headtr1ck and npl seek to lift B8's RMR curse

B8 have been to RMRs before, but this time they may just have what it takes to reach the promised land.

In 2021, a little-known organization named B8 picked up a Counter-Strike team. Founded by legendary DotA player Dendi, who won the first ever The International, the org signed a group of players previously competing as ex-Marlian, and frankly, it wasn't a squad worth getting too excited about. What the organization would do over the next few years was, however, something exciting.

From No. 211 to back-to-back RMRs

For just over a year B8 would tinker with their lineup, all the while steadily improving and hauling their world ranking in the right direction, climbing from a low of No. 211 to hover just outside the top 50. It was in October 2022 that B8 would make their first big breakthrough by upsetting the likes of Movistar Riders and HEET, ranked No. 9 and No. 23 at the time, to qualify for IEM Road to Rio Europe RMR A.

Already this was a momentous achievement for an organization that had only entered CS a year ago, and for a team that lacked for big names or even well-known up-and-comers.

At the RMR itself, which was the organization's first-ever international LAN, B8 continued to surprise and punch above their weight. After an opening defeat by Cloud9, fnatic and ECSTATIC fell to the wayside as B8 put themselves within touching distance of the Major, only to fall to heartbreaking losses to Sprout, and GamerLegion as their dreams were crushed.

If you took a look at the event page for this RMR, you'd be forgiven for seeing Artem "⁠r1nkle⁠" Moroz on B8's lineup and thinking the AWPer was the hard-carry of his team's RMR exploits and was let down by the players around him, but this was entirely not the case. It was Arseniy "⁠cptkurtka023⁠" Derevinskiy, Denys "⁠amster⁠" Liashenko and Alexey "⁠alex666⁠" Yarmoshchuk who did the heavy lifting in B8's map wins, signaling the potential that the lineup had which just waiting to be unlocked in the future.

B8 made it back-to-back RMRs early the following year, grinding their way through the open and closed qualifiers to bag a spot in BLAST.tv Paris Major Europe RMR A. Four of the five players who fought for IEM Rio Major qualification turned up in Malta to represent B8 in their quest to make it to Paris, joined by Mykhailo "⁠OWNER⁠" Lymar in place of Mykyta "⁠Hkta⁠" Reva, and once again the team displayed the consistent improvement that has typified B8's journey in CS thus far.

Two dramatic scalps were claimed by B8 on the first day of play, with top 10 sides MOUZ and Virtus.pro falling to B8's impressive play on Ancient. In both instances the Ukrainians blitzed out to huge leads with a marauding T-side, and in both instances the favorites couldn't find a way back.

"It was really sick" r1nkle told HLTV on the ground after B8's stellar opening day, the AWPer having established himself as the team's star by this point which he only emphasised with his play against Virtus.pro and MOUZ. "We have confidence, we practiced our communication, we practiced our stuff, and we're ready to show ourselves — and we did."

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r1nkle: "We're feeling way better than we were at the last RMR"

Unfortunately for r1nkle and B8, they weren't able to show any more. History repeated itself and, with a single series win separating them from the Major, they bombed out after four losses on the bounce.

B8's best lineup yet

The PGL Major Copenhagen cycle wasn't as successful for B8. The team's lineup was in flux throughout the back half of 2023, with alex666 being benched, a player named Altair "⁠kAlash⁠" Askarov joining and leaving within a month, and results suffered. The team wasn't ready to compete with the best of tier-two as they tried, as they had in the past, to find incremental improvements to the lineup, and as such couldn't make their way through the open qualifiers.

Fast forward to the end of 2024, B8 are once again geared up to compete for a spot at the Major, making it three of the last four RMRs that the organization have qualified for. Not a bad record for an organization that entered CS three years ago. But this time, B8 are more than a plucky underdog. In fact, they may well be odds-on to bag a spot at CS' marquee event.

Only two players who represented B8 at previous RMRs are still on the lineup, cptkurtka023 and alex666, who re-joined the team mid-way through 2024 after almost a year away. Joining that pair in Shanghai are youngster Dmytro "⁠esenthial⁠" Tsvir, plucked from the unknown at the start of this year, and the headline duo of the team: Andrii "⁠npl⁠" Kukharskyi and Daniil "⁠headtr1ck⁠" Valitov.

Since npl and later headtr1ck joined the roster, bringing invaluable tier-one experience to an otherwise inexperienced roster, B8 have soared up the world rankings and racked up some impressive results. Those results include a plethora of tier-two online tournament wins and, more recently, some deep runs in LAN competitions with tier-one opposition. It's fair to say that this is by far the best version of B8 we have ever seen.

