TeamNade Ep7

The podcast starts with a casual conversation between two friends about their week and drinking habits. They then talk about the recent Call of Duty games and discuss the scores and predictions. They also mention some surprising results and the current standings in the league. The top three teams are Heretics, FaZe, and New York Subliners, with Optic in fourth place. ROKR is currently at the bottom of the standings. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to TeamNade Podcast, Episode 7. We're joined today by myself, Forbes98, and we've also got along with us... It's BrianAbe. How are we doing today, Jan? I'm good, man. What are you saying? Good week? Not a lot. Yeah, man. Can't complain. You go up so much? I mean, I could complain, but probably best not to. No, working. Same old. Had a Christmas night out, which is always good to have. You? Nice, man. Yeah, I did a lot of drinking this week. Can't lie. We don't condone that behaviour. Only if you're over the age of whatever your legal age of being out with the drinkers. You know what I mean? Different places. You know where we're from? Twelve. Well, I mean, where we're from, it's like out of the womb, isn't it? Especially where you're from, bro. Yeah, where I'm from, it's eight years old in a park with a packet of cigs. It's just standard. To be fair, where I'm from, it's like that as well, to be fair. Yeah, but they just nick them. Where I'm from, it's rough. Anyway, moving on. What's the crack, bro? Lay it on me. The Cod was pretty interesting this weekend. I managed to catch a little bit of Friday and all of Sunday, because Sunday's games were over very quickly. They were over ridiculously quickly. So