The International 8 concluded and the next premier event to look out for with great enthusiasm is FACEIT MAJOR 2018. This 13th Valve-sponsored Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship and the first Major held by FACEIT would be the greatest events being the second Major out of two in this year.
1. Series: FACEIT Major
2. Commencing date: September 5, 2018
3. Venue: Twickenham Stadium, London (The New Challengers Stage & The New Legends Stage); SSE Arena, Wembley (The New Champions Stage)
4. Teams: 24
Current Legends:
Cloud9, FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, MIBR, Fnatic, G2 Esports, mousesports, Winstrike Team.
New Challengers:
Gambit Esports, Vega Squadron, Space Soldiers, BIG, Astralis, Team Liquid, North, Virtus.pro
Minors’ Champions:
Ninjas in Pyjamas, complexity Gaming, HellRaisers, Renegades, OpTic Gaming, Rogue, Team Spirit, TyLoo
5. Prize pool: $1,000,000
Winner gets $500,000 and the top 16 teams will receive reducing prize money.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a multiplayer first person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corporation. Organized by ELEAGUE previous year’s Major called ELEAGUE Major 2018 or Boston 2018 was held at Agganis Arena, Boston with the participation of 24 professional teams and a prize pool of $1,000,000. The grand final was marked as the greatest finals of all time featuring FaZe Clan and Cloud9 and the latter taking home the prize pool.

What makes FACEIT Major different from its previous one?
• Teams get direct invitation from its organizers but that was not the scene this year. Unlike last year when all eight teams were invited to Asia Minor, this year only two teams were given direct invitation.
• The map pool shall also be different this year. On April 20, 2018, Valve announced that the revamped Dust II would be replacing Cobblestone in the Active Duty map pool.

Watch out for these teams because:
1. Astralis – The most favorite one among all and the strongest team so far. They have the best team play and tactics when compared to any other team in CS:GO. And their decision-making skill as individuals and as a team adds up to their score. Timely usage of molotovs and grenades ensure more kills and gla1ve’s knack for timings to hold on to his utilities until the perfect moment arises. Their massive advantage is the map pools they play in, Overpass being their signature map. With all this said, a match with Astralis would be a tough one.
2. Cloud9 – Even though the team’s struggle in leadership back in 2017 caused a lot of downfalls, their decision to make Stewie2k as their permanent leader put the team back into the spotlight. The team still showed inconsistency in their performance leading them to replace players like n0thing and shroud with RUSH and tarik. They slowly bounced back into track becoming the official winners of ELEAGUE Major 2018.
3. North – This team has been through a rollercoaster ride with their performance – one day they perform really well and the next day they would be performing on an average level. The period during addition of new players and head coaches proved to be a bad process showing a level of play below their caliber. They “intend to work hard and harmonize their views on how to play a perfect game of CS:GO”. All these efforts have been fruitful as they won three Dreamhack titles consecutively in the last three months.
4. Fnatic: The #1 team in CS:GO on the basis of number of tournaments played and prize pot received. Awarded the Esports team of the year during 2006 & 2009 their performance gradually came down. After a time gap of 2 years team Fnatic has raised their game play and won Intel Extreme Masters XII tournament. Also with a team member like Krimz who won 114 games of 115, we better keep an eye on this team.
5. Team Liquid: This team has managed to be on the top list till date in various tournaments from the year 2015 and also won TI7. Consisting of team member like EliGE voted as the 12th best player of 2017 by HLTV.org, and nitr0 being a successful in-game leader (IGL) their communication skills has put their team in their current top position. The IGL micromanages everyone especially during the mid and last rounds when a team has to perform as one.
Natus Vincere: They have the best player in the world- Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostylie.

From where can you watch? To watch FACEIT Major 2018 you may either visit FaceIt’s official Twitch account or their Youtube channel.
Being the second and last Major of the year this one would undoubtedly be the biggest event of the year. As the invited and qualified teams fight their battles to make it till the end, would this keep us on our toes or will it be just another Major event? We would have to wait a few more days to finalize on that and hope that all odds be in favor of the teams.