stand-in, so fair enough. Liquid, they got a lot of problems. I think the problem they had was they faced NAVI twice. They lost 2-1 to NAVI in the first game, it was obviously Mikhaelzi's first ever game in Tier 1 as well. But then, NAVI leveled up as they were playing games, and when they faced FaZe the second time, it was just, they would already improve, they'd already worked some things out, you know. NAVI are known for long days, long practice days, blade pushing everyone to go further, and then they do show improvement quite a lot across the tournament. But I still think for FaZe, some days, they're not happy, but to come back with Broky, to have been in this situation, they've been in it across the last year, this is, it's an acceptable performance.

Devilwalk I'm not going to be screaming about it. I think there's, you're starting to look at it with some hope through the scope, you know, because before, everyone looked like they couldn't hit a shot, everything was wrong, you know, they're tilting, they're, you know, not a single person on the team thought it was acceptable to some extent. But now, you're actually seeing people pop off and like some of that individual brilliance they all have starts to shine through again. And you can see how they kind of enjoy the game to a certain extent. So maybe, you know, like having to play or having to. Having played with Simple kind of gave them that kind of kickstart.

Banks And he's demanding.

Devilwalk Yeah. And like also maybe you start thinking about Counter-Strike in a little bit different ways. And once you've unlocked that kind of thought process, a lot of other stuff starts making sense. And, you know, maybe it was good that, you know, they obviously talked about Simple being a little bit demanding, not afraid to call people out when they made mistakes in practice, et cetera. And maybe they adopted some of that as well, so that they could have a little bit of more efficient practice and yield better results from it.

Banks One thing I want to touch on, because people seem to always allow Kerrigan to get away with it though. Kerrigan, 0.78 rating. Obviously, it's not terrible, but I mean, when do we now need to sit back and say, we need a little bit more from you, because that could be the difference maker here, you know? Because I'm happy if I see him like a 0.90, 0., I don't know, let's say 88, something like that. It's not great, but I feel like he maybe had to manage all this stuff going through the team and all the changes, and then this performance drops off again. But if he can have a little bit more without just relying on the rest of his team to do it, we've been here before with him, where he said, I've been back grinding DM, I've been back less on the tactics, more on are we just in that mode where it's back to more strategic and tactical team stuff, and now I've dropped off a bit and we have to fix this. Obviously, there's a balance with it, but we are in this position where your apexes, your choppers, your blitzes, for example, are just putting more number output. And you know, I've always sat with this on you of saying like, it's not just about the numbers and the stats with it, there's a lot of reasons and factors that go into it, but being that low can also be a bit of a hindrance, right?

Devilwalk I mean, yes, to a certain extent.

Banks We can't just let him get away just because he's Carrigan.

Devilwalk No, no, I don't think so as well. I think when you drop to 0.78, I don't think he's happy with himself and his performance. Absolutely not. But usually, I also think when you look at the way Carrigan plays, and he's usually very aggressive, he likes to go first. In that sense, it can be really hard once you're stuck in this kind of suicide role and then finding your flow in a game. When you know this is the best call, but you're going to be able to put yourself in a terrible position because of it.

Banks Yeah.

Devilwalk It's like an individual responsibility versus team responsibility thing. But yeah, I think it definitely needs to step up. And probably, I'd say they'll probably win a lot more matches if his rating was more at 0.9. I think that's completely acceptable.

Banks That's what I'm looking for from him, personally.

Devilwalk And that can even be really, really good considering some of the positions and situations he puts himself in.

Banks Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Devilwalk All right.

Banks Well, FaZe is getting there. It's slowly but surely getting there. It was nice to see Broky back. I think Broky performed really well. I think this break for Broky was beneficial. And I like that he's back. But I need to see more. It can't just be this one event. I need to see Broky back on his bullshit again. That's what we need to see. The Broky bullshit is real. So let's start looking at our playoff teams in here. Let's go through the playoffs. As I'll start with the first playoff game we had. It was NAVI taking on Mongols. We can get into NAVI a little bit later because we know we got a bit more special mode to go on to it. But I'll just say that for NAVI, Mongols had been a problem. Winning that Inferno was crazy. Like I was in the arena watch. I watched all of it from the best seat in the house basically, right down on the floor in the middle of it all. And NAVI had the game and then it started to slip away from them. They cost themselves a bit on the CT side. But once they got into overtime, at times it felt like they had it, but it was like can't win some CT rounds, then can't win some CT rounds, are we going to fail it here? But once they got through that, I think McCarthy, let's just check McCarthy's T side rating. So CT was really good. T side he struggled for a bit.

Devilwalk Yeah, T side he struggled a lot, but I think Mongols had everything to win Inferno. And I think because they lost from that 10-4 lead, I think they lost to like Alexi B picking up like a 5-7 and killing them on like an anti-4s on B side. And that started the comeback for NAVI on the CT side, where they got to pick up a bunch of weapons, they mounted five rounds in a row, and Mongols couldn't really, you know, chain any rounds together. There was a lot of close, like kind of clutches, clutch moments, and you could really see the frustration in Mongols, like what we should have closed this, because they were almost playing with NAVI at a certain point, and it felt like they became a little bit overconfident, just walking into that B side and got punished, and then they just never found the groove again. Also, Makase was huge on the CT side, picked up, I think he had, he had like something like three kills on the T side and nine deaths, and I think he was like pretty much a top performer for NAVI at the end. Picked up like a 3k, 3k, 2k, multiple kills, like multiple rounds in a row to bring them to overtime. And yeah, it was a joy to watch NAVI, and it felt like they... I don't know, we're going to go into this. I don't know if we should do it now, or if we should move on to the playoff bracket and revisit this conversation.

Banks Let's also talk about that Spirit game before we get to it. Yeah. So we can go from here to talk a bit about obviously the Mouz-Furia game. That was the other quarterfinals one. FURIA had that. FURIA should have been in the semifinals. They threw that Inferno. What were they up? They were up 11-7.

Devilwalk I mean, you could say they threw Train as well to some degree.

Banks Dude, it was... I felt bad for them because Molodoy is legit. I actually put Molodoy as like my potential. If he had a full year playing with FURIA, he'd be rookie of the year. He'd be rookie of the year by far. I love what I'm seeing from him.

Devilwalk I mean, the only problem is there's some rookies that are really, really good this year. Let's just put it that way. There's a lot of rookies that are really good.

Banks Who am I forgetting that I'm overrating this? You're not going to say Kioski, are you? Because he's going to struggle as well because he's only had half a year.

Devilwalk Yeah, but I mean, you have obviously Molodoy, you have Kioski, you have Makase now, you have Sway.

Banks So Mikazin and Kioski are only starting from this point, right? Sway as well.

Devilwalk You have Sway. I have to actually check.

Banks See, I'm thinking, that's what I'm thinking. Molodoy got a little leg up on these guys by starting earlier.

Devilwalk Yeah, he did. Let me see. There's a bunch of kind of new ones in Heroic, as an example. There's a bunch of Gamer Legion.

Banks No, let's see. None of them would I put into PR, maybe. PR potentially. I give PR some credit, but I still think Molodoy just has more moments that I remember.

Devilwalk He might actually be, like, as you say, he might actually be Rookie of the Year at the moment. I'll agree on that.

Banks Getting that Astana event, double playoffs now, you know? He's showing himself. He's definitely showing himself.

Devilwalk I agree on that.

Banks So, Mouz were on the ropes across this series. Yeah, they were struggling massively.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks And I feel like, what's this? 58th right for the major as well for FURIA. FURIA was pretty bad, but then you have a very solid run at Cologne. And I know it hurts. And I spoke to Molodoy. I spoke to Ksvrata as well when I've been here. But I spoke to Sid the coach as well. And I just said to him like, we're seeing progress. Like this is still good. I know it's not, you're not going as far as you want. And the trophy's not come, but there's a lot of changes in this team. You trust in Molodoy and he's having the impact you need. You swapped languages. You've got your kinder part translating half the time for Molodoy as well. I'm really in on this Furia, man.

Devilwalk I think they're super exciting. Super exciting.

Banks And Mouz was just lucky that it was Furia dropping the ball. Otherwise, they would not have even made it to the Grand Final. They wouldn't have stood a chance in it. But Mouz have that ability, right? Mouz have kind of like a new phase style, where even when the chips are down, they've got enough belief in each other and enough individuals that it can quickly change around. Like, Xershan is the most craziest one, right? Because sometimes he can have games where he is potting out, like having no success. And then suddenly the last three, four rounds of a game, he'll be like, okay, I figured it out. And I'll just, I'll say one thing. He doesn't seem to get, he can have the worst game and he can still come back into it. He's not someone who's given up.

Devilwalk But I think all mouse players kind of have that ability to some degree. But yeah, Xershan being more of the aggressive, especially like his entry and CT sides, always putting himself first. And you'll have to give him some respect that he never shies away from it, no matter how bad a game he has, that he continues to do what is said by the team, that this is your role and your responsibility to do, that he keeps doing it.

Banks He's like, I'll keep running it, I'll keep trying even if the chips are down. Then we can look at the, I guess, let's look at mouse vitality, and you're going to have to do all the legwork here, mate, because I saw nothing. I was stuck in my signing session for all of this. So mouse have lost seven games in a row to vitality. Vitality is their crip tonight. I'm just going to go stat man for a moment and be one of the people I hate. ZywOo had a 0.63 rating.

Devilwalk This is the worst game I've ever seen from ZywOo. And he didn't, like, he didn't, the thing is, it didn't really, like, it's not like he was bad.

Banks Yeah, but he wasn't, that's why he was bad.

