Talking Counter
Episode 162: HLTV Awards, Fl0m LAN, Spirit, Astralis, BCG, 100T lineups.. train is OUT anubis is IN
14 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Gentlemen, today I've got the three of you here for a big discussion. It's a big one for 2026. There have been three high-profile bannings in the Discord in recent time. One being a gentleman called Huzz. Huzz was banned, but Psychological was the man who drew the attention to Huzz. Why do I mention Psychological?
Chapter 2: What are the high-profile Discord bans mentioned?
He was the second... high profile discord ban third and finally in the more recent time during the major an individual known as asalim was banned by yanko now i believe for goading yanko while falcons were losing i wanted to bring these three names to the council today to discuss if we would be happy to unban one of the three names brought into question here today no no screw them all just to
You've spent some time on the Australian beaches during this break.
You've come back with a certain glow.
Oh, it's all of my time.
I have something to say on that. But before anything, really, you wanted to make this somehow more white, this podcast?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's tough to do.
Winterstar 2026, holy shit.
Up with a bang.
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Chapter 3: What experiences are shared about the recent award shows?
I came in for the first one. So I wanted to see how it goes, you know. And I run into Chad after, I guess, the first one. Yeah, because his was the second one. And Chad is, you wouldn't believe it. Like, I'm like, Chad, you look so good whenever you come back from Oz. You know, he has a tan going. He has a huge smile on his face. He's loving life, right? And he's like, yeah, man, it's been great.
We did this, we did that. Ocean, blah, blah, blah. Hung out with family, friends. It's like, all right, can't wait for... And I even gave it like... I said, I can't wait for day two of I Am Krakow for you to just go into full depressed chat again. It didn't even take that long. It just took him, you know, three, four days.
Took him his trip home, really. Beat my expectations.
It's tough out there, guys. I'm saying every time I go home, I'm like, man, it's pretty good.
It's harder to come back.
It's pretty nice here. It's pretty nice, especially because it's summer and then you go to Serbia and you guys are all snowed in right now. And then here in Malta, it's all right. The sun's out. Gone for a couple of walks. It's been kind of nice. You know, I went out yesterday, went out today. The weather's not bad. But Jason, you're at Flomland. So the Flomland, the Flom mythical land.
Is that from like a goodness of my heart type event?
Yeah.
Oh, I got paid, baby.
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Chapter 4: How does the conversation shift to upcoming events?
I don't know how the fuck you pronounce it in French. It's basically just a day party, day drinking. And I did great at that. I did so well, actually, that... I fell asleep at 9 p.m. before my kid. They went to bed at like 10, 10.30. So I was just like, you know, I don't just tell me, hey, why don't you go lie down? You know, I was like, all right. Woke up the next day, like 9 a.m. or something.
I'd never heard of somebody refer to day drinking though as a matinee. A matinee for me would be, you know, there's a theater performance, you know, I've gone to go watch the matinee performance of Mary Poppins, but no, you've gone for the day drinking.
Well, this was the matinee performance of Milan Parapanedejkovic, my very good friend and a singer and a... keyboard player. Say that three times fast. I didn't go to a performance where the performance is myself drinking. It was like, you know, a restaurant and music and food and drinks.
Say his name again.
Milan Del Cuit.
Oh, what was the... But there was another bit. Oh, okay. All right, all right, all right. I guess that's his stage.
I wanted to get into some stuff, but there's two things. We have a lot to do. Well, did you want to start with the awards? Well, first I wanted to say happy birthday to Jason for his birthday yesterday on the show. So everyone in the comments can say happy birthday, Jason. Thank you very much. The other I want to say, Yanko, thank you for your efforts at the award show to try and get us sponsors.
Oh, were you out there shopping the potty?
I was, you know, to the best of my ability, which isn't a lot. I'm not American, so I don't know how to randomly come to people and start talking to them.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the new LAN events for teams?
So Bounty is their kickoff to get some officials underway. Then from there, obviously Krakow, and I said, okay, so this is a new location now. Do you still look at this the same grandeur? as Katowice and they said yes, right? So for them also with the grand slam, they need this to be able to win the grand slam before the major, right? Otherwise they will have to win it at the major.
If they win, yeah.
It'd be a cool place to win it though.
It would also influence other parts of their season, right? Because if they're not going to go to EPL and they want to win the grand slam, they will have to go to one of Rio or Atlanta, maybe both. If they want to make sure they're still in for the revenue share, I don't know how many ESL events they can skip in that conversation.
And then like you see after the date that Yanko was talking about, which I just had a look, it's the 6th of April, after the major cutoff date, then you want to make sure that you're still attending events to stay in shape and winning, but you want to make sure you leave yourself enough time off before the major itself so you can have time off and bootcamp.
you know, they were talking about how much time they take off. This was the vitality guys and how many practice in a day and this, that, and the other. And I think it was really insightful to see. Obviously it's team by team and every team is going to be different.