Once NAVI's support, now B8's playmaking IGL - Andrii "⁠npl⁠" Kukharskyi

npl joined B8 16 months ago having spent a stint on Natus Vincere, coming all the way up through the youth system. npl found his way onto Natus Vincere's main team as they were searching for a solution to their problems finding a fifth, replacing Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev at the end of 2022.

"I was a bit scared of playing there because of the tier-one players," npl admits of his time in Natus Vincere. "But now I am a completely different player, for sure."

npl generally struggled to find his footing amongst a roster of superstars like Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev and Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov, bar brief flashes of brilliance, like at Europe RMR A for the Paris Major. "I was playing bad roles, I wasn't in my roles," npl reveals. "When I left, I wanted to prove for myself especially, and for other people, that I'm not that bad player as they saw me in NAVI."

So when Natus Vincere decided to go in a different direction with an international roster, npl was on the hunt for a new team, and he found his home in B8. "I had a couple of offers," he begins. "There were two or three teams that wanted me, but B8 wanted me more than those teams. I also liked the structure that the coach told me we would play."

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Rather than being an experiment as an already-established team sought to fix their roster issues, npl would become an invaluable part of an up-and-coming project, slotting in not only as one of the star players, but also as the IGL. "I was the main voice in NAVI Junior, with UNBR0KEN helping me, so I had this experience," he states. "I felt pretty comfortable, it wasn't a new experience.

"We are playing against much better teams, rather than academies, so at the start it was a bit hard. I had to manage every player, but the coach said we needed to change the structure, to help me as I am playing playmaker roles, and it's hard to manage every player. Other players are helping me in mid-round now, when I am in the action and I cannot talk a lot, they help me, and this is working for us."

Freed from the NIP circus - Daniil "⁠headtr1ck⁠" Valitov

headtr1ck came into B8 with some big shoes to fill, replacing star AWPer r1nkle as the two swapped places, with the latter heading to Ninjas in Pyjamas. headtr1ck, similarly to npl, had shown flashes of his talent whilst playing for the Ninjas, but wasn't able to shine consistently, or enjoy much success in terms of tournament results.

"It was a little bit hectic," headtr1ck admits of his time in Ninjas in Pyjamas. "It felt that at some point, it just didn't work. It felt like we had some good practice days and bootcamps, but we were going to LAN and bombing out. It was just maybe not the right group of people together, if we look back at the results, but we also didn't play that much together with one roster."

Despite his tough time, headtr1ck still thinks back fondly on his stint in NIP. "Overall it was a really good experience, I played my first big matches there and qualified for my first Major with NIP. I think it's a very good experience for me at such a young age, it was important."

headtr1ck, once again in a similar vein to npl, felt like he had something to prove when he departed Ninjas in Pyjamas. "I think I had something to prove, but I just wanted to prove it to myself in the first place. On the one hand I was sad that they benched me, that we had bad results and NIP decided to do big changes.

"After some time I felt really good, because I understood it should happen at some point and it's better to happen earlier than later. The changes improved me a lot as a player and a person, I think they gave me some strength and power to move forward, and some energy."

Not only did he see B8 as a place to show off himself individually, he saw it as a team that he could grow with moving forward. "I just understood that B8 would be the right place to improve my individual game, to start feeling confident again and making some good plays.

"What was important for me as well was understanding that each player wants to improve, that no player has a big ego that blocks improvement. A young team without that much experience is giving players fire in their eyes, and space to take criticism in a good way to improve themselves. I felt like we could grow together as a team."

The first taste of LAN success

As headtr1ck predicted could be the case, B8 have grown substantially since he joined. They have gone from hovering around top 50 to now being able to call themselves a top 20 side, regularly collecting tier-two online wins and, more importantly, they have shown they have the chops to perform on LAN.

In October they attended Elisa Masters Espoo and ESL Challenger Katowice, collecting a top-four and second-place finish respectively amongst solid fields, particularly in Katowice where the team took down Eternal Fire and paiN in series play.

After Elisa, neither headtr1ck nor npl were getting ahead of themselves, as they secured their top-four finish with victories against weaker teams.

Date	Matches
Elisa Masters Espoo 2024
16/10/2024	Ninjas in Pyjamas Finished 14:16 B8	Match
16/10/2024	The MongolZ Finished 2:0 B8	Match
18/10/2024	B8 Finished 2:0 JANO	Match
19/10/2024	B8 Finished 0:2 HEROIC	Match

"I would say that I'm not satisfied about our Elisa performance," headtr1ck began. "We beat NIP, but they're not in their best condition right now and we had a really hard game against them, it could have gone both ways. Then we lost to HEROIC with no chance on stage, which was really upsetting for us because we were sure that we were able to do more."

