A Brazilian curse broken, the first Train, and more from BLAST Bounty day one

Liquid, HEROIC and FlyQuest all saw their changed rosters get off to winning starts, with plenty of new signings shining.

A new year of tier-one play kicked off today, with BLAST Bounty pitting a raft of underdogs against top-ranked teams they themselves chose to play, with cash bounties on offer for any underdogs that secured wins.

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BLAST Bounty 2025 Season 1 teams, format, schedule, prizes, talent, fantasy

Unfortunately for the underdogs, they did not have a good time, with HEROIC being the only lower-ranked team to secure a victory. Otherwise the higher-ranked sides, Liquid, Spirit and FlyQuest, all secured victories and a spot in the next round of play.

The biggest transfer of the off-season on display today was Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz, who turned out for Liquid against a 9 Pandas who themselves had revamped their roster in the player break.

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Stat Check: NertZ is a good signing for any team but Liquid still lack a true bomb-site entry

The major question mark hanging over the signing of NertZ was how Liquid would operate on the T side. Liquid's offense had been their big problem in the previous season, and HLTV's statman Harry "NER0" Richards pointed out that the team would lack for a true bomb-site entry.

That concern was firmly dispelled, at least for today, as NertZ tore 9 Pandas apart on the T side, taking 31.8% of Liquid's opening attempts with a whopping 100% success rate on his way to a 1.49 T-side rating, dwarfing the next-highest offensive rating on his team of 0.90.

Another side that made a single change in the player break, FlyQuest, also saw their transfer dealings bear fruit. New signing Iulian "⁠regali⁠" Harjău was proficient on the first map of Nuke, but he took over on Anubis to the tune of a 1.58 rating to help his team cruise to victory over an MIBR side that were lacklustre beyond the ever-reliable Felipe "⁠insani⁠" Yuji.

In securing victory, FlyQuest's roster broke a Brazilian curse stretching back to almost two years, to when they were playing as Grayhound. The Australian side had lost nine matches in a row against Brazilian teams, last winning in March 2023 against 00NATION at ESL Pro League S17.

HEROIC's entirely new squad had a tougher time of things, being taken to overtime on the first map before dropping the second, but they eventually got the job done against 3DMAX, securing a $20,000 bounty for their efforts.

Left-field addition Andrey "⁠tN1R⁠" Tatarinovich was utterly irresistible on Ancient, dropping 33 kills to haul his team to a narrow 16-14 win, before Yasin "⁠xfl0ud⁠" Koç took over on the decider of Anubis to seal the deal for his new team.

It's worth noting that Álvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" García struggled in his first series for HEROIC, sitting at the bottom of the scoreboard with a 0.88 rating. The Spaniard's excellent 2023 form still seems a world away.

Considering the odd state of HEROIC's roster, with Linus "⁠nilo⁠" Bergman and Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković waiting in the wings, if the current starting lineup can put together a good run of form, the organization will have interesting decisions to make moving forward.

In the final series of the day, Spirit survived fnatic springing the new version of Train upon them in the first tournament of the year, ultimately securing a relatively comfortable 2-0 victory.

fnatic's CT side was what let them down on Train, before a 1.95-rated performance by Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets decimated them on Nuke.