But this is one of my more favorite things at the moment in the space is looking at how teams of different statuses are going to navigate the VRS, right? Because for some of them, like FlyQuest could have gone to bounty, but because it's online, it's not worth it. They've gone to some event in China Fair enough. Right?
It's not worth it for them to play an online game against a high-ranked team and then lose and get no points. They've gone, okay, let's go to China and let's get some land wins. So... There's always a land in China, baby. Hey, yeah. That's one thing you can bank on.
That's what they always say.
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Chapter 6: How do roster changes affect team dynamics?
Yeah. And whatnot. And I don't know. Spirit is an interesting one, how they approach it, because there's not a lot of veterans on that team. You imagine looking at the team, there's not, I imagine, much that they do outside of playing. They're going to be there and grind. He's just going to play 10 face-it games. Not 10, whatever.
Five, six face-it games instead of practicing on that day that you're giving him time off. I get it. You don't want to... overburden yourself and you want to leave time to practice and Magix is coming in as a new IGL, but it's just sometimes a little bit... Curious, I guess, how they pick and choose events.
Well, you would assume that then they'll play EPL, right? Whereas some of these other teams who are doing Clusia, we know Vitality likely going to skip. I think there'll be other names who are going to skip EPL as well because of the online portion. And then after EPL, what is it? Is it Rotterdam after EPL? Let me have a look here. What the hell is in Rotterdam? Uh, blast open.
So blast open is going to run it. Yeah. So they're doing, they will have their studio stuff in Copenhagen and then the playoffs will be in Rotterdam. Uh, then after that will be Bucharest, which will be a studio event. That'll be during the cutoff. So that event, I think a lot of teams might skip cause this is just a studio event and PGL, uh, in Romania. And yeah,
you can't really benefit from that event other than prize pool, right? It is still 1.25 million, but you can only benefit from prize pool. So it could be a time to take a bit of a break. I don't know. It'd be interesting to see. This is what all these teams are going to have to pick and choose from. Because from there, it's into Rio.
There's a Fisher event here, but we don't know if it's going to happen or not. There's a blast rivals, which is going to be in the US. Then you've got Astana. Then you've got Atlanta, which is overlapping with Astana. Then there's that CAC event, which I told you guys a million dollars is crazy. 16 team event from May 19th to 24th. And the major starts on the 2nd of June.
So I guess if you're a stage three team, you could go to China and just rack up a big prize pool and then still get a decent break. But it's a lot of travel and shit. So there's a lot of thoughts going into all of this for this season coming up.
Maybe the Mongols will go if they're still a stage three team by that point in time or someone similar. I mean, there's still value in it. I think it's only...
teams and orgs that are i wouldn't say stage three but contenders right like the teams that feel like they have a realistic chance of lifting the trophy that will put their old chips in the uh major basket right otherwise like why not take advantage of the opportunity that those teams won't be there and and you know go lift the trophy yourself or set yourself up for a great second half of the year in terms of the invites and whatnot
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Chapter 7: What are the expectations for Spirit's new lineup?
Fuck, why can't I move around this thing? Give me a guess, Diego. What do you think prize money for all 2026 is going to look like? Where are you putting it?
I almost want to say like 40 million.
Yeah, I was going to go, I was thinking like 30, 32 is what I was going to go with.
Between 35 and 40.
Okay, well, I've kind of fucked up here. I do have all the prize monies, but I don't have a total. I turn them into graphs. So like, for example... Is it a spreadsheet?
Can you do it quickly or do you have to add it up in a calc?
I'd have to add it up in a calc, but I can do this for you, right? So like, yeah, it's... Let's save it. I'll get the hard dial later on.
Throw it into Grok, man.
Just throw the numbers into Grok and say, what's the total of all these numbers?
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Chapter 8: How does the community perceive the return of Anubis?
EWC are offering 2 million. And Fisher is offering 2.4. So that's the price we're likely to change. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I included it anyway.
No, it's fun. Yeah, it's good to include for now.
So that's the cash that's up for grabs for teams in 2026. That's over the course of the whole year, obviously. So yeah, there's a bit of money out there. All right, should we get into the roster changes? We should get into the roster changes, yes, sir. Okay. I don't think we bother going through all of them. I think we just go through the big ones that are on your minds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, probably. What's the big one? There has to be a big one on you. Or are you just a bit underwhelmed? This is why I was saying on HTV Confirmed, we shouldn't call it a fucking roster mania. It's just an off-season. No. It's just an off-season.
I guess that's part of the conversation, though. Are you underwhelmed? I mean, it's not a matter of being underwhelmed. I'm not really underwhelmed in the sense that I had expectations and I wanted to see things blown away.
I had expectations. I wanted to be blown away.
But I guess what's more interesting to me is like the random little like off, like the little chatter that I feel like I've heard like a little bit and seen publicly. And I don't know how true it is, but it sounds like it could very well be true is that a lot of the reason why a lot of these bigger roster changes and more changes aren't happening is just shit's too fucking expensive.
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