The Recap - EP06

by OnlyJoshinTV

Welcome to The Recap, a new weekly content series covering Counter-Strike in the ANZ region with a touch of global action here and there. We aim to provide a regular series covering our region, from ESEA Open, ECL, and global events, to local LAN and online tournaments hosted here at home.

Developing News in the Talon Rumours

The Talon rumours have gone into full swing with Nettik announcing that he has left Rooster. Nettik was one of the players targeted by Talon. This also coincides with Foggers announcing that Apocdud had left the Arcade roster and has been replaced by Versa. It is suspected that Apocdud will join Bad News Kangaroos.

Just as the momentum was gathering for Talon, Monte announced they have signed nawrot, dycha and hades on 10th July. Hades was one of the key targets for Talon and now it leaves the Hong Kong organisation to find another AWPer instead. Unfortunately, there are not many AWPers who are currently free agents; a few that come to mind are Woro2k, Snatchie, Gxx and Gratisfaction.

They could alternatively look at the benches and academies of other teams and org-less teams. One example is draken, who is currently playing for Johnny Speeds. With the Talon emergence coming to fruition, what sort of roster will they field? Only time can tell.

jks joins Team Liquid

After a long time out of the game, Aussie superstar jks has finally been signed by Team Liquid. He joins a roster of NAF, Twistzz, Ultimate and Yekindar with MithR as coach. Jks was benched from G2 in November 2023.

He had received offers from Bleed previously which he declined. His first game would most likely be BLAST Premier Fall Groups which starts from July 26.

There was a mixed reception on his return to Liquid mainly due to narratives surrounding his communication ability, which is believed to be the main cause behind his G2 benching. Also, Hooxi has stated on the Danish Podcast (according to a translation of the podcast) that it was a mistake to bench jks.

The other side of the coin is that jks joins another star-studded roster with NAF and Twistzz who have shown themselves to be quite a formidable duo. Jks might add the crucial anchor role to navigate Team Liquid in key moments just as he did when he stood in for FaZe.

This will relieve pressure off NAF and Twistzz who are seemingly carrying most of the weight in Team Liquid with a 1.23 rating and 1.19 rating in the last 3 months.

ESL Challenger League Season 48 – Oceania Returns

Well, we have a packed ECL Week 1 with 4 games this Tuesday (July 16) and 4 games this Thursday (July 18). The ECL format is unchanged with a 2x Bo1 format.

There will be no Art of War or FlyQuest this week as Eddie “Viri” Azzi and FlyQuest will be at the Esports World Cup.

This will give us a chance to see the potential new rosters for both Rooster, Bad News Kangaroos, Vantage and Arcade who have made a few changes in the off-season. It’ll also give us a peek at how Mantra Flow stacks up compared to the rest of the competition with their games against Vantage and Mindfreak.

The fixtures for Week 1 are:

Tuesday 16^th July

• BNK v DXA
• Vantage v Mantra
• Arcade v KZG
• Rooster v Mindfreak

Thursday 18^th July

• BNK v Arcade
• Rooster v DXA
• Mindfreak v Mantra Flow
• Vantage v KZG

It’ll be a rough start once again for DXA who take on Bad News Kangaroos and Rooster in the first week. This also occurred in the previous season where they had to take on FlyQuest and Rooster in the first week.

We do have a key match-up for Tuesday where Rooster takes on Mindfreak. This will most likely have consequences for both teams further when it comes closer to the playoffs. Last season, Mindfreak lost 2-0 to Rooster in the regular season.

All of Thursday’s games are essentially key matchups for either potential relegations or playoffs other than Mantra Flow vs. Mindfreak. Vantage made the playoffs by winning a majority of its games against the group of KZG, DXA, and Arcade which allowed them to nab the 5^th spot.

I feel like Rooster and Mindfreak will end at a 1-1 draw on the Tuesday match-up. Arcade, Vantage and BNK will be winners in the other matchups.

On Thursday, I don’t expect any upsets or a map to be taken from either Rooster, Mindfreak, Vantage or BNK.

Esports World Cup 2024

The Esports World Cup starts on July 17 with FlyQuest taking on FaZe at 10:30pm AEST or 7:30pm AWST.

There is no link to the stream as of yet, but we will put it in here once we find out! (Sorry, Annette!). Be there to cheer on INS, liazz, vexite, Alistair and dexter as they battle their way to glory in the Esports World Cup.

FlyQuest is not expected to advance to the playoffs at this event—just as they weren’t expected to make the ESL Pro League Playoffs in Season 19 either…

FlyQuest isn’t the only OCE crew there either. A lot of our backstage crew are there as well such as Wander, Mordred, Aisling and Eddie are already at the event.

It is rumoured that Mac could be there too given that these tweets suggest that he was on a flight with Eddie and Leddy.

That’s a wrap for the recap this week!