Devilwalk Yes, but actually, yes, but he just never got the opportunities. He consistently got, I guess, to some extent, he was not as aware as I'd normally see a ZywOo. You know, where he's like, he knows exactly where everyone is on the map consistently. He got called off a couple of times, which was like not something I'm used to seeing from ZywOo. But overall, I mean, the only person that was even remotely recognizable in that Vitality team was Rops, who had to like, he aced around from A ramp. He did a 1v4-ish, 1v3, depending on how you cut it. And he was the only one keeping them in the game. Like they could have been a lot more stomped than the score wise actually shows. Yes, on Mirage this could have been a 13-5 victory for Mousesports if it wasn't for Rops.

Banks I'm going to have to watch this back to understand because I'm just... I know how much Mousesports wanted this, but it's also... I didn't expect it. I expected if they're going to win, it's going to be a brawl. It's going to be a fight. Vitality are going to push into the very last minute like what we expect from them. I've only heard the things from Twitter and stuff as well, but I heard that Apex said that maybe they should have come back earlier from break or been more on a game time or something. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm reading headlines here.

Devilwalk To be fair, they fought and played pretty much every possible game they could play of Counter-Strike last half of the season, except the first tournament. They probably deserved to have a little bit of a break. Now, obviously, like when we talk to Apex, the hardest thing is to stay on top and kind of keep that hunger and revisit those goals and kind of keep the grind going. But rather have a fast wake up call like this, than a gradual kind of decline.

Banks A slow decline into like second place.

Devilwalk Like a slap in the face, kind of struggling, you know. And it's still like we're complaining about Vitality's play against Mouz here. Still, it's like one of the worst performances for them in the entire year and their semi-final.

Banks Yeah, most teams would be happy with that, you know. Most teams would take that and be like, this is fine, I'm good with this. But did you, you said you watched it, right?

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks Did you watch it from the VOD?

Devilwalk Yeah, I watched the VOD with the casters.

Banks What was the thing where someone said about like Apex was screaming at flames? Like we know he can be like, this is emotional. Was there something shown? Was there something I missed?

Devilwalk I mean, I did hear they went into some kind of, you know, beep-beep voice, like comics mid-game. But honestly, I couldn't hear shit what he said, and I didn't like restart it. I just didn't understand it, if I'm completely honest. So I don't know what was said.

Banks I'm guessing he was trying to get them spurred on, right? We know what Apex can be like. But I mean, 37 best of threes and best of fives, the best season of all time and absolute dominance. They did start off their year by losing the first event, and this was the first event for them of the next part of the season as well. So anyone that's going to write them off just from this doesn't understand, like, what ability is there. And this is probably a great wake up call for them in terms of back to it, boys. This isn't this isn't what Vitality is accepting.

Devilwalk Yeah. And I think I think it's a healthy wake up call.

Banks Yeah.

Devilwalk And it's probably good that they got a little bit slapped now. So they understand it's not like they got lucky. They actually got out called. They got outplayed. So there was a lot of things. It wasn't that, you know, one guy popped off. If you look at like highlights on HLTV, it's all Robs highlights. So it's Vitality were lucky.

Banks They weren't. It is. It actually is.

Devilwalk So Vitality were lucky.

Banks I was playing bad. I can get MVP. Let's win this. Let's go. Finally, we might get MVP. He's like, please, Zywoo, you just play bad and the rest of us play good. I can be the one finally to get an MVP.

Devilwalk Maybe it was even Robs who poisoned Zywoo before the game to just, just to have a chance.

Banks Someone's going to clip in and actually make that like, someone will throw that at them. Robs secretly. Also, the good thing is, with Robs still having a good performance, no one can say shit about his Porsche and what he's doing with that. No one can complain about that at all.

Devilwalk No, but Robs was amazing. And he would have been the best performer on the server if he got a little bit more ground runs to play with.

Banks So what you're saying is he got a Porsche buff. He actually played better.

Devilwalk Yeah, Porsche buff. No, he was insane.

Banks He was truly insane. All right, so we won't go from this then into the NAVI one. Let's just talk about what we're going to do next with NAVI, because they lost to Spirit. They should have, not should have, but they could have won 2-0 against Spirit and been in the final. I spoke to Alexey. I've been spending a lot of time with Wonderful. I spoke to Macazi a bit as well. I've been, I would say I was just giving him a lot of love and a lot of praise because I think it's very hard to come into NAVI, who have so much structure in this blade way. And like he even told me personally, he said, dude, there's so many things written down and all these things I need to go through that it's like, it's a lot, you can't be ready. And their map pool realistically wasn't that strong. Like he's not remembering everything. They're not going to be fully there on all the maps. This was a great performance. And it's just in the cruise, like they should have won Mirage or at least had it in overtime. I felt like they should have won Mirage. Nuke, they did really well on. And then Ancient, that was like the go-to good map. They were just getting absolutely smashed on in the end by Donk. Like that's just the way it was going. And I don't think there's anything wrong with how they approach things, really. They'll be sad about it. But this is like, for me, this is positive. Like, you got a brand new player in. Mikazee is the aggression that was missing. How many times did we see in the past where like, JL should be going in for something, but then they back off or they're not too sure. When JL was feeling a game, he will go for everything and every kill. But sometimes if his confidence wasn't there, or if he was getting smashed down banana or something, he wouldn't be able to take it. Mikazee was not scared. Sometimes he was just rolling out, dominating Donk and then rolling on the rest of Spirit and saving crucial rounds. There was multiple times I was thinking, this guy actually has no fear. When I spoke to Mikazee personally, he goes, I'm not scared of anyone. He goes, Donk is just a name. And remember, he's been playing in this lower tier. He's played against the Spirit Academies of the world and stuff like that. He's dealt with this before. Donk is just another player to him. And that's the level of confidence these younger players are coming with because of the way they're coming up in a different way to our more veteran players.

Devilwalk There's also a little bit of the Albanian fire in him as well.

Banks He did say, by the way, he spoke to our boys. He spoke to the B&E boys and they just told him like, be shouting, be loud, like, just go for it. And he did say the first stage part of the game, he was not like that. He was more quiet because it was like, it was a lot. And remember, I feel bad for him for this reason. You play the first game of the playoffs and there's the opening ceremony where all teams walk on stage, which means you do your warm up and set up. Yeah. And then maybe 40 minutes to an hour, you don't touch the game because you have to do this walk in and all the stuff. Yeah. And then also the adrenaline is going because you've never stepped on it. So he didn't just have like a normal stage walkout. He had like the most intense...

Devilwalk He couldn't just sneak from backstage into the PC.

Banks No, it wasn't like just... Even this, I think of a normal walkout on the semifinals day, it's just walk out with both teams, you go and play your game. And that's maybe like a 15, 20 minute break. This was almost 40 minutes to an hour break because it's the big grand opening of Cologne 2025. First of all, it's his first ever. He stood there blessing with his Kosovo flag, which is beautiful to see, you know, they all had their flags up, by the way, the NAVI boys. And then he has to be basically not warmed up, all the adrenaline is pumping. And then it's like, you're in your game. Like there's, for people to understand, there is no time for the rest of the players who've experienced this before. They've gone through it. They understand it. There's nothing that can prepare him for that. Nothing at all.

Devilwalk No.

Banks And he still played well.

Devilwalk And he did. And he grew during the tournament. And even looking at every game, looking at this like Spirit NAVI game, NAVI should have won against Spirit. Like they should have actually made it to the grand final, in my opinion. I'm loving that Spirit NAVI kind of rivalry is reborn where it isn't just NAVI continuously losing.

Banks It's not just dominant and getting smashed. Yeah, thank God.

Devilwalk That is, it's close. And you could see there was a lot of frustration on Spirit. They clawed their way back on that Mirage, which, you know, I thought that NAVI should probably have won having that 7-1 lead on the T side.

Banks NAVI had it. They started off so good on every map except Ancient.

Devilwalk Yeah. Ancient, they got smashed. But they could have easily won that Mirage.

Banks Did you see the Nuke one where, like, Mikazee gets four kills, two AWP, one Tech 9, and then an M4 kill? Bro, that was ridiculous. Like, he did everything crazy. And by the way, the secondary AWP mode that was normally put on to, like, bit, Mikazee picking it up a bit there as well was something I didn't expect. Like, I wasn't ready for that. And he can be okay with it. Obviously, we need to see some more his first event, but I mean, like, he's got a good arsenal of weaponry with him. So from that, let's nicely go into this Devilwalk. It's our second Devilwalk through of the podcast, because we're going to look into some of the changes up for NAVI in here, which is obviously, it's a very different way. It's not like you give Mikazee everything, right? As far as I understand it, he's not had the treatment that Kiewski's had here. And I guess, for me, mate, the questions are looking at just the comparison of positions between NAVI with JL and then with Mikazee. Looking at how that compares to, obviously, we saw already with Falcons, Kiewski getting everything he wanted. And also, Ima had, like, such a good performance. Way better than in recent times.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks I don't know, actually, if it was factual, but at one point, he was having his best ever performance in a NAVI jersey. Let me have a look at that. Because he was playing so good. I don't want to see maybe if those changes helped him in any way for that. So that's what I wanted to get into with you and see all of that kind of thing.

Devilwalk Yeah, I think if we just look a little bit, can look at a little bit first here, like it's a kind of a B-poppy round with IM and JL kind of moving first. And IM is jumping out first, he's checking everything, he's clearing and he's getting killed from the back. And we see JL here, has a little bit more of a passive kind of role. He takes a space, kind of holds an angle rather than follow IM to a certain extent to kind of get those trades. We did get a trade here in the end by bit and wonderful jumping out of the window. But it's, I think, leaving IM a little bit too isolated. He's doing his job good. He's trying to clear, trying to find someone out. They get the trade because of it, but there's no real follow through. It's a little bit slow here on the B site. And I think we can even bring this up to a video. If we look at it from this perspective, it's the in-game perspective of the same round, where you kind of follow JL's kind of point of view. And you see, I am dying there over at electric box, people filling it, but then it kind of slows down. And rotations kind of have a chance to kind of chime in and take spots on the site. Not necessarily bad, but it's a different way of playing. If we're going to kind of compare this to a Makase round, Makase is the one going first. I am following, and Makase is just straight running. He's going to take the space, move out, and I am much closer and dropping down with him eventually to kind of cover that initial space, take a role, because he's played that role in the past. He knows what's up, he knows what he needs help with, and he doesn't take as much of a passive kind of position where JL took behind Carr.

