Evaluating Asia-Oceania's performance at the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023

Grayhound and TheMongolz have been the dominant teams in the Asia-OCE region since 2022. Both teams have had occasional international wins and have slowly built their form up to manage upsets even at the Majors. With the last Major in CSGO coming to an end, we look at how the two fared at BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023.

Grayhound

Simon "Sico" Williams
Joshua "INS" Potter
Alistair "aliStair" Johnston
Jay "Liazz" Tregillgas
Declan "Vexite" Portelli

Starting with the boys from down under, Grayhound's performance was quite similar to their runs at the previous Majors. A couple of Bo1 wins, followed by disappointing Bo3 performances. After last year's upset over Cloud9, Grayhound set their sights on another CIS squad, FORZE. The Jerry-led team started the Mirage game with an incredible 12-3 lead but ended up fumbling the finish, giving Grayhound an early 1-0 start in the Challengers stage.

The comeback was powered by the duo of aliStair and INS, the latter also being the star of their win over TheMongolz. Unfortunately, for the good maps they had, the team also faced some brutal losses. The 2-0s from Liquid and NIP would have been a low point in their campaign had it not been for the 0-16 domination handed to them by Apeks. The team showed resilience but still has a long way to go before becoming a true challenge globally.

TheMongolZ

Garidmagnai "bLitz" Byambasuren
Sodbayar "Techno4K" Munkhbold
Baatarkhuu "Bart4k" Batbold
Tuvshintugs "ANNIHILATION" Nyamdorj
Chinguun "hasteka" Bayarmaa
Erdenedalai "maaRaa" Bayanbat

The performance of Asia's best was even more mixed. While their loss to Grayhound was rough, the other losses were at the hands of Monte and G2. The former was in the quarter-finals, while the latter is one of the best teams in the world. And TheMongolZ even had a win over eventual Major finalists, GamerLegion, defeating the team on one of their best maps, Inferno. While their fundamentals are still strong, they need to work on their map pool a lot more if they don't want to remain a one-trick Inferno pony.

What's next ?

Grayhound are participating at IEM Dallas 2023 where they'll be hoping to catch top teams off-guard in the post-major burnout and sneak a couple wins, meanwhile TheMongolZ don't have an international event lined up for the next few months following the ongoing ESL Challenger League Season 45 Asia-Pacific.

With the CS2 Majors starting in early 2023 fans will hope for Asia-Oceania to come into the game with their best foot forward and hopefully earn the region more spots in the Major circuit through Challenger stage wins.