Falcons lost the Thunderpick World Championship third-place match 2-1 to Aurora on Sunday and dropped below them in Valve’s Regional Standings. Four months after winning the Cologne Major, they have yet to reach a final, and they will not play again before the Singapore Major invite cutoff.
The day after BETBOOM reverse-swept them in the semi-finals, Falcons had one more chance to leave Malta with something. They took Anubis 13-8, came back from 7-11 on their own Dust2 pick to force overtime, but lost the map 19-17 before Aurora closed out the series 13-9 on Nuke.
Aurora2-1
FalconsStatsAnubis 8-13, Dust2 19-17, Nuke 13-9
| Aurora | K-D | +/- | ADR | KAST |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Jimpphat | 69-44 | +25 | 87.9 | 74.7% |
 Wicadia | 56-48 | +8 | 69.7 | 70.9% |
| woxic | 58-51 | +7 | 75.2 | 69.6% |
| XANTARES | 51-52 | -1 | 80.1 | 75.9% |
 kyxsan | 42-55 | -13 | 63.7 | 67.1% |
| Falcons | K-D | +/- | ADR | KAST |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 m0NESY | 68-50 | +18 | 73.1 | 68.4% |
 NiKo | 58-52 | +6 | 78.0 | 68.4% |
| kyousuke | 53-57 | -4 | 78.9 | 70.9% |
 karrigan | 38-60 | -22 | 62.6 | 65.8% |
| TeSeS | 32-57 | -25 | 48.9 | 51.9% |
Jimpphat led the server with 69 kills, while woxic held the CT side on Nuke with the AWP as Aurora won the last four rounds from 9-9. On the Falcons side, TeSeS finished 32-57 and karrigan 38-60. The bronze is worth $100,000 to Aurora, while Falcons leave with $50,000 for fourth place.
For Aurora it is a second podium in a row after third place at ESL Pro League Season 24, and a small piece of revenge. The team is led by kyxsan, the in-game leader Falcons replaced with karrigan in the spring, and Falcons had swept them 2-0 in the Pro League group stage two weeks earlier. Aurora’s CS2 account celebrated with a meme in Turkish: “We finished the tournament in third place”, followed by “We beat Falcons”.
Behind Aurora in the VRS
The result matters more than the bronze. After the final on Sunday, Aurora sit fifth in Valve’s Regional Standings with 1,861 points and Falcons sixth with 1,819, according to HLTV’s VRS calculation. FURIA climbed to fourth with the title.
Falcons are still in a good position for a direct Stage 3 spot at the PGL Major Singapore. HLTV’s invite predictor gave them an 88.3% chance after the bronze match. They cannot add to their total themselves. The invite cutoff is 2 November, and Falcons were the only top team to turn down an invite to PGL Masters Bucharest, which starts on Saturday with FURIA, Aurora, BETBOOM and Legacy in the field. Their next event is IEM Beijing, which begins on the day of the cutoff.
karrigan knew what was at stake. Before Sunday’s match, he told Thunderpick’s broadcast that the result meant more for the Stage 3 race because it was Falcons’ last game before the cutoff.
Five events, no final
Falcons beat FURIA 3-0 in the Cologne Major final in June. Since then:
- BLAST Bounty Season 2 Finals: out in their first match, 2-1 to 100 Thieves after leading 9-3 on the Anubis decider
- Esports World Cup: 5th-8th, 2-0 to Legacy in the quarter-finals
- BLAST Open Porto: 3rd-4th, 2-0 to Spirit in the semi-finals
- ESL Pro League Season 24: 5th-8th, 2-0 to Spirit in the quarter-finals
- Thunderpick World Championship: 4th, 2-1 to BETBOOM in the semi-finals and 2-1 to Aurora in the third-place match
Their only playoff series wins in that run came against The MongolZ at the Esports World Cup and G2 in Porto. Malta was supposed to be the turnaround. With Vitality, MOUZ and Spirit absent, Falcons started as favourites.