Banks It's quite funny because I saw this first one was when I was watching on Ancient, and I saw there was so many rounds, I think it was against FaZe, where Ima was like, Mikazee's going, Ima was so close to him, and then sometimes Ima was just ready for that first contact, even just crouched behind Mikazee, and it was like a double wombo combo attack, you know? Like being ready to just pounce and on point, and I feel like that suits Ima's style, and also Mikazee is not scared, he's just going in. There's no falling back, he's just straight running and fighting.

Devilwalk But it is one of those things where I even, you know, looking at things, I've never seen Ima as like a pure entry fragger. It's kind of just been a role he's had to take in this NAVI.

Banks Yeah, he's been forced into it.

Devilwalk For things to make sense. He's a great playmaker, he's good at playing around smokes, doing damage, using utility, and sometimes taking that all in duel, but he's not that kind of flicky entry checking every spot kind of guy, which Masaki most certainly is. He likes to push forward, likes to take that space. And I think that's the biggest difference. There are some other differences for Ima on other maps where he takes more of a lurking position and maybe gets a little bit more time to play around. We can see around here, for example, he now goes as to kind of lurk here on short to kind of join in. And Makase just cleans house with that speed he has, where he just goes straight in, takes the duels. You know, he just drops out B apps here and chases people down. He does it in such a smart way.

Banks You know what, it's good as well, because how many people were telling the world, you need to cut Ima, he's not the one, he's not good. And it's like, I said this, and people just said, because I'm biased to NAVI, that like, oh, you're just saying that because you like him. But his contribution to the team in terms of communication, talking, ideas, what he brings to the table was so big. And it's almost like this situation now, even though it's just the early event, it's the first thing to looking at, just suits him better in being able to be the better version of himself.

Devilwalk Yeah. And actually looked at one round or two comparison. I don't have the round now, but I'll just write like kind of draw it for you. So I timed around where JL essentially started here in a B-Pop situation. Here we see this is where Makase started. After five seconds, Makase was out here. And JL came to this position. This is much more slow paced and clearer in the way that he goes through it. But he started from a longer position away and just jumped straight out, went to default and it becomes this. Even if Makase dies, he gets into that role where he has very flicky aim as well. So sometimes it just looks insane when he jumps out like this. And he has that speed.

Banks He clears a lot faster on things.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks He's got that like ready, ready, ready.

Devilwalk Very, very fast on taking space. And I think it gives, you know, the rest of the players kind of filling the void and coming in a lot more sense of what's going on, what I need to cover. It's not as chaotic. Like if you're positioned in these positions and had your entry die here, all of a sudden, you know, there's so many positions they can walk out. Maybe there's a smoke pot. You know, they gain so much space where they can move around and you're still afraid of rotations coming in and awping and whatever. So it eliminates moves. It also gives these people to kind of position themselves better, as you know, that he's not afraid. He will push all the way front market and pressure the opponent. And they can kind of react on that information and get into better positions for the afterplanet. So I think that's a key area of what makes NAVI also a little bit more dangerous now on certain maps. Mirage is one of those where I feel like it looks better. It looks cleaner. It looks faster. And I personally am a fan of it. There are other maps where I think Makase maybe could learn from JL, taking it a little bit slower, especially when he's on a solo role. But in terms of roles, if we just look quickly, so obviously we're not going to find around where he has that. But in general, he has that B apps role. Unless they're doing something very specific, like holding for an anti-eco or something, then they will probably leave IAM here alone. Macazza kind of filling in a gap for a bit, so they don't get pushed and lose the map control. But otherwise, he is a straight swap with JL on that B apps, that I am still going under. So there's no role swap, essentially, except that I am on like rounds, but he gets to be more of a trader kind of person, rather than the first guy out. And if we look at...

Banks What is it like on the CT side?

Devilwalk Oh, on the CT side, it's also a straight swap.

Banks Okay.

Devilwalk So Macazza is short, where JL used to be. And JL used to like to go in to ladder room. When I checked things, at least the last couple of games, and they were obviously struggling a little bit at the end. I am and Macazza actually looked quite off-sync, where, for example, Ima would be here in the corner, close con, and JL would be in ladder room, and they didn't really have the sink. But now we see a much more active Macazza willing to kind of see how they both back off at the same time. It's not worth it to get into positions where they can cover for each other and play a little bit more safer. There's also things where when Macazza is actually playing ladder, you have Ima a little bit more in the crossfire here, so they can cover each other. Like if Macazza wants to cover this side, Ima has his window boost, etc. So they're playing a little bit more together. And also, I think because they are playing more together, Ima is not as isolated and dies as often entry, because Macazza can be there and cover a lot more with his presence.

Banks So they're covering each other and they're actually working together already from the beginning.

Devilwalk And I also think the whole team looks a little bit sharper in the way, when they want to clear things, they go as a group, they have flashes ready, they're moving as a unit, which was something that lacked a little bit more, it seemed a little bit more hesitant to do.

Banks Could that be just because like a new player comes in, it's that rejuvenation and stuff?

Devilwalk I don't think it's a problem thing. I think it's more like rehashing old rules and like, this is how we want to do things. Okay, now everyone's refreshed on it. There's no doubt in our minds. Maybe we know what we're doing. Yeah, exactly, like old things didn't really rehash or maybe it's too obvious to talk about, we should know this. So I think there's definitely a certain degree of that. But yeah, I think they looked great. Macauzi didn't have like crazy performances every map, but I think that Sink felt better and especially coming to the playoff, he was insane. And I think he grew in the tournament. But having a person like that is willing to go first, to willing to kind of step out short or whatever it is. See here when they're playing ladder and jungle, a little bit more secure. I've seen demos with JL would be in ladder and Imme here in Con, be just completely isolated. But I think that's really, really nice to see that they have that sort of communication and probably Imme is the one by kind of ruling it. Okay, let's do it this way or that way. And he's just follow us along.

Banks Yeah, Mikaels is probably in a position where he's going to listen, right? At that point, you're the young rookie coming in, you know, you're playing on big NAVI now, you've got the dream call up, you've actually now done better than any Kosovo player, despite our boys doing well at Majors, right? You've gone to a Cologne playoffs on your first event at 18 years old. It's not a full Albanian Kosovo team, but you're doing the country proud. I've even met Kosovo fans, by the way, and Albanian fans in the arena. Obviously, Albanians are everywhere, right? And they came to support that boy. But it's like, there's pressure on him from his own community at the same time of what expectations I had on him and the way he wants to play. But if he learns from these players around him, all the experience they have, this is going to be something he can really thrive in and grow in. Yeah.

Devilwalk And then we have Inferno, which is also a straight swap on both sides of the map. Macassi is playing on the banana side here, and on CT side, he will be a B player as well. So nothing is changed in terms of...

Banks This is basically normal.

Devilwalk Yeah. It's like Bitter's apps, Ima is kind of second mid-boiler. Alexi, a wonderful ramp supporting the banana player. The one thing that I think Macassi is struggling with a little bit, is he does tend to take a lot of damage and nade damage early on in the round.

Banks From you, Sil. I saw that.

Devilwalk So...

Banks He got bullied, man. Is this right in saying that he probably didn't get punished for this in Tier 2?

Devilwalk To a certain degree, because I think in Tier 2 and Tier 3 teams, they can sometimes become a little bit robotic, and they're every single round nading here, or every single round. Like, they don't switch it up as much. So you've probably got caught off guard a little bit with that. There's a lot of switch-up and a lot of different ways to apply that utility pressure. But one thing that JL did really good on this map is that he waited a lot in this kind of wall side where the smoke pops, waited for when utility pop, then asked for flashes to pop in. So that's a little bit of a key difference. JL had a bit more patience, and didn't take as much damage in banana. I think that's something that Makase could probably learn or try to find out, but he did play banana on NAVI Jr. Now, this is great, right?

Banks Because he's been punished for this in his first bits of games. I'll say this, even though he was bullied the hell out of, he came back into that game. He is resilient and he still had the confidence. He didn't get it knocked.

Devilwalk He did. One of the things I was really impressed with was, they're still playing that kind of same, they want to early be able to flash and peek and kind of deny, tease that kind of early control towards the half wall and punish anyone walking in. But I think he's so good at this thing where like, they're moving together into the site, getting a lot of multi-kills together with Alexey B. They're playing great in synergy, just crushing people. We can see it's here again. This time, they're in like a forced buy situation. And you see there's like a little bit of an exchange here on banana, Macazzo takes some damage. They're still pressuring, making sure there's, you know, not a freebie to come here. Now they're walking back into the site, shifting some utility, getting into a set up. And remember here, Macazzo has MP9, Alexa B, MP9. They're pretty much 100 HP together against a five-man Mongols. You see Macazzo here with the flash, he gets a double kill, backs off. He's still very low on HP. He manages to get a third one here, as they plant the bomb and they can just clean up. So that's a very, like very, very good round for them. And, you know, one of the V-sides.

Banks And he came back for Ima to give him the backup as well, right? So Alexey died, he got his two kills, but then he didn't try and overextend for a thing that rookies would often do.

Devilwalk Exactly. So he's super good at this, like weirdly enough defensive play on B-site Inferno. I was super impressed with him. He got multiple, like this is not even enough. You could show probably four or five more of these rounds where he got multi-kills on B-site to save them in this game of Inferno. So super impressed with that. But it was this kind of nading. He got naded a lot on Banana. And we see here some rounds just for fancies.

Banks Just eating damage. Poor guy. That can be the life of a Banana player. Yeah.

