Keeping up with the frantic pace of the world of CS:GO eSports isn’t easy, especially now that there is a major underway. In this piece we’ll try to sum up all the noteworthy events of the past seven days, from various team roster-moves to actual tournament news.
The highest-profile CS:GO news of the week obviously concern the start of the 2016 MLG Columbus, the major which kicked off yesterday and which – by all early signs – is off to a roaring start. There have already been several closely contested match-ups, back-to-back even, and viewer numbers have already eclipsed the 700,000 mark, so everything seems to be going according to plan. The first of the Day 1 matches saw Ninjas in Pyjamas square off against the Ukrainian organization known as FlipSid3 Tactics. The Swedes ended up taking this one 19-17, but it could indeed have gone either way. Luminosity Gaming disposed of Mousesports 16-13, FaZe Clan lost out to Team Liquid 11-16 (much as we had predicted it), while Fnatic powered through Splyce in another rather predictable 16-5 drubbing. CLG defeated Team EnVyUs 16-8 and Astralis disposed of Gambit 16-10. Natus Vincere brushed Cloud9 aside 16-9, while Virtus.Pro disposed of G2 Esports 16-1. These were the results for the first day of action and by-and-large they seem to have confirmed expectations thus far.
In other news: The Copenhagen Games wrapped up this week, with Slovakia’s Hellraisers walking away with the top prize of $20k. The Slovaks cruised to the top in a relatively comfortable manner, defeating Bulgaria’s E-Frag 2-0 on de_inferno and de_dust2. While the first of those maps saw the hostilities go to overtime three times, the second one was a 16-5 massacre in favor of the eventual winners. The runner-up picked up a $9k prize.
but the team’s search for a more permanent fit continues
In still other news: Orgless were looking to round out their roster with the addition of Orbit’s former in-game leader, Alexander SKYTTEN Carlsson, and towards this end, they had the player working a trial period for them. Unfortunately for those involved, the match just wasn’t there. Carlsson had different ideas in regards to strategic philosophy, so different in fact that they simply couldn’t be reconciled with the team’s overall approach. The announcement concerning his removal from the roster was made by him. The player who will round out the Orgless roster for the time being is Fredrik “slap” Junbrant, but the team’s search for a more permanent fit continues.
The StarSeries i-League has raised quite a bit of ruckus in China, by choosing the country as the scene of their offline finals, scheduled to take place towards the end of the year. Chinese teams have obviously been looking for a way in and this week they finally found out whether they had made the China-exclusive qualifier tournament or not. StarLadder released the list of teams that would take part in the said event. Vici Gaming, bringing CyberZen’s former lineup to bear, will be there, as will Tyloo, who have recently revamped their own roster.
In other lineup-related news: the Mongolz have dropped two members. Otgonjargal “Menace” Ganzorig and Bold “ncl” Batsukh were the two on the chopping block, sacrificed apparently to make room for other talent, a rather surprising move on the part of the team, especially in light of their recent successes. They made it to the MLG qualifiers as well as to the IEM Katowice, and despite the fact that they were not able to take part in either due to visa issues, the value of the accomplishment remains. Perhaps the Mongolz have something even better lined up than the above said two players, hence the roster shuffle-up.
Peter Wassenberg works for Gosugamers, the best spot to follow major eSports events like TI 2014.