Instead, both series in the playoffs followed a familiar pattern: Falcons won the first map and lost the next two. The same thing happened against 100 Thieves at BLAST Bounty, against MOUZ in the Porto group stage and against Vitality at Pro League. Before the third-place match, karrigan admitted that winning the first map and “throwing the whole game in the end” has been a problem for the team. “It’s not the first time of the season,” he said.
The kyousuke question
Much of the criticism in Malta landed on kyousuke. The Russian was a star in the Cologne playoffs, and his three-month rating on HLTV stood at 1.22 in August. By the end of the Thunderpick World Championship, it had fallen to 1.07. Before Sunday’s match, the broadcast’s analyst desk called Malta the worst-rated LAN event of his career.
Asked about kyousuke before the third-place match, karrigan offered a self-deprecating theory.
Maybe me getting some double entries put kyousuke in different positions. Because it’s not something that happens often that I’m playing a decent level of CS. So maybe some situation got stranger.
The in-game leader said the rifler had “played really good in the first few months I joined” and that the team has to look into what is going on, but added that “in the end, it’s also in the player’s hand” and that every player has an off tournament. Coach zonic had told HLTV at the start of the event that karrigan brings “five, ten percent extra to some of the other players, especially Maksim, when things are going well”.
kyousuke answered his critics in part on Sunday, with 53 kills and the highest ADR of any Falcons player. The bigger picture is that the elimination matches have not been decided by one player.
| Elimination | Opponent | kyousuke K-D | kyousuke rating | Lowest-rated Falcons player |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BLAST Bounty S2 | 100 Thieves 1-2 | 50-38 | 1.28 | NiKo 0.94 |
| Esports World Cup |  Legacy 0-2 | 23-32 | 0.69 | karrigan 0.62 |
| BLAST Open Porto |  Spirit 0-2 | 35-35 | 1.04 | karrigan 0.78 |
| EPL Season 24 | Spirit 0-2 | 37-34 | 1.17 | karrigan 0.54 |
| Thunderpick WC semi-final |  BETBOOM 1-2 | 39-48 | 0.84 | kyousuke 0.84 |
| Thunderpick WC third place | Aurora 1-2 | 53-57 | 1.13 | TeSeS 0.63 |
kyousuke himself told HLTV before Pro League that he was working on his floor when his game is not going well. “It’s just being a bit smarter, being a bit more disciplined,” he said.
zonic takes the blame
Falcons had won Anubis 13-5 and the first half of Dust2 in the semi-final before it slipped away. Afterwards, zonic put the defeat on himself in his interview with Thunderpick’s broadcast.
I don’t know if it’s underestimating them or if it’s me not being clear enough. I think ultimately I have to take the responsibility as well. But I wouldn’t say that we underestimated them, but we just didn’t play properly. And things get out of hand and you get punished.
The Dane said the team forced too many fights and should have taken a step back when they had the advantage. Asked whether there was something about BETBOOM in particular, he kept it short: “I think I’ll keep it for myself, but ultimately it’s my responsibility.”
The diagnosis was not new. At the start of the event, zonic told HLTV that the team tends to “stress a lot” on the big stage this season, and that the Major title had led them to put “a lot of expectations on ourselves”. NiKo said something similar to HLTV in September.
I feel like we are not carrying well the confidence we had from the Major, I think it rather hurt us more than we actually benefitted from the confidence.
After the semi-final, NiKo told Dust2 Brasil that Falcons are no longer favourites wherever they go, and that the team stops playing together and starts to individualise when the pressure is high.
What comes next
Falcons now have two weeks without official matches before IEM Beijing, and the Singapore Major starts in late November. HLTV’s predictor still makes them clear favourites for a Stage 3 spot, with Bucharest the last big chance for the teams below them to close the gap. The bigger question is whether the lineup that won in Cologne can find that level again, or whether the autumn without a final will force changes before the Major.