Devilwalk And obviously like you get into these positions and all of a sudden there's just raining nades down as they're kind of retaking B. So learning this kind of stuff where it needs to be a little bit more passive, I think is going to be something that, yeah. It needs to learn to either start baiting a little bit more to not receive as much damage or move into, you know, that passive role of banana and kind of retaking it.

Banks Yeah.

Devilwalk And yeah, that was this Inferno. And on Nuke, here, there is a couple of changes because if we look at the... I'll just explain it. So JL used to be inside, right? With Ime. Alexi B used to be the outside player. Now, Makassar has taken the outside spot, right? Alexi B has moved inside with Ime. One big thing that they used to do a lot, having kind of like two of your star riflers holding the inside, they used to do a lot of like lobby pushes, pushing through smokes, kind of be aggressive in that lobby space.

Banks Yeah, that lurk smoke in lobby and then push behind him.

Devilwalk Exactly. So they used to like push door and kind of double prong attack or double through it. There's a little bit less of that, I'd say. And there's a little bit more kind of from Makassar wanting to stay a little bit more outside compared to Aleksu kind of wanted to be tucked into the corner in the main a little bit more. That's kind of like the key differences from the CT side. So there's not as much. Let's say Ima used to rotate down vent and he used to kill people from short or long stairs a little bit more or jump short. But now he's a little bit more there trying to take that fight towards yard.

Banks And he's got the backup of Makazi again.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks I really got to watch this so much at future events as well of just how Makazi and Ima are going to play well together. It seems like they're going to be put into that position so much even on CT side.

Devilwalk And on T side, it's also a few role changes, mostly from Ima taking that lobby lurk and Makazi taking Ima's role of the yard player.

Banks Was that what he did on NAVI Junior? Was he also a yard then?

Devilwalk Yeah. Okay. So here it's a big change for Ima. He gets to be in a little bit of a lurk role. I think he likes this kind of role where he kind of sneaks out, drops out vents or sneaks out to try to-

Banks Very smart player as well, so it makes sense.

Devilwalk Yeah, to kind of take random duels. So I remember watching a little bit about JL and Ima. I'm just going through rounds, but either way, I'll just show it in writing. So there's so many skybox edge rounds I had to keep track of. But Ima and JL, the biggest difference is JL pretty much always wanted to lurk out door and T vents. Ima is a little bit more flexible joining in on Hut, but the main difference is JL wanted to tuck into the smoke here and aim top Hut to try to catch people off guard and then drop vents after he cleared a little bit. Ima likes to just go straight down vent and hold, kind of catch the rotation off. We saw it even against spirits like Donk got caught off guard rotating down vent one round when Ima was there. So there's a couple of situations where the dynamic has changed, obviously with a little bit of an aggressive yard player and a little bit more sneaky door player in this case, where JL likes to take the, yeah, catching people off guard on hut. Both can work to their advantages, but it's a small change in dynamic, but otherwise they play pretty much the same. And if we actually, I'm actually gonna show a clip here of, not that, over here. So this is essentially what I was talking about. If you look at, Imme, dropping down, holding down the vent, just waiting for people and you see they're going for that kind of ramp push. I see this don't really have an idea what's going on. And if we move on into a JL, he likes to go out on this T vent, trying to aim for a top hut player, or trying to catch someone off guard, hiding in that smoke and finding a timing. So he's a little bit more, I want to try and catch a kill. Well, Imme is-

Banks Yeah, one for the kill than the space.

Devilwalk Yeah. So there's advantages to both. But I think in this case, I think Imme has more successful rate at at least forcing more rotations around, if they notice that Imme is down there. It's a very awkward way to-

Banks To upset where they've gone.

Devilwalk Force CTs to rotate down into Secret or force them into that ramp or lobby.

Banks I think they beat Vitality, you know, that like they didn't come with their A-game, and this version of NAVI would be, for a grand final again, first time with this new team, they would be so on it. Might not be in the same fashion, some three-oh or something like that, but I mean, I've got that belief in it just because of how Majors are playing on it, just on a side note here, because of how close this was and how good this game finally was from NAVI to put up a fight against the Spirit that they haven't been able to do for so long.

Devilwalk So I'd say this is the map, Ancients, where the most role changes happen for NAVI.

Banks Okay. So this is the Macazi Specialist map. This is the one he loves his favorite.

Devilwalk So essentially, what I'll tell you here is Alexi B has actually moved into that B Lurker role, at least early game, where Bitt is actually taking Alexi B's role of being the second support in case they need to go fast mid and have four flashes, et cetera, in timing. Who then joins, you know, Alexi B. And Bitt used to be that second guy out mid with Ime. So now this is obviously dependent on spawns, who is going first and not. So it's not like Ime is the pure entry here.

Banks It's got a straight entry one, yeah.

Devilwalk It's timing. It's all based on the spawns. Who's going to go first depending on how early they are. So that obviously leaves, going to have obviously these more rounds. I'm going to try to find, here we see, Bitt has kind of taken that role of flashing. Alexi B going straight into it. So that's the biggest thing on t-side. Obviously, there's role changes again on the CT side. But I'd still argue that this is a better combo, where Makase can go kind of straight out. You see how fast he wants to take the space. And there's potential of even...

Banks He was constantly getting into red as well.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks He's red in doughnut control. He was always ready.

Devilwalk And it's a little bit special having Alexi B here on, you know, the caller kind of isolated here on the B side.

Banks On his own, on an island.

Devilwalk But I think he can probably do it a little bit better than... Because, I mean, having Bitt hitting the sides with this amount of riflers, I think this is a good fit for them still, because he can join in and be lurky anyways, and gains a lot of information here to make the calls. On CT side, it's a little bit of a weird one, because you have Makase kind of taking Aime's old role with D0n0t, Aime kind of being in red a lot more than Wonderful. It almost looks to me like Wonderful is the A player, and if Wonderful wants to take a shot in B, or if he wants to take a shot in mid, then Aime is going to be the one rotating back and covering for him. But in general, it looks like Wonderful is the A player, which is a little bit weird. But yeah, so also Bit used to be the A player in the past.

Banks Yep.

Devilwalk Now is the kind of banana anchor here on B, Alexi B is the K player. So that is a change, but I think it's a good change.

Banks Before you say it, because I think for me, Bit M4A4, he loves that gun. Yeah. This B rushes, this B play come out where he can go a little bit with Pokey and push out and how fast he can be for headshot. That's a change I like the sound of.

Devilwalk I think it, like just looking at his qualities is probably a change that, you know, like you say, it suits him. I think this B site is something for him. He's very good. Also, he's a player that I don't think is afraid of people poking up and challenging him. I think he's very comfortable with the, he likes that. Yeah. These kinds of plays. And it's an area where you're going to gain so much from having a player being able to be independent, not forcing Alexi B back to that B site or being able to die early from just a lurk, which kind of leaves a lot of space on the map to try to regain. If someone comes up here and starts smoking off and mulling off, creating panic across the whole map for CTs. So this is a change I really, really like. And probably was, you know, not everyone has the patience to play A on this map, because it is kind of a B mirage apps situation.

Banks It's a boring, thankless position.

Devilwalk It truly is. So yeah, Makase having that donut, they're rotating around on rifle a lot more often than wonderful. But it's a little bit interchangeable. And it looks great for them. I mean, in this map, they lost one T-Round here against Mongols. Absolutely crushed them.

Banks They only got slapped on it by Spirit.

Devilwalk Yeah. And this is obviously just to see how they obviously played wonderful here a little bit as well. But I think Bitt was a little bit more towards that A-side on his own. But they had this kind of wonderful A half of the time, and Bitt half of the time.

Banks Okay. Still rotating around A regardless.

Devilwalk Yeah, but this map has a lot more changes. But on T-side, I'd say like, as long as you are these players and having the flashes, and then coming B, if you're already a player that did that, it's not that big of a change.

Banks And I also think Macazi and Ima taking mid like that, is so strong as that one, two punch again, that we were talking about. And just the fact they're going to play over each other a lot in these different maps and these different positions, it's going to be something to keep an arm, but something very powerful for NAVI to use to their advantage.

Devilwalk Yeah, and I think it unlocks a bit to a sense as well. It's not forced to always be the one going out and fragging, because he's a great closer of rounds as well.

Banks That's the whole point, right? Yeah.

Devilwalk So I think balance-wise, overall NAVI, they look a little bit better in my opinion. I think they have a little bit more speed when they're going for rounds and being fast. There are still learning curves on some maps where they need to find a balance for Macazi. But overall, I like the balance a lot more, and that's probably why they've done so well. I think that they're looking like this could be the piece that kind of elevates them into challenging for tier one again.

Banks Finally. They were always in tier one, but I mean, they dropped off so far from being a title contender.

Devilwalk Let's just say they could be in the conversation of actually challenging for titles again because that's not where they were in the past six months.

Banks I like it. Well, that leaves us. Well, thank you very much for all the devil walkthroughs on that. We get so much of trying to break down because people ask for it in the comments as well. When we're talking about how to keep improving the podcast, what to do things differently, we're adding something that can't or isn't being done by other people, and we get it live with all my questions getting to be answered, and we get to understand all the changes that have been going on. So sick work, my dude.

Devilwalk Thank you. Thank you. It was a lot of information to keep in my head because there's so many maps, but I'm lucky.

Banks I just basically interview you, ask you questions. You have to figure it all out.

Devilwalk But it was fun. I feel like I probably know the most about NAVI and Falcons now after watching the differences of the old one and the new ones kind of unfold and kind of breaking it down more deeply than just watching a match.

Banks Maybe Falcons should watch this. Maybe it will help them. There you go. Someone send this to Falcons. Maybe send this on it, guys. Pass it over to him. Send to the analyst.

Devilwalk I don't know.

