HEROIC Make the Major & Break Finals Curse!

published 30 April 2025

HEROIC does it again as we qualify for the BLAST.tv Austin Major, our 7th in a row - all without dropping a map!

This upcoming Major will be:

-tN1R and yxngstxr’s first
-LNZ and xfl0ud’s second
-Sunpayus’s fourth
-Coach sAw’s seventh!

And that’s not the only good news! Last Sunday, after 686 days without a CS tournament win (and three HEROIC cores later), the boys finally broke the curse by winning the CCT Global Finals 2025! This victory served as a great confidence booster for the squad as they begin their campaign at MESA Nomadic Masters Spring in Mongolia this week, where they look to replicate their current form on LAN.

But that’s not all. The cherry on top for last weekend was the new HEROIC Academy squad coming 2nd in their LAN debut at the Gamebox Masters event, a home-soil tournament for our Danish core. This was also the first LAN that fnl and St0m4k have played at, making it all the more impressive that the boys fell only to a team of four former Major competitors on Tricked.

And for those of you who weren’t able to catch all the matches, here’s how everything went down!

BLAST.tv Austin Major RMQ:

Day 1 kicked off with a bang, showing that the boys don’t need pistol rounds to win a match! Our revenge matchup against PARIVISION ended 13-9 in our favor. Despite a strong start for PARIVISION, SunPayus shut them down with a stunning 4k to push the momentum into our favor, helping us close out the half and subsequently, the map

Up next was ENCE, where we continued the trend of losing both pistol rounds. The boys powered on through, though, ending the game with a solid 13-6 finish. This time, it was xfl0ud’s time to shine with a wild 1.78 rating. SunPayus again contributed massively with a sneaky 1v2 clutch to save the round! With this, we moved up to the 2-0 bracket along with Metizport, OG, and Nemiga, our next opponent!

Day 2 was a revenge match against Nemiga after our devastatingly close loss at ESL Pro League. We started on Dust 2, finally breaking the pistol curse, winning both pistols, and securing a hard-fought but confident 13-8 win. Map two was Mirage - where things got a little wild. An intense back-and-forth led to a 2v1 clutch from SunPayus breaking the stalemate and the half ending 7-5! Nemiga fought back hard, managing to string together six rounds in a row for 11, but thankfully our Belarusian donk in tN1R clutched up with a stunning ace, allowing HEROIC to fight back and push the game into overtime victory and a 16-13 final score.

The squad ended day 2 with a flawless 3-0 record and were the first team to qualify through the gruelling European RMQ. SunPayus and tN1R put up standout performances throughout, being the #2 and #3 highest-rated players of the tournament with 1.32 and 1.31 ratings. But don’t let this distract you from the team performance, as we also finished as the highest-rated squad of the event, with everyone showing fantastic resilience in getting all 6 maps cleanly over the finish line.

CCT Global Finals 2025:

The road to our first trophy this year was a tough one for the team. After a fumble against B8 in the upper bracket semifinals, the team was sent down to the lower bracket and had to win three BO3s to make it to the grand final.

Kicking off our lower bracket run was a 2-1 win over Wildcard. Partizan was the next domino to fall after a solid 2-0. BetBoom followed and they sure put up a good fight. After already losing a quadruple OT in the upper bracket final against B8, we handed BetBoom a second quadruple OT defeat, ending their 9 win streak on Train. SunPayus and tN1R both put up insane numbers ending with a 1.27 and a 1.15 rating, respectively, and xfl0ud not far behind.

With the win over BetBoom, our rematch against B8 was set for the grand final. This time, we didn’t play around. HEROIC shattered B8’s 15-map win streak on Mirage after an incredibly dominant 13-4. We left B8 no room to breathe heading onto our map pick of Dust 2, swiftly ending things 13-7, and the series 2-0. tN1R the GOAT dominated the server, putting up a mindblowing 1.69 rating over the 2 maps, truly showing why he deserves to be on HEROIC. SunPayus also contributed to the demolition, ending with an amazing 1.47 rating.

With that, the squad raised HEROIC’s first trophy in two years!

Gamebox Masters 2025:

HEROIC Academy didn’t want to miss out on the fun either! After dispatching AVANTI, nicoodoz’s brother, nikiodoz’s team in the opening round, the boys faced WOPA. A tough series ended 2-1 in our favour after some impressive comebacks leaving Preasy up next. After being handed a quick loss on Preasy’s map pick, we rallied back, reverse sweeping the match favorites to make the Grand Finals! anber made sure to leave Preasy with a parting gift of a 1.28 rating, being the top-rated player on the server.

Finally, the boys met with the tournament favorites, Tricked. Unfortunately, the team with four former Major attendees proved to be too much for our Academy as they were defeated 0-2 in the final. Despite this, the team performed well above expectations as the VRS points show! Going into the tournament, HEROIC Academy was ranked 287th on VRS, but following the 2nd place finish, we skyrocketed 157 positions to 130th! We’re incredibly proud of our Academy team and are very excited to see them continue to improve.

We also can’t wait to see the main team hit the stage again in Ulaanbaatar, Dallas and Austin, and we hope you’ll be there cheering for us! Shout-out to our performance team behind the scenes, and thank you so much to our amazing fans who have supported us through every step of the way!