The Blast Draft for South East Asia has generated quite the buzz among the fans of Counter-Strike as we find some of the biggest names in the history of the esport find themselves playing for the best teams of the region. The 3 days long tournament will have six legends going to six teams across Indian and Pakistani CS2 teams.

The legends invited to the event have been some of the most iconic players to grace the game. Former FaZe Clan duo olofmeister and legendary sniper guardiaN along with NIP legends GeT_RighT and friberg and finally the French duo KennyS and shox. While most of the names have been out of top-flight CS for a long time, they have kept in touch with the game through streaming and brief stints with lesser-known teams.

The hype is real! 🚀 Get ready as the Super Six for #TheDraft arrives, bringing incredible Counter Strike 2 action to your screens! 🎮 Witness the clash of world's best CS2 legends as they compete for supremacy!

🗓🔴 Action goes live from 8-11 Feb , 9:30AM IST onwards pic.twitter.com/xJpJIACj01

— NODWIN Gaming (@NodwinGaming) February 6, 2024

GuardiaN has been out of the headlines ever since his unimpressive second stint with NAVI and since then he remained out of the tier-1 competitions but continued to be a part of the community through streaming. The Slovak will play for God’s Regin in The Draft. His FaZe Clan teammate Olof will be playing for the Pakistani side Team WahWah.

The legendary French duo of Shox and KennyS will be playing for Marchos Gaming and True Rippers. KennyS has been out of top-flight CS since his move away from G2 while Shox did not enjoy playing for English-speaking teams which ended up in a failed stint with Liquid Gaming.

GeT_RighT and Friberg were two of the most loved players in the history of the game will play for Come Mid and Pak Boyz respectively. The Swedish duo has been out of touch for the longest time but their stint with NiP during the formative years of CSGO lives in the hearts of fans rent-free.

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On February 6, 2024, Valve released a huge update for their popular competitive shooter, Counter Strike 2, fulfilling the fervent wishes of countless CS2 enthusiasts who had been eagerly anticipating this moment for weeks. The update brought with it not only a new case, but also a new game mode, new music kits, custom sticker placements, and a lot more.

Let’s take a moment to check out everything new that the latest Counter Strike 2 update has introduced to the title.

New CS2 Update: What’s New?

While the wait for the first CS2 Operation continues, the amount of content introduced to the game with the new update doesn’t fall much shorter of it.

Arms Race Mode

For starters, the Arms Race game mode has been added to CS2 with the new update. It was previously a game mode in CS:GO, but wasn’t present in CS2 at the time of its launch.

The Arms Race game mode pits players in a free-for-all deathmatch where they need to score two kills with a particular weapon to get a different one. The first player to work their way up to the knife stage and get the final kill is declared the winner.

Custom Sticker Placements

The second major addition that the new CS2 update has brought alongside it is custom sticker placements. Moving forward, players will be able to drag, drop, and even rotate the stickers that they place on their weapons to get the ideal sticker placement.

New Weapon Case

The Kilowatt Case marks the debut weapon case in CS2, boasting finishes for 18 weapons. It introduces the game to a new knife, the Kukri Knife, and features the first-ever skin for the Zeus x27.

Stickers and Music Kits

But that’s not all, the February 6th update also adds six new music kits to the game under the NIGHTMODE Music Kit Box alongside the Ambush Sticker Capsule featuring 21 community-created stickers. Players will be able to buy these from the in-game shop.

XP Overload

Once you’ve earned all the normal weekly XP and transitioned to reduced XP gain, an XP Overload icon will appear next to your name in your profile, on the scoreboard, and in the kill-feed. As you maintain your XP-earning streak each week, your XP Overload icon will progressively upgrade.

CS2 February 6 Update Patch Notes

Here’s a look at the detailed patch notes of the new Counter Strike 2 update, as listed in the official blog post by Valve:

Arms Race

• Added Arms Race to available game modes
• Added maps “Baggage” and “Shoots”

Weapon Finishes

• Introducing the Kilowatt Case, featuring 17 community-designed weapon finishes, and the Kukri Knife with original finishes as a rare special item
• Various bug fixes and tweaks

Stickers

• The Ambush Sticker Capsule is now available for purchase
• Added support for flexible sticker placement. Stickers can now be placed at user-specified positions and rotation when applied to weapons
• All weapons now support up to five stickers
• Added a zoom feature during sticker placement to allow for higher precision sticker application
• Various bug fixes and tweaks

Music Kits

• The NIGHTMODE Music Kit Box is now available for purchase in standard and StatTrak versions

Zeus

• Made Zeus reusable in all game modes, after a 30 second recharge delay
• Added support for applying stickers and name tags to the Zeus
• Adjusted the Zeus first person model position
• Added Zeus kill icon to kill cards and post round damage report

Smoke

• Smokes now cast shadows
• Smoke rendering and animation have been improved

Gameplay

• Added a “Refund All” button to the buy menu
• Added a setting to disable first person bullet tracers
• Silencers can now always be reattached regardless of whether detaching them is enabled or not
• Player pings are no longer blocked by invisible geometry
• Various adjustments to sub-tick shooting
• Fixed several cases where players could silently drop down vertical surfaces
• Improved smoothness of sliding along surfaces
• Fixed an issue where collisions between players were jittery
• To ensure loadouts are correct at the beginning of matches, loadout changes are no longer allowed while searching for Premier, Competitive, or Wingman