Banks Whoever else is there, give them a help in hand. But there's still a little bit more to talk about with Cologne. We got to talk about this grand final. Honestly, I predicted 3-1 in favor of Mouz. I thought, and maybe I was just stupid in this, that Mouz beating Vitality and how much it meant for him, that emotional but also so happy, Torgi interview he did with Shox where he's like just laughing. They finally did it. I think now, looking back at it, obviously it's with hindsight, we know the result. It's like they beat the final boss, but it wasn't actually the final boss. Because they beat Vitality. They've been desperate for that win. They lost seven times in a row. Then they do it. And then they go up against Spirit. And they probably, I wouldn't say they think like, yeah, we can beat Spirit. It's going to be so easy. But all year, apart from at Cologne, they were beating Spirit. They played like, how many times did I say they played? Let me just check. I think they had guaranteed they had 12 maps played before this grand final. Yeah. And six of the maps had gone to overtime, which is crazy. Four series, all best of threes. Three won by Mouse, one at Cologne, the most recent one before the grand final, one by Spirit. So you're thinking, okay, Mouse got an advantage in this. And the difference can be donk, sure. But it wasn't just donk here because Mouse in some situations lost to themselves. Ancient, for example.

Devilwalk So I have a question for you. I mean, I've thought about this question myself. But if you look at Spirit right now and you compare the Spirit to the Spirit with Magix, do they actually look better? Or is it the opponent that looks worse?

Banks Hmm, I will say that Mouse didn't look worse. If we're specifically talking about Mouse. Yeah, I will say that the one thing I noticed, it seems like if I'm if you're looking at pure numbers and stats, people are saying numbers just like eye tests.

Devilwalk Look at it. Cool.

Banks That's it, because people are saying Zwei Magic says no like, there's no real different comparison, right? It's the same kind of thing. But I'll say this, eye test wise, when I look at Zwei, he is more mechanically gifted and can play better at times of hitting crucial kills that maybe Magix would have missed in the past. Maybe wouldn't have been closed out. Like I actually now see that I'm not looking at like Donk, Shiro and Zontix. I'm now already thinking Donk, Shiro and Zwei. That's how I'm looking at it in my head.

Devilwalk I mean, I'm not as convinced as you are about this. I think he had a bit of a, I don't know, poor showing is harsh. I think he's been in roles where he hasn't had that many opportunities to play his game. It's been more of like a passive players, just kind of just holding the map control for them. And he hasn't really found where and when he can have freedom. But I personally just felt like Donk has played the entire freaking semester. You know, like there's no vacation for Donk. He's just grinding and he's just goes there.

Banks I didn't ask him, but I don't think he's been on holiday. I know Zontik's been on holiday after Shanghai, for example, but I'm pretty sure Donk's the type of dude that would just been... We need to check his face stats, but I mean, like...

Devilwalk He just looked like... He looked as sharp as if it was in the middle of a season. You know, there wasn't that much... I don't know. He's just so fucking overpowered. It's crazy. Yeah. And he's... Yeah. I feel like there's a little bit rust on other teams, but it's obviously incredibly impressive.

Banks When was the player break from? When did we leave? So, 18th of June, yeah, was the last game he played before the player break.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks Is that right? Yeah. On Faceit. And then the next game he played was the 10th of... So let's look at this on my calendar. Just bring this up. So, June 18th, that would have been... after the Major League? Yeah. June 18th was just... So he was playing Faceit before Major Playoffs. Then the Major Playoffs hit. They obviously get eliminated by the 10th. So he had one, two weeks. He had two weeks and four days before he started grinding Faceit again. And it was like 2.50 in the morning, 10th of July, midnight, 1 p.m. And on the 11th, he would play bloody hell. He just played so many games. 12th played, 13th played, 14th played, 15th played, 16th played, 17th played, 18th, 19th, 20th. He took a break on the 21st and he went 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th. Yeah, he was just full out grinding from there until the 1st of August, but obviously he was getting to Cologne.

Devilwalk Yeah. He looked sharp as ever. His break was minimal. And I mean, yeah, he's just crazy to watch. He is absolutely crazy because he doesn't shy away from anything.

Banks Let's look at this. Let's talk about this. I love Niko. I'm a big Niko fan.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks But in 1.5, maybe 2 years, Donk's got Major, Cologne, Caddo and MVPs from all 3. Niko is still struggling for the Major. It's been 10 years. Obviously, everyone kept calling him the greatest rifler. Individually, he's always looked like that. But this is not just Donk surpassing him. This is like as an individually skilled player, there is no better player individually than Donk. We've never seen anyone like this. And in his roles and in what he can do, this is just... This is why he has Donk666 in his name. I call him the devil child. He is actually the devil child of Counter-Strike. Because he's demon mode, owning everyone.

Devilwalk The only thing Niko has, like going for him in the debate is obviously longevity. He's been in the game for so, so long. But in terms of like acolytes and achievements.

Banks I'm not worried about Donk's longevity.

Devilwalk I mean, Niko must have more tournament wins and stuff like that, right?

Banks More tournament wins, but Donk's already equaled his MVPs.

Devilwalk Well, he will surpass him as the greatest rifler of all time. I have no doubt.

Banks For me he has. For me he already has. He broke the records. He achieved the big trophies, the big three. He's got the major as well, which obviously has a bit more of a rise to it. And he even said after this, right, he wants more. He's not his player who's like, I've done this. I'm going to be unmotivated. You remember, he enjoys playing the game. He doesn't like it when his team skips tournaments. He doesn't like it when he's not playing Counter-Strike still. He's still, and I know we should talk about the game in some ways. So it's not just going to be us harping on about Donk. But do you remember when I said after the major, Donk didn't want to do a loser interview when Spirit got eliminated? Chopper came to me, he always does, he's always so good and kind to me, gives me more English interviews than anyone else. I think I got a very good relationship with him. But Donk didn't want to do a loser interview because when I saw him, he wasn't crying, but he had like tears in his eyes after that elimination. He was so unhappy. Yeah. But then for all the people like who they hate Donk, I don't know, maybe they hate Donk because he's too good, but they say, oh, he doesn't care. He only cares like about trophies. Oh, he's so bad to you on interviews. First of all, I kept saying this, he's so young. So like he's learning his way with this. English isn't his first language, but guess what? He's already doing very good at the English interviews. But he had tears in his eyes looking at that cloned trophy because it was something he wanted so much. And even on the MVP interview, he doesn't care about the MVPs. He wants trophies. Trophies is the legacy, right? More majors, more big events, more colognes, more Katowice. You know, this is what this guy is aiming for. And he's still yet to become really like a man. 18 doesn't make you a man. You still got to learn, you got to grow. He's going through life, you know. Think of all the money he's earned, all he's going through. And he's not one of these people I see him with like, he's splurging out cash on things. I told already the story on the podcast, like he was reading the Kobe Bryant book as well, Mamba Mentality. This is a smart kid. This is a smart young adult. Yeah. And he may have a lot to learn and grow into, but you've got to respect this. Like, he's not emotionless. He does have desire and motivation and he does have feelings. And that showed. And that was what was so beautiful about this win. And especially because it's been a rough season up until then, you know.

Devilwalk Yeah, I mean, 100% agree. I mean, he's been frustrated kind of all year because I think Spirit were in that conversation. They probably put themselves in that conversation. This is Spirit's year before Vitality started dominating everyone. They kind of took a backseat, not only to Vitality, but they took a backseat to more teams like Mousesports. You know, he's the best player in the world. And you know, like a rifler being in that position is crazy.

Banks And never had it.

Devilwalk I understand his frustrations, you know, like it's it's also because we're hyping him up obviously. And he's trying to tune that down a little bit to kind of keep himself on the ground, which is probably a pretty healthy way of looking at it.

Banks We don't want ego, Donk, that would be terrible.

Devilwalk I mean, he probably has ego to some degree in the game.

Banks But I mean, we don't want it like visual ego, like I'm the best walking out fucking Conor McGregor style or something like that.

Devilwalk You know, or like all of a sudden, I'm sick of going first, you know.

Banks Yeah, he's like, you go first.

Devilwalk You go first.

Banks No, he just sends his way out every time and then starts trading him. By the way, that's that's another thing. Well, I know we're glazing Donk the whole way here, but Zwei, I called it his first tier one tournament because like, yeah, he's competed at some majors and stuff, but it's with the meager. He's not been at big, big events. Yeah. For his first event on Spirit and you walk away, your first trophy alone, 20, 25 years, 17 years old. It's not like Donk numbers or anything, but that's pretty damn cool.

Devilwalk Oh, that's super cool.

Banks He had moments, bro. He got the last kill on the last map as well in a 1v1, I guess Clutch will call it, right? It's not like a 1v2 or something, but he got that last kill. He wasn't like, that's got to feel great for him, man. And even Shiro had a bad final.

Devilwalk Yeah. And I mean, Sway is going to be better and better the more you watch him and look at him as he kind of gets used to this, because I mean, he was honest in his interviews. He said he's not fully comfortable with this kind of thing. He's not in the best, you know, confidence mode. So once he kind of gets integrated, and I think a lot of it is for these young players, especially when you come into a team like Spirit. If you're the aggressive player, like Donk is much easier because, you know, you're going to take the pace that you want to go in. Yeah. W can only go so fast. Whilst being the more passive and you know, having extended stretch of a round where you have to stay alive, you have to keep the control because they're very slow paced in the late round. And like keeping your focus and not zoning out into the audience, or doing something wrong or whatever it is, it's much harder from that kind of position. So I think he just needs to learn a little bit more where, when he can take his freedom, and when he can get his opportunities to shine, where he can play from his gut feeling, still follow the rules and the system and everything like that, but still be able to express himself on the server. I think that for me was lacking a little bit. I didn't really get to see Sway, you know? Does that make sense?

