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How to fix the failing panther

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The all Brazilian team FURIA have been having a hard time lately, with disappointing finishes at IEM Cologne and DreamHack Masters Spring along with failing to qualify for IEM Summer . While it’s hard to see them failing to make the PGL Major in Stockholm , if they can’t recover their form come November it’s easy to see them having another disappointing showing. This is all rather startling, given their dominance in North America in 2020 after winning the North American divisions of ESL Pro League 12 , DreamHack Masters Spring 2020 , and IEM New York 2020 . Since then they have fallen from the top, with only a spoiler performance at ESL Pro League 13 and less prestigious wins at Spring Sweet Spring and Gamers Without Borders. Given all this, what can be done to resharpen the panthers claws and bring Brazilian CSGO back to the top? It’s all about the big green The core to many great CSGO teams is a solid player to carry the AWP, someone who can be dedicated to utilizing the weapo...
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XANTARES out, gade in, and why it won’t work.

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Let me set the scene for you. I’m sitting at the Robert Stanfield International Airport, with a cold pint while I wait for my flight to visit my parents in Montreal, and I finally read the news that XANTARES , BIG ’s big name fragger has been benched in favour of gade , who’s acquisition had been announced the day before. BIG haven’t been able to get the results they’d been hyped for recently, barely holding onto a top 10 position on HLTV after less then stellar performances at the last 3 IEM and DreamHack events. Sitting there, with 2 /12 hours to wait, I thought to look into gade and BIG much deeper to see if I can solve why this deal was made. Clearly something needed to be changed, but why XANTARES, and why gade? The first question that came to my mind when I saw the gade signing is “who is this guy”. I’d heard his name before from North, but that was during that rosters dark time when they were below the top 20 on HLTV. As a player though, what does gade bring to the table for...
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Location: Halifax, NS, Canada
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How to fix The Juggernaut

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On paper, Complexity is a team full of skill. With a roster stacked with two top 20 players, a former major winner, and a top Danish fragger, they should be regularly finishing high in big name tournaments. Yet for the last 5 top tier competitions the Dallas based org have not been meeting expectations, acting more as a simple speedbump that higher ranked teams must surpass in order to make deep runs. Below is a table of their last 6 main tournament finishes, showing these middling results. Tournament Placement Lost to IEM Cologne 13 th -16 th Virtus.Pro (2-1) BLAST Spring Finals 5 th -6 th G2 (2-1) IEM Summer 7 th -8 th Gambit (2-1) Flashpoint 3 10 th Sprout (2-0) ESL Pro League S13 5 th -6 th NiP (2-1) IEM World Championship 17 th -20 th Mousesports (2-1) All is...
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Location: Halifax Regional Municipality, NS, Canada
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A Beautiful Game: Scarlett vs Innovation Game 1

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               Well for you Starcraft folks out there, or for those curious about this weird space thing, then a big tournament has just ended. Dream Hack’s Summer season has come to an end with the Master’s Cup, and the finals ended 4-3 in favor of Reynor, an Italian Zerg beating out Maru, the Korean Terran. But I don't really want to talk about that, mainly because as a final series that game will be talked to death, and also well, I think someone like Winter can cover it much better than I could. Instead I want to one, give a primer on Starcraft for those who don’t know much about Starcraft and also just talk about one of the most beautiful games of Starcraft I have seen, Game 1 of the Round of 8 series Scarlett v. Innovation.  Let’s start by looking at this map, Blackburn.  I want to start with some really basic map info. Skip this paragraph if you know about the basics of SC. So, the goal for each player here is to gather the t...
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ENCE and their no good, very bad, unforced errors - How one round changed an entire half.

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 Yesterday at GamingWithoutBorders 2021 ENCE played FURIA in the semi-finals, where on Ancient they lost 16-9 largely on the back of several unforced errors and blunders on the T-side that FURIA took great advantage of. This was odd too, as this was ENCE’s map pick and thus clearly one they felt confident on enough to take the Brazilians down on. That’s not to say FURIA didn’t play well, far from it. aRT , KSCERATO and yuurih all showcased their prowess, with even honda finally popping off with a 1.01 rating, his first “over 1.00” rating since becoming a regular on the team. Whether it be from poor communication or over confidence, ENCE failed to play to their strengths and allowed too many blunders to lose them this crucial map. dycha struggled most on Ancient, finishing with a 0.64 rating The bulk of ENCE’s issues came on round 9. On the T-side, they had broken FURIA’s economy and forced them to make an incredibly weird buy, Nova and body armour for aRT and virtually no...
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