Team Liquid's Counter-Strike 2 project was met with much criticism at the end, but skeptical pundits have been silenced after the team's explosive start to the season at the BLAST Premier Fall Groups, which included two straight victories against world number one NAVI.

The Twistzz-led outfit shocked NAVI—and the wider CS2 world—by booking an early ticket to the Fall Finals after two 2-1 wins over the reigning Major champions this weekend. Liquid opened their BLAST ledger with a relatively clean 2-0 win over Virtus.pro behind brilliant performances from Canadian duo Twistzz and NAF before new Polish AWPer Roland “Ultimate” Tomkowiak took on NAVI in the upper bracket final.

Many were willing to dismiss the win as a one-off, but there was no denying Liquid’s resurgence as they repeated their victory after NAVI fought back to the group finals. This time it was Latvian Mareks “YEKINDAR” Gaļinskis who came under fire and made the magic happen as Liquid fought back to even the series in overtime, then put on a CT clinic on Inferno to come back and take the series.

“I’m just super proud of my team, we’ve put together some great CT teams,” Twistzz said, adding that the team offered comfort and freedom to the young ultimate, who had a hand in directing the squad to best suit the situation. Along with the addition of the unknown quantity in ultimate and Aussie rifler jks, all eyes were on how Twistzz would take on the role of captain for the first time, but the early signs are great.