Banks Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. But like you said, it will come with time. But I just think when I'm looking at the way he was playing some individual, when he had that freedom on his own, there was a time where he was like outside yards, looking at his main, three CTs pushed him. He got two and a half in there, held his own. Like he's just, he was ready. He was aware he could take them fights. And he's not like, I would think that Magix would maybe get one, but maybe not be as sharp to get him that quickly. And it's nothing against Magix, but it's just like, it's a younger upgrade in some sense like that. And also, this way he's got this good attitude, kind of similar to the donk style of saying like, I always want to do better. I want to get the trophies. Like he's in the right mentality point. I think that's what's going to work here very well. I will say that with Shiro performing for a grand final 0.99, like I'm actually fine with that because of the way obviously Spirit use him. But normally we're relying on the donk, Shiro whole style. But Chopper needs to mention because Chopper sometimes was calling the right stacks, the right positions, the right way of things to go. And also at times, like I think it was on Mirage, him and donk had like the same numbers. Maybe him, donk and Shiro were the ones like, let me check.

Devilwalk Even is on Mirage, I remember.

Banks Yeah, on B, right? When they tried to push in through the smoke. Look, Chopper had a 1.26 rate in the same as Zontix. Obviously, they played really good on Mirage, but it's like, with Chopper's doing that as well. And by the way, the thing, remember when everyone was saying like, kick Chopper, they need a new IGL as well, like people saying kick him and Magix. I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, like Chopper, he has some moments where it's not great, but I mean, he's never been someone where I look at and go, yeah, they should get a different IGL than Chopper. Like, no, he's, this guy's been through all, and the players love him, like his team love him. And the relationship he has with Halley, something's definitely working there.

Devilwalk No, I think Chopper is, he always surprises me when I watch him because, you know, he doesn't look very individually gifted, but he can shoot.

Banks Sometimes he looks a bit slow, you know?

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks Sometimes I feel like he is maybe his time to kill is like less than what I would expect. And it doesn't matter who's Nigel or not. It's just like, I think it's like it's a labored spray or like it's a not so clean shot. But then other times he'll just, it's like sometimes when they're in the worst position and they're really down on rounds, Chopper just has this feeling. He's like, well, fuck this guy. It's like, I'm just going and he'll mow a few people down.

Devilwalk I mean, I think the biggest thing about Chopper is, he's really good at finding gaps in the slow pace rounds and like finding the space that they need to take or finding a flank and wait for his team to kind of distract them and he comes behind and gets a kill. So he's using his brain a lot and finding these gaps. And it's not easy to find these kinds of gaps or pressure opponents. I mean, there was even this like, I mentioned this in the, I'm not sure you were here, but it was like the Neeko commented on Austin's post of Spirit's nuke T side and he did a video of that. And Neeko, I'll even put it out here. So it was like Austin made like a three minute video calling like, this is the worst T side I've ever seen on nuke ever.

Banks What Spirit T side?

Devilwalk About Spirit. And Neeko, he said this essentially, I can explain to you what this is. Round six, they saved three weapons without any utility. In round seven, they could only afford two smokes. The fact that shopper could get under heaven and put so much pressure on NAVI with such low utility is impressive. If somethings got on the kill on bit, they could have won the round right there. The upcoming round, they said that they failed the smoke line. But if you do any basic background work, you will see Makase will throw a molly close to T-Red to destroy their smoke line. I like your content, but you should understand more context to the rounds before criticizing players.

Banks Ooh, spicy Niko.

Devilwalk Yeah, but it was fair. It was one of these rounds where like shopper, they did save rounds, you know, the weaponry, he still manages to pressure out any smokes on Yard, gets under heaven, manages to dodge the AWP, and like kind of was really close to Wonderful under heaven. And he somehow manages to get past him and get into ramp.

Banks Oh, yeah. Because, no, do you know what happened? I remember this round, wonderful for a molly, yeah. But before the round, shopper knew the molly was going. And shopper like before it even landed, I remember it's a CT molly, so it's just a bit more shit as well. But like shopper goes and Wonderful still thinks he's locked in. Wonderful even pulls out a pistol to go hunting for him. And like shopper's already gone, man.

Devilwalk He's got his like running back to ramp and regrouping with his team from lobby.

Banks This is great for me. And they end up winning that round, which is absolutely wild. But also, like with Nico saying this to Austin, my thing is I like a lot of Austin's content. Some of it's funny, some of it's very informative. But as someone who is informed about the game himself, before he puts any tweet out to try and get the clicks or the views, he should double check these things. You need to be like, I'll always say if I'm not sure about something, I think I remember like this and then we're checking it live or something. You can't try and set a fake narrative on it.

Devilwalk Yeah. It was still nice to see Nico kind of defending another team.

Banks Like, come on, that means he's watching as well, man. That's the caliber of Nico, right?

Devilwalk I think I've always been like protagonist. I don't know if that's the right word, but for maybe analysts are a little bit too critical a player sometimes without really, you know, taking rounds in context.

Banks Right? Sometimes analysts like, oh, by the way, I'll give this even to even defend some talent on how we look at things. Watching the game from the arena, not in the talent room, yeah? And being there live like I was, I had no distractions from someone coming in who's a producer and saying, we've got this or someone saying, get ready for this. Sometimes, I don't see six to ten rounds of a game. Yeah, but sometimes I miss six to ten rounds of a game because I'm doing interviews for another game in advance because the time is so short, right? So then people go to me, why didn't you ask this question about this round? I didn't fucking see it. What am I supposed to do? Just make up questions that I didn't have the information to? And they blame me for not having it. Some of the analysts will be pulled into a meeting for the next game while the current game is going on. And then you also miss a bunch of those rounds. So it's like, I can sympathize with them sometimes, but it's also on the tournament organizers to either have a better flow or a better schedule or better tools for people to work with to do this. Because even now, some analysts will be so critical on players or teams, right? But they don't have the ability like you just did there with Edge, for example, to go straight in and pull that out, because the game ends and they're thrown straight onto a desk. You know, you've been there, you've done it yourself. And then you also have to do a bit of guesswork. So some of that job is guesswork at the same time. And then afterwards, yes, someone can make a video, but that's because they've had hours to review the demo and check out Molly and remember this thing. It's only what you can do off live. And that's where like some people can really fuck up by being over critical. Some people can play it too safe for being too nice. There's a balance with it and it depends on many of the situations that outside people are not aware of who aren't in that. Like so many times, I had a new appreciation being a fan in the arena, yeah, not working for anyone but myself, obviously doing the one expect content, but I mean, like I was just chilling, yeah. And I saw so much more of the game that I was even thinking, I could ask this question now. I want to see what this got on. Like there was a moment where I noticed on Mirage it was, yeah, always Donk's first one in. Well, one round, because obviously, Mouz and Spirit know each other so well, they've had all these games, they send two players ramp, yeah, and Torzzy and Broland's already there, like Broland's playing anti-flash, Torzzy's off to the side of him, Broland goes in and gets the one kill with an MP9, Torzzy's unknown, but guess what? They sent Donk on a lurk through mid, was that the round where he aced? he gets all the space, it was either ace or forker, he did say it was something in a non-concreteble moment.

Devilwalk Yeah, I think he aced it.

Banks And basically, he cleaned up everyone, because guess what? They fought, oh, Donk's in first, so that whole push is coming in, and it wasn't Donk, it was Shiro that went down first, and all of a sudden Donk's like, ha ha ha, I'm just gonna kill everyone and do what I do best, and they weren't ready for it, you know?

Devilwalk I think that was the round he came up the stairs, right? He got the 2K, he jumped into Tetris, hid, and then when they did a freeman retake from CT, killed one default, killed the smoke, and then the jungle guy.

Banks Yeah, and so I saw more of the game because I didn't have any producer in my ear clicking on something else, doing something else, you know, and that's definitely a factor in it. To talk about mouse quickly, they threw Ancient, like it was 11.5, I think it was, and that's going to haunt them. They were 11.5 up, they let Donk do a little bit of his master stuff, right? He was taking a lot of control, and I think they started to realize it was slipping away, but when they had the chance to get that, I feel like if they got Ancient, we'd have a series on our hands, we might be looking at a different situation, but once it got to Nuke, it was already over.

Devilwalk Yeah, but I have to agree with what you, on the, like, when I was thinking about predictions, I actually thought that Mouse would have it, but it most certainly...

Banks They were not the bookies' favorites, by the way. The bookies all were going for Spirit being favorites.

Devilwalk Yeah, but I just thought like, okay, they just beat Vitality, they're gonna be full of, you know, good vibes and confidence and everything.

Banks Everything's nice. We're gonna get another trophy.

Devilwalk When I look back at it now, it's one of these like traps where they got overjoyous and they relaxed. It was like they already won.

Banks You say overjoyous. In the interviews, they were like, but we know the finals tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I agree.

Devilwalk Yeah, but that's something you say, you still overjoyous.

Banks Exactly, exactly. And so I just feel bad for Mouse because that's now five finals, you've had one trophy, it was Cluj-Napoca when there wasn't as many of the top teams, that was your first event with Spinks. And it was only Brolan, who's the in-game leader, he shouldn't be the one is your highest rated player, right? Everyone else was struggling. Yim Fat still having some struggles that I'm starting to have a little, I love Yim Fat, but like, little Yimmy's having some moments where he goes like two and 18 or whatever and has these games where he's not up to the standard of the old Yim Fat that I used to see. I don't know that's the Spinks thing since he's come in. I don't know if it's just a confidence thing, but it's a problem they need to solve. And even though they got over this vitality hurdle, it's still now for me, Vitality is the best team, Spirit is the second team. Spirit will not be the best team in the world for me, unless they now get a couple of other trophies and take down Vitality. They need to take on the final boss. And the final boss is still Vitality for everyone.

Devilwalk They haven't won against Vitality yet. They can't be crowned.