For npl, Elisa was more about the experience the team gained than anything else. "It was our first LAN experience so we just enjoyed it. It's a somewhat exotic country for a LAN, there's not many LANs in Finland, so everyone enjoyed it."

That experience proved invaluable, according to npl, when it came time for B8 to take on the likes of Eternal Fire and paiN at ESL Challenger Katowice. "We played against good teams and lost to them [at Elisa], we understood the problems, then we played again against better teams and beat them [in Katowice]."

Date	Matches
ESL Challenger Katowice 2024
25/10/2024	Eternal Fire Finished 11:13 B8	Match
25/10/2024	B8 Finished 10:13 SAW	Match
26/10/2024	B8 Finished 2:0 Eternal Fire	Match
27/10/2024	paiN Finished 1:2 B8	Match
27/10/2024	SAW Finished 2:0 B8	Match

Not only did B8 beat top-level sides in the form of Eternal Fire and paiN, but they proved they possessed some important qualities, according to headtr1ck.

"It was not about the second place, it was more about the way we had to do it. I think the most important thing about this event was to show the team that we are really able not just to play online events and beat some top 30 teams there, but we are able to do it on LAN. What I have seen as well is that even if some of us have a bad game, we are able to turn ourselves to more communication, speak more, and contribute as much as we can.

"After the BO3 against Eternal Fire I was really happy, because it was a really hard match and I was happy about the cohesion and resilience we showed. We were losing the second map 3-9, and against a good team in a BO3, it's hard to come back. I'm happy that we found a way to build it step by step, and I think these games show the team how we can play overall, if everyone gives all that they have."

Not only did B8's performance in Katowice see them rise to the organization's peak HLTV ranking of No. 18, it also gave the less experienced players some confidence, according to npl. "It gave us confidence, but I wouldn't be that unconfident about our team even if we lost to Eternal Fire and paiN, because I know how we can play. But for sure for the other players it will help them in our first game against Spirit."

Looking to the RMR

Despite the momentum B8 have built up, headtr1ck is remaining grounded when looking forward to the RMR. "I think it will be a very good lesson for us and a big challenge, because still you need to win three games against good teams, and it's not easy. Especially when everyone is trying to play their best CS. We will see, but I think it will be entertaining."

He also believes his team have a similarly grounded mentality, saying "everyone understands that if we win, for example, one or two games, it doesn't mean that we have qualified already."

B8 face a stiff test to open their RMR campaign, facing off against Spirit in the first round. Many teams would balk when presented with such a challenge, but npl had a different view on things.

"I'm not nervous and I don't think the other players are nervous either," he began. "I think that Spirit will be more nervous than us, because they are the favorites and they know we are a good team. They for sure will prepare well, but we will also prepare for them and we know how they play. I'd say they should be more scared of us than we are of them."

Both of B8's stars shared the belief that their team was poised to grab a spot at the Major proper. "Of course I think we should qualify," said headtr1ck. "If we think about how much work we have done, and the fact B8 had two RMRs where they should qualify, but didn't pass the last exam, then B8 should at some point break the curse. We need to do it, hopefully it will be this RMR."

For npl's part, he pointed out the very beatable opposition he feels await them in the RMR. "Yeah, for sure we are one of the favorites. In my opinion we should be a higher-mid seed, rather than lower-mid as we are right now, but we are fine with that. Of course I consider us likely to qualify, because I know how we play. Also there are some tier… not tier-two, but let's say 1.5, teams like Astralis and Virtus.pro, who are not playing good CS right now. Those games are winnable."

The Ukrainian rifler didn't just have his sights set on qualification, but he was also looking even further ahead to the Major itself and what it could do for B8's ranking. "I think we can climb into the top 10 for sure, all we have to do is reach the Major playoffs. That's not that hard, and I think with our CS right now, we can do it."

Whilst npl seemed almost blasé about the upcoming RMR, headtr1ck served as a balancing voice and sounded a note of caution, saying "you never know how it goes. I came with NIP to the last RMR, had a good bootcamp and good practice matches, then lost 0-3."

That quote from headtr1ck is important, as it speaks to something both he and npl bring that B8 lacked in their previous RMR campaigns: experience. Both have played at RMRs before, and that shows in npl's confidence and headtr1ck's level-headed optimism. "Sometimes you just need to not overthink it and just play," headtr1ck stated. "You need to have a cool head even though it's an important event for everyone, even the organization."