Sound

• Added the option to select an audio input device for VOIP from the audio settings menu
• Added the option to change your microphone threshold (the minimum loudness before we start transmitting audio) from the audio options menu, as well as metering for your current mic loudness
• Added the option to listen to your own microphone from the audio settings menu to hear how you sound
• Replaced the M249 fire sound effect
• Replaced the Zeus charging, charge not available, and charge ready states sound effects
• Further reduced occlusion effects
• Minor mix adjustments
• Fixed an issue where some player-centric sounds were being perceived as originating from slightly behind the player

Networking

• Reduced peeker’s advantage in many cases
• The amount of peeker’s advantage in the steady state is reduced by 16ms
• Also reduced the frequency of situations that lead to very large peeker’s advantage due to excessive command queue depth
• Added cl_ticktiming console command that prints a report breaking down the various sources of latency
• Added an option to buffer server updates and user commands by one or more packets. This can be used to smooth over stuttering due to packet loss, at the expense of increased latency

UI

• Added support for separate main menu and item inspect background map settings
• Added “Baggage” and “Warehouse” as options for the main menu and item inspect background maps
• In-game team-only chat will now be prefixed with the team (e.g., “[T]” or “[CT]”)
• Added ‘XP Overload’ status which is awarded to players who have earned all of their normal XP during the week (11,166 XP) and reached reduced XP gain. XP Overload status is attached to players’ names in scoreboard, main menu, death notices, etc. XP Overload status is awarded for a minimum of one week. Additional tiers of XP Overload status can be unlocked by earning all of the normal XP over multiple consecutive weeks
• Agents with unique end-of-match cheer animations now have unique defeat animations as well. You can disable playing defeat animations for the local player in settings
• Added more accolades to end-of-match

Misc

• Adjusted the range of CS Ratings allowed to party together in Premier matchmaking
• Fixed a case where high-DPI mice would result in jittery mouse movement
• Added Minor improvements to animations during demo playback
• Disabled rich presence update when running Steam Client in tournament mode

MAPS

Inferno

• Fixed various gaps and adjusted grenade collision to make grenade bounces more predictable
• Adjusted texture blending to improve player visibility

Ancient

• Adjusted grenade collision on bombsite B ground to make grenade bounces more predictable

Anubis

• Fixed holes in world at Lower Tunnel
• Fixed collision on all pillars so players can no longer pixel boost
• Fixed collision so utility does not fall out of world on top of structure at T Start
• Fixed missing collision on steps at Street which would allow dropped weapons to fall out of world
• Improved vis at CT spawn
• Fixed invisible boost ledge at Bombsite B
• Fixed various gaps in the world
• Fixed missing collision on stair geo at CT spawn that allowed weapons/bomb to fall out of world
• Fixed missing collision at Fountain that allowed weapons/bomb to fall out of world
• Fixed some doors not generating bullet decals
• Fixed vis issue at Street

Overpass

• Fixed some collision that was causing unpredictable player movement

Mirage

• Added collision to prevent bomb becoming unreachable
• Adjusted some collision to prevent a ledge/pixel walk
• Fixed player getting stuck when strafing on Middle Ramp by simplifying geo of floor and wall
• Removed a clip brush from Apartments to improve flash lineups

Nuke

• Built some collision to prevent bomb from getting stuck behind barrels
• Fixed some disappearing mesh
• Fixed dynamic shadow clipping on characters at Vending
• Improved clipping in vents
• Fixed bombsite water to have better reflections on low settings
• Fixed vis issue at t-spawn
• Fixed collision on ramp in Bombsite B
• Fixed holes in world

Vertigo

• Fixed holes in world and other minor geometry bugs

Italy

• Adjusted some collision to prevent players getting stuck in apartment

Office

• Fixed a case where players could jump on a wall
• Fixed a case where players could get stuck if they crouched

A shaky G2 takes on an in-from ENCE for a spot in the Playoffs of IEM Katowice. G2 comes in the game off the back of a convincing victory against Heroic while ENCE on the other hand has been taking scalps left and right throughout the entirety of the tournament. This game boasts all the elements it takes to build an interesting match-up.

Veto

• ENCE removed Inferno
• G2 removed Vertigo
• ENCE picked Mirage
• G2 picked Anubis
• ENCE removed Overpass
• G2 removed Nuke
• Ancient was left over

Map 1: Mirage

ENCE’s map pick saw them go 6-0 up right from the get-go as G2’s defence failed to find any answer until the 7th round of the game. G2 had unexpected contributors in nexa and Hooxi served as the highest-fragging player for G2 while ENCE showed up with all players picking up important kills across the board. G2 put together 4 rounds in a row on their defence before closing the half with a 4-8 scoreline.

Any hopes of a G2 comeback were cut short by a pistol-round victory by ENCE which they followed up with two more rounds. G2 were able to put together 3 more rounds on their offence but it presented nothing in terms of a comeback. hadens stood out with 21 frags and a 1.50 IR as his dynamic AWPing was too much for G2 to handle.

Map 2: Anubis

ENCE started the match with a pistol round loss but quickly made it to the scoreboard by converting a force buy. The force buy win took them 3-1 up before G2 won their 2nd round. G2 had players perform at a level that was not expected from them by any means, while flashes of brilliance did get a few rounds for them but it wasn’t enough to overtake a well-drilled T side of ENCE.

gla1ve stood out as their best player, topping the scoreboard while leading the team. The Danish skipper has led his polish teammates to the Spodek arena off the back of a 13-7 dommination of the international roster of G2 Esports. While ENCE finds themeselves in the playoffs, G2 will have one more chance to make it there.

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