Banks But I think that brings us to the end of Cologne. Don't get another MVP. He's in a great position. The new MVP model was brilliant, by the way, bigger than the old ones. Special Cologne design had the Graffitis on there as well. The Olof one was in there at the same time, which is beautiful on the side. The Cathedral is on there. And then, what happened? Okay, we've already been saying on the podcast for like every episode that Cologne is the next major, but finally, it's public information that Cologne 2026 is the next major. I'll just say, if anyone from ESL is watching, please don't do me dirty like you did for this 2025. Please hire me for the major. I've never worked a Cologne major. I would love to work Cologne as a major because I grew up watching that stuff, you know? I was watching that from back at home and they are some of the most special. You've been for them?

Devilwalk Yeah, it is definitely a special. I mean, all Cologne events are special to their own degree. But having Cologne and adding the major tag for it. I mean, I even talked to people who used to watch, you know, Counter-Strike back in the days and stop watching. They always think Cologne and Katowice are a major no matter what, you know, because they're so special of events. And people who don't watch like super regularly still think it's a major even if it's not. And kind of is.

Banks It's always that way.

Devilwalk It kind of is.

Banks It is the crowd. I will say this, the crowd this year was good. Friday was a bit rough. Sunday was okay. But it wasn't as crazy as last Cologne. Like this didn't, I was watching, I can remember from inside the arena, in the crowd, sat down on the arena floor sometimes as well. And I even heard it from a lot of fans themselves. It wasn't as hyped, but it might have just been from what final we got and what sort of games we got. There was moments of like, it was really hyped. The Vitality game was obviously crazy with the Golden Horn. It's going like mad as always. They're amazing. But it was a bit more quiet here than what was normal. But I also think, I would say from an outside perspective, that it felt like because the next clone is the major, this one was like toned down a little bit in order to make sure that ramp up into the next clone is like skyrocket high. ESL put out all the bells and whistles and we go into like nuclear mode of how it's going to be amazing.

Devilwalk But it's also a little bit, you know, when you've had a little bit of break, you don't really know. People are a little bit rusty in terms of CS. We don't have the exact storylines of this next season to some degree as well. So I think that also kind of matters a little bit.

Banks Yeah, that comes into it. Now, the podcast has really been going on a long time. There's a lot of roster moves we could touch on. I don't want to touch on any of them for this episode, because otherwise it is already three in the morning. We will never sleep. And I have to go and travel again tomorrow. There's a lot of things that have already been touched on by other posts. We can come back to it on the next episode, maybe after Blast Bounty. So let's get into Blast Bounty and then do our Q&A, and then we can be done with it all. Hopefully, everyone's still enjoying the episode and get some sleep. So Blast Bounty is obviously very weird. It's become a more problematic event, because only eight teams go to the LAN finals. Everything else before that's online. It's all VRS global invites, how it's done like that.

Devilwalk And there's no prize pool.

Banks There is most of the top teams. There's no prize pool yet. There'll be prize pool for the LAN bit, right? So it's just aiming for a LAN spot. You potentially ruin some VRS points.

Devilwalk I mean, it is essentially a qualifier.

Banks Yeah, it's a qualifier for the LAN finals. It's a risk for some of the teams if you're at the very top. And remember, it's single elimination. So one best, three loss, and you're out. You're done. You just need to make it through each part. It does have the really cool format we touched on it last time, you know, like where teams can fight each other for the money and stuff that's on the line. You can choose your opponent of who you're going to vote into. So like one of the lower seeds gets to pick the higher seed or however that works, right? Whatever one thinks is going to fit them in the best way possible. NRG, unluckily, the North American team called Vitality is their first one to fight up against. Let's go down just, I guess, the VRS thing is the problem, because say Vitality did lose to NRG. It's on line, so it's less counting, because it's not a LAN match, but it's still going to hurt Vitality. It's going to be a boost for NRG, but there's no money on the line. It's just these LAN spots. Like kind of anything can happen here, but it's kind of rough, right? It's not the most exciting in that sense, but the format at least makes it exciting. I won't be working on that one. I wasn't invited to the Molotov one. You can see the hosts are going to do the interviews as well. They're not using me on the stage for the LAN bit. So I'm just chilling once again.

Devilwalk Do you just want to predict the games? Who's going to win?

Banks The first opening games? There's a lot of opening games. So let's just go straight from the top. Round of 32. First game is going to be... I'll just do it in the order that's on HRTV rather than the time order, but MIBR, Virtus.Pro. MIBR have not shown much still. With NiX coming in, I don't have much faith. Brennan is still struggling as well. So this probably be VP.

Devilwalk Yeah, I'll probably go VP as well, actually.

Banks Pain vs. Ninjas.

Devilwalk I'll take NIP on this one. I think they've shown, you know, that ex- I have a problem saying this name, ex-Kaspersky. Ex-Kaspersky. No, I think he's the real deal. I think he looked really, really, really good when I watched him. Pain, they were a bit of a disappointment. Hopefully, they can regain some form, but I have high hopes for NIP, you know, coming into this half of the season.

Banks I agree on the NIP thing. I just think that Pain will come in with the fire. They need to for this thing. They made the LAN finals last time as well. They do perform good online. Then we got Heroic taking on Complexity.

Devilwalk Heroic?

Banks I'm going to go for Heroic, man. Yeah, I'm going to go for Heroic for that. Fnatic vs Legacy, this gets hard because I can't underestimate Legacy again. Yeah, and I love my boy Fear. We got Jambo there. Cypher's just coming to Fnatic, but they were even struggling to qualify for the last Open London. I think they lost to Ecstatic.

Devilwalk They got a new player in Cypher replacing Matus.

Banks Let's give that to Legacy. Ecstatic Liquid, bro, I'm taking Ecstatic for real.

Devilwalk I actually want to take Ecstatic as well. I'm going to follow you.

Banks All right. Then we've got Foot now. I don't know what that means.

Devilwalk It's NAVI.

Banks Foot versus Base. The ex-NAVI junior. Yeah.

Devilwalk Oh, yeah, junior.

Banks So they got Misuta. I just don't know how to say the team name. They got Misuta now as the replacement for Mikaze. I don't think... Have they played any games with Misuta? Let's see. They lost to VP Prodigy with Misuta. Yeah. Kabeny is still doing pretty good. Still the one. He was the follow up to Mikaze. They have a Kosovo boy in there. I don't know. I feel like Bates should win that one personally.

Devilwalk I think, yeah, this is a game Bates should win. I think they are not to be underestimated, like foot. Obviously losing Mikaze could be a big one. Misuta not a bad replacement, but I haven't seen him play in ages. So really, really hard to say where he is. But online, I feel like this is Bates' kind of home ground. Not that they are bad on LAN, but this is where they're comfortable. They're comfortable playing these kind of teams. They've been very consistent against these types of teams. So, Bates.

Banks Then we got G2 Namiga. I'm going to go G2.

Devilwalk G2.

Banks I do like what Namiga's got, but losing his way is a big loss for them. TNL, Ukrainian team, going up against NAVI. There's something in this, especially with NAVI playing online. I spoke to Mikaz about this. He's going to have like 40 to 50 ping probably, but he's used to it. He is used to playing these online games. It should be NAVI, but I mean, I think TNL will give them a bit of a run on something.

Devilwalk I'm thinking NAVI all the way, man.

Banks I'm glad you're saying that. I'm really happy you're saying that, but I just mean I feel like this is a game where TNL will take a map from them or something.

Devilwalk NAVI has converted me after this tournament. You have to keep your faith as a biased NAVI supporter, as all the YouTube comments are saying.

Banks I'm biased. I am so biased. FlyQuest Aurora. Remember Aurora has got Zantara's back. I'm picking Aurora. They do?

Devilwalk Yes, Aurora.

Banks Rare Atom Astralis.

Devilwalk Oof. Oof. I mean, I'm taking Astralis. I think... Do they have a new player? Rare Atom?

Banks Rare Atom, I believe. Tiger. Tiger, Tiger. Yeah.

Devilwalk You know anything about them?

Banks I love Child. No, Zero. I know they replaced somebody with Tiger. That was the headline. That was it. Somebody went and Tiger's in.

Devilwalk Wasn't it at one point, like, that they replaced somebody with Trash or something like this?

Banks Oh, was it that? Maybe I'm wrong, then. Maybe I'm wrong on which team...

Devilwalk Do you remember this headline? Or am I talking out of my ass here?

Banks No, you're correct. Let me see. So, oh, yeah, Trash is substitute. Okay. So, right, somebody transfers to Rare Atom bench, yeah? And then Trash is moved to substitute and Tiger joins Rare Atom.

Devilwalk Oh, okay.

Banks I just love Child King, by the way. I'm always going to be a Child King, Fang. He is the king of children, to be clear. Because he was the best child in his land, and that's where the name came from. It's just an epic name. He was a cool guy to talk to an interview and learn some more about, but I do think Stratus will win. I'm not holding that much hope for Rare Atom in this one. ENCE vs Mongols. ENCE, Regan is on the team now as well. We do like that, but this is the Mongols, baby. They're not losing that.

Devilwalk I hope they make it close, and Regan pops off.

Banks Yeah, he's got his chance again.

Devilwalk Yeah, I love watching Regan play, but Mongols have this, I think. They're getting more and more stable than... Yeah, I don't know. They are looking... I mean, they're ranked number three in the world right now. It's crazy.

Banks Yeah, rightly so. Yeah. Big vs. Furia. Got to take Furia of that. Yeah. Passion UA. Obviously, Warro is there. Grim, Demka, Jocasmo, Topper as well. It is going to be a Spirit win most likely, but there could be some way that Passion could do something crazy here.

Devilwalk The domestic games are always a little bit tough.

Banks And Passion will have some extra passion for that one. BetBoom, FaZe. They don't even have Axile anymore in BetBoom, even though he was doing bad. They kept Siren. They haven't got Axile anymore.

Devilwalk It's going to be interesting to see if Passion can do well. But FaZe is on that.

