The Recap - EP07 | dfrag.gg

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.

ANZC Locals – Fortress Sydney

It has been a wild week but let’s start it off with a LAN! ANZ Circuit announced the teams for its LAN event at Fortress Sydney, kicking off August 10. The teams include Bad News Kangaroos, DINQ, Arcade, Vantage, The Art of War, Pot of Greed (Kayoh), DXA or AXD (pain, sliimey, rocky, kiyo and Samuuks) and lastly, Let’s go golfing (swede). Full rosters for all teams are yet to be confirmed.

One notable absence was Canon Event. It must have been a tough decision between a couple of teams!

Esports World Cup

The Esports World Cup has got underway and our team, FlyQuest performed well against FaZe despite losing 2-0. Vexite played incredibly well with a 1.14 rating across both maps. FlyQuest pushed FaZe to the edge on Anubis (losing 16-13) and on Nuke (losing 13-11).

Falling to the Resurrection Stage, FlyQuest’s chances of beating FURIA looked promising. However, it all came crashing down and FlyQuest were eliminated by the Brazilians (13-5) which placed them at 12^th-15^th. Alistair was a solid mention for the elimination series with a 0.97 rating in a rather one-sided affair.

These results are essentially rehashing tropes for most FlyQuest matches; they come close but never close enough and Brazilian teams are fast proving the ANZ scene’s bogeymen.

FlyQuest will now bootcamp in Europe before their next event, the IEM Cologne Play-in, on August 7th.

ESL Challenger League Fixtures/Results

ESL Challenger League Season 48 kicked off in Oceania and we’ve already got some wild results. Things began normally with BNK showing a clinic on Inferno with an 11-1 CT half to win 13-5. DXA turned their fixture from hell into a boon as they managed to steal Anubis off BNK. The BNK win was surprising as DXA had to utilise prakM as a sub who led the upset with a 1.86 rating!

In the following series against Rooster, DXA managed to secure Anubis once again with an incredible second half on their CT half of 8 rounds. It is insane that DXA have beaten two top teams with a CT side rally on a notably T-sided map. Roflko must be really taking his demo reviews incredibly seriously!

The madness didn’t end there as Arcade repeated the process and stole a map off BNK as well. BNK recovered with a 13-10 victory over Arcade on Anubis to split the series. Versa had an insane debut for Arcade with a massive 1.73 rating on Inferno and 1.52 rating on Anubis.

The only team that showed any sort of normality this week was Mindfreak. They were slaughtered by Rooster including a 13-1 drubbing on their ace map, Nuke, and only got slightly better on Mirage.

They took down Mantra Flow (2-0) with a nervous opening game on Nuke where they were down 9-3 in the half. However, the Mindfreak of old completely blitzed Mantra Flow on Ancient with a merciless rampage (13-3). Gump mentioned in the interview post-match that they had been on break for a week and a bit and they are not up to the standard compared to last season.

Week 1 Results Summary

DXA v BNK (5-13 INF, 13-4 ANB)
Rooster v Mindfreak (13-1 NUKE, 13-4 MRG)
DXA v Rooster (13-8 ANB, 10-13 MRG)
Mindfreak V Mantra (13-10 NUKE, 13-3 ANC)
Arcade v BNK (13-10 INF, 10-13 ANB)
Vantage v Mantra (Forfeit by Vantage)

Vantage had to forfeit due to not retaining at least 3 of their players that played last season on the server. This was due to Drox being late for the match and Jynxx a twork. Vision was also unavailable and Omichella was now playing for BNK.

A few notable changes are that Rooster played with Hatz instead of nettik and BNK played with apocdud and Omichella instead of hazr and ADDICT.

Week 2 Fixtures

Monday 22^nd July – 7pm AEST Start

Arcade v KZG

Tuesday 23^rd July – 7pm AEST Start

Mantra Flow v BNK
KZG v DXA
Mindfreak v Arcade
Rooster v The Art of War

Is Talon imminent?

Well, I’ve been talking about it for a while and it looks like there are some legs to this rumour. Nettik, hazr and ADDICT did not play for their respective teams in Week 1. The “ifs'' are now turning into a “When will the announcement be?” at this point.

Is there another team being put together in the shadows?

It looks like SaVage could be building a team in the shadows. Savage’s dad, aptly named BenTheLegend, made a subtle dig at Rooster for not being much chop. Asap responded, stating that someone is a bit mad that he couldn’t get Rooster players to play with SaVage in tier 3 European CS.

Or maybe Rooster are adding Spirit’s chopper to their roster and Ben is subtly leaking their new actual 5^th player instead of Hatz—although that last part might be a little ridiculous…

That’s all for the recap: We’re looking forward to another wild week of ANZ CS2!