Awaken

We beat the best teams, not the best team! First international tournament of the year. Keeping the same 10 players/staff means you have experience traveling and competing together. Busy 2025/26 so far: LOIO Paris, LEC Evry, MSI Vancouver, EWC Riyadh, LEC Madrid, Worlds Tianjin/Beijing/Shanghai, LOIO Munich, LEC Barcelona. Each trip was an adventure with specific challenges. Sao Paulo showed us that we are getting better at adapting our processes and attitude, so we can be in top form during those intense events. For First stand, the daily schedule was really different than the classic rhythm, with early start of days forcing more discipline than usual. Props to Isma for his work over the last years, helping us to better navigate the "energy and health" topic. We learnt from Worlds quarters the basics of how to behave on those intense games with high external pressure, when it's "elimination or glory" time. We approached BFX and GENG in a better mental space, remaining sharper during those days. What a crazy feeling to eliminate the whole Korean region in 24h with a double 3-0. The final against BLG was a fun one. At least we showed up and we were not shadows of ourselves like our last BO against them. I think we did a great job. We had no major failure like we usually have when we lose those big games. We were present and focused. The drafts were good puzzles. The gameplay was proactive and we were making plans on comms. The decisions were reasonable under pressure. We won the first game! They just did everything a tiny bit better. Not crazy better, "just" enough to kill our nexus 3x times. We did our best - not enough yet. We got beaten but not outclassed. It felt like it was doable. Hope, a strong and forgotten feeling! They are currently the best team in the world and BIN is a deserved MVP. GG Another adventure to learn from. Below the words of the day + scrim result. No whiteboard this time

LEC Versus Champions! This split was a journey, and we accelerated at the right time. Shaky start, focused playoffs and a banger 5-game final. Starting the year without a new staff member or new player means no honeymoon effect, and you have to challenge how you keep working together. As part of this exercise, all 10 members of the team (5 players + 5 staff) had to go 1o1 dinner with each other, so a total of 9 dinners per person. Each duo had to chose a place and send a selfie. The 45 selfies are posted below, it's a cool memory from our winter prep. BO1 were volatile and we ended up almost missing playoffs. It gave us some extra frustration to fuel our grind mode for the last 3 weeks. Fearless was a better experience, each game is a new puzzle and it's more fun to play. The final game 5 versus KC is the most insane game I've ever watched. They were a crazy opponent and I'm looking forward to our rematch. Below you'll find the schedule + scrim results. On the board, the orange words are selected from the "Word of the Day" exercise where a player has to say a recap-word for the day. Lot of inside jokes. We now have a few days in Berlin to prepare for First Stand, and then vamos para o Brasil!

🚨🇰🇼🐦 INSOLITE Les douaniers du Koweït interceptent un pigeon venant d’Irak près de la frontière. L’oiseau transportait un petit sac en tissu contenant ~178 comprimés de kétamine.