Banks FaZe, in the history, can do bad online. Let's just be clear on that, but let's see what happens. NRG Vitality.

Devilwalk Vitality. Mouse OG.

Banks Okay, they got the Adam B move in, but I don't think that's going to be in. I think Mouse should be solid for that. Yeah, Mouse. Now, which eight teams you think are going to go to the LAN finals?

Devilwalk LAN finals. I have Vitality, Mouse, I'm just reading from the top dogs here. Vitality, Mouse, Mongols, Spirit, Furia, NAVI. I'll say...

Banks I'm not yawning at you, by the way. I'm just yawning, because it's 3.30 in the morning. I've been awake for too long.

Devilwalk I don't know, I'll say Aurora G2. I'll skip FaZe this time.

Banks Okay, so for me, eight teams have made it to the LAN finals. Vitality, Spirit, Mouz, Mongols, NAVI, Furia. Oof, this is where it gets harder.

Devilwalk Yeah, you're gonna have to skip one, or two.

Banks Do I believe in FaZe to do it when it comes from online? I think Aurora will do it. And then I'll say, Pain, Pain Over FaZe. It would be Pain Over Astralis, so yeah, something like that, but I'll go with Pain. Gonna believe in them to do the dirty as always online. Who do you think is winning it? Who do you think is gonna go forward and win?

Devilwalk Like the LAN finals?

Banks Yeah, the whole thing. Win the whole thing.

Devilwalk I mean, I'll take a safety, just vitality. I think that...

Banks Just go vitality?

Devilwalk A wake up call, just come here and dominate.

Banks I saw a picture just posted on Instagram story, Flamzy's in Estonia with Rops. There was a picture by his car. So maybe they're bootcamping together for this, because obviously, playing from Israel would not be good ping for him. It's always terrible ping from Israel. So maybe just play him with Rops in Estonia, and Rops has got PCs as well. He knows all the tech. But I do think for me, finals will be spirit, vitality and vitality come through and get the win, and they go back to winning ways. It's a very easy pick in there. I'd love to see NAVI have a continuous improvement and go to finals, even when it would be beautiful. I think NAVI will make semis at least.

Devilwalk Yeah, I think they have a good chance of making it far. But it's all dependent on who you face in the bracket. I mean, you face a furry early or a spirit or mouse early, or you know, like, everything can happen in that sort of way, but guessing with what we have.

Banks All right, let's go into Q&A, and then we are done for episode 21 of the All About Counter-Strike Podcast. Skorga, as always, is our first question. He is not just a long time viewer. He's been since the beginning. He's got a question in, I think, every single episode. He says, which team do you think has made the best moves during this roster mania? For me, it has to be Heroic. They've brought in a reliable coach, though replacing Saw will be difficult, if not impossible. And the granddad of the team, Tenir, is only 24 years old. I really think this team has great potential, or at least it will be very profitable. Every team Heroic has is profitable, because they are the money-making team. I did a whole article on this. The insane money they've made from transfers, they're just the most winning org at the moment, in that sense.

Devilwalk Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think they have made some really good decisions, but I also think... I feel like teams that are on the up is... I think NAVI, considering, you know, they haven't paid the dime for Makase, he's looking to fit in really well. I think he could be... Looking at NAVI, like a couple of months ago, was almost like sad, or it was fun, because you were always a little bit mad or sad.

Banks Oh, thanks, mate. Cheers for that.

Devilwalk So I had a little bit of enjoyment because of that.

Banks Should we talk about Tottenham and what you lost today? Should we go into that? Should we make you sad?

Devilwalk No, I cried today because Son retired from Tottenham. That's why I'm wearing this jersey, by the way.

Banks Fucking pussy.

Devilwalk Son jersey. And no, but I think in terms of that, it didn't cost them anything. It's looking like a pure improvement. And I get excited watching NAVI again, which is something I kind of lost a little bit. They're looking like they can challenge for titles, at least now early on. Hopefully that continues. And they, you know, Macassi gets more comfortable in his roles and then just continue to develop the playbook because it looks very similar to what they did. So they probably just caught him on to what they had in the past. So I'm excited for that. I think that's a win. Otherwise, G2 for me is a big one. I think what they've done from such a terrible position has to be, you know, acknowledged. And I think they are also someone that we're going to talk about a little bit and they're going to be, you know, be able to upset some of these teams that are really chasing a title and make some deep runs in a little while.

Banks Especially with how Sora and Hunt took on work together as well.

Devilwalk Yeah. So I've seen those two.

Banks Obviously, you already taken my NAVI ones. That was my obviously instant pick on that because it's just a big win. Some people will probably say his way, but I'm not going to go for that just because Spirit got a win. It's not like it's not some massive move. I think in some way, I know we've we've harped on about Falcons, but Kielski is still such a win move for Falcons because even if they had to pay loads of money for him, Spirit didn't even get him because he wanted to go to Falcons to play with Nico and Manassi, you know, and have this opportunity in front of him. And obviously, probably the salary is incredibly good and the lifestyles will be very good.

Devilwalk The only problem with it is they were the second best team in the world when they made that change.

Banks We already said this, I'll give it three months for it to go back up and then work it all out, right? But I feel like that's still going to be the best roster move of this roster mania because a lot of it was disappointing. But I will say, because obviously you took my NAVI one, that I'll go for Kiyosuke and also ex-Kaspersky to NiP. Yeah, I can't forget about that because it's just a good bit of backup for the team of what they needed. The rifle fire output alongside what Ringcluster offers is really nice in there.

Devilwalk Yeah, I agree with that.

Banks And then we have... Oh, you can read this one out because God knows how you're saying that.

Devilwalk Okay, let's... I need to... do this. Okay. So... Fattengeist?

Banks I would have said... Perfottengeist, I would have said. Perfottengeist.

Devilwalk Perfottengeist. I don't know.

Banks It's not fat.

Devilwalk I thought it was an A. I'm getting sleepy. Either way, Fottengeist says, which map of the past operation was your favorite that never came back and no one talks about? As an example, mine is Thrill. I have to be honest with you. I have no clue what map that is. I have absolutely zero clue. And, you know, there are some maps that I've really enjoyed, but they have never been like a 5v5 map that I've played. Probably never played any of the operation maps that are 5v5. The only maps that I've ever played on the operations are the 2v2 wingman maps. And I don't remember their names, but I remember one map I really enjoyed where you were kind of on like a river side kind of thing, and you could like walk up to the right as you spawned as T. And there was like a little window in the middle, where CTs could peek down to where the T's were spawned. And that map I really like. Me and Michael Lele used to play it all the time. We even did tactics on it just to tilt people. But yeah, that one. Don't know the name of it. I don't know. Remember, there was a little window and like a stone wall. You look down.

Banks I found the one I liked, but it was a terrible map if you wanted to play a 5v5 competitive. Santorini.

Devilwalk Santorini.

Banks Santorini was awesome. Yeah. Santorini was nice. It was just fun to play. Like it was just interesting, but it wasn't going to make it as a comp map.

Devilwalk Yeah.

Banks It says here, actually trivia appears in Counter-Strike Online. However, the two maps are completely unrelated, featuring completely different layouts. There you go. Some trivia. But yeah, I just remember I even streamed a few games of just playing that with viewers and stuff. So Santorini was one that just sticks out in my mind. By the way, if the names keep getting funny, I'm just going to keep reading them as well. As long as they're not like racist or angry or like abusive, I'm going to keep reading these crazy names out. Where does your nickname come from, dude? Write us in Discord about where your nickname comes from and how you came up with this name. It's always good to know. It's always good fun. But that does bring us in to the end of episode 21 of the All About Counter-Strike Podcast. It is very late. It is 3.39 in the morning. We've been rocking and rolling. We had two Devilwalks for you. We covered all of Cologne in so much detail. We've done a bit on Blast Bounty. There was still more to cover, but sleep is a must. Sleep is needed. We want to make sure we got this episode out nice and early for you guys to enjoy as well, straight off the back of the hype from Cologne. Hopefully, you've enjoyed it. Also, Devilwalk, I met more people who kept coming up to me and saying like, I'm watching the podcast all the time. Love what you guys are doing. So it's actually now becoming a regular thing, which at least it warms my heart. It makes me feel like that's fucking cool, man. People now, it's not just about being a host or being an interviewer. It's like people are watching the podcast and coming back for it, maybe listening to it as well. It's dope. That's so good to hear. So thank you so much to all you that's actually mentioned the podcast to me because you saw it when you mentioned it to me how happy I was and it makes me happy.

Devilwalk Can't smile right now. I'm too tired.

Banks Dead inside actually.

Devilwalk A little bit, a little bit, but we did go through it. And thank you so much for the support. Love to hearing that as well. Yeah, I am exhausted.

Banks Well, with that, we will go to bed and get some sleep. You guys get to enjoy the podcast. Maybe you'll listen to this while sleeping, like some of our viewers do. Suceso in the comments every single time that he goes to sleep to the podcast. I never know if it's a good thing or a bad thing.

Devilwalk I think it's a good thing.

Banks We bore him so much.

Devilwalk We have comfortable voices to listen.

Banks I need to sleep. Let's listen to Banks and Devilwalk again.

Devilwalk My stepbrother actually does. Yeah, with this podcast, yeah.

Banks Oh, God. He wants to hear your voice, not mine. That's for sure. But plenty more counter-strike. The second part of the season has only just begun. It's going to be a fun, wild ride of the season for sure. I'm excited to see what can happen now that Vitality needs to have a little bit of a bounce back. There's some more roster reason stuff we'll discuss on Episode 22. We'll probably be back when Blast Bounty ends. And what's after Blast Bounty? Let me have a quick look. So I think from Blast Bounty, we go to the Esports World Cup. So yeah, we'll be doing the episode for that as well. So everything's going to be hitting you back to back, straight through all around the world. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe, like, follow, whatever else you're doing. And we'll see you on Episode 22.

Devilwalk Thank you.