{"id":1799364,"date":"2023-01-18T20:52:05","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T01:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/plato-data\/blast-premier-spring-groups-2023-hunden-leads-the-storylines\/"},"modified":"2023-01-18T20:52:05","modified_gmt":"2023-01-19T01:52:05","slug":"blast-premier-spring-groups-2023-hunden-leads-the-storylines","status":"publish","type":"station","link":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/plato-data\/blast-premier-spring-groups-2023-hunden-leads-the-storylines\/","title":{"rendered":"BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2023: HUNDEN leads the storylines"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

There are many exciting questions to answer as we head into the 2023 season of competitive CS, but there\u2019s no bigger score to settle than the one between HUNDEN and Heroic: our brand new villain in the scene may very well face his past team again, and his toxic influence is strong enough to affect the matchup even if he won\u2019t be the one standing behind the Astralis players just yet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2023: a storyline-filled event to start out the year<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s more spice in this BLAST tournament than in Herbert Frank\u2019s books, which means fans all around the world have great reasons to tune in to follow the CS:GO matches<\/a>. FaZe had to re-jig their roster, G2 didn\u2019t: which superteam will come out better from this? Of course, s1mple is the number one<\/a> and ZywOo is the number two: but who will start the new year stronger? Will Aleksib\u2019s Ninjas shift into a higher gear, or the less-and-less-dark horses of Liquid get to challenge for the top?<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Astralis. Oh, goodness me, there\u2019s Astralis.<\/p>\n

From a competitive perspective, the return of device overshadows everything else going on, and it will be fascinating to see both how he will fare against elite-level opposition and how well the new-look squad is gelling as we head into the new year. The Buzz pickup was a somewhat disappointing follow-up to the wayward son\u2019s return, and you could easily imagine this team topping its group or missing out on a Finals spot in its entirety.<\/p>\n

And yet, the biggest story of the upcoming BLAST Premier Spring Groups event is whether HUNDEN, the dastardly Dane will meet up with his disowned <\/strong>brothers in arms, even if indirectly: of all the possible matchups at the event, there is not one quite like the potential domestic derby between Heroic and Astralis.<\/p>\n

Behold, the HUNDEN derby<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s tough to imagine a larger own goal than picking up the most disgraced person to be involved with the entire coaching bug scandal, especially considering everything else that followed. (You can get the ESIC report expunged, SCP-style, but you can\u2019t outrun the Streisand effect.) Even if he were the second coming of mid-2018 zonic, adding him to the org chart is not worth the downsides. If it were any other org, you\u2019d stroke your chin and wonder if anything else unsavory may be going on behind the scenes \u2013 but come on, it\u2019s Astralis, we all know the answer to that.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake, HUNDEN wasn\u2019t hired to remain in the shadows for long: you don\u2019t pick up such a controversial person and take the sort of PR hit that comes with it to add a small cog to the machine. (Ideally, you wouldn\u2019t do so in the first place, and once you did, you wouldn\u2019t compound the error with saccharine PR posts on LinkedIn<\/a> and empty threats from your comms director on Twitter<\/a>, but that\u2019s clearly too much to ask.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always more than enough motivation in a domestic derby, and Heroic clearly overhauled Astralis as the best Danish side in the server. Should they meet again this time, no doubt the prospect of this victory would be the sweetest of them all so far.<\/p>\n

But what if one of them lose their opening matchup? Don\u2019t you worry, even if the matchup doesn\u2019t come to pass now, it\u2019s only a matter of time, and this tournament itself offers multiple chances for them to meet up. Shockingly enough, Katowice won\u2019t mark the next opportunity \u2013 coming just two days after this tournament ends, a sign of how stuffed the tournament calendar is right now \u2013 but the new-look Pro League format might give us what we\u2019re looking for. And in any case, there are only so many potential pan-outs in the elite-level CS:GO brackets: it\u2019s only a matter of time.<\/p>\n

Besides, Group A will offer other spicy options depending on how this particular bracket plays out. There\u2019s the Astralis reunion with the Vitality matchup to start things off, and should the right upset come to pass, we would get to see Evil Geniuses go up against a group of dastardly dumbasses instead of the HUNDEN derby, which would be more than enough to make up for any potential disappointment.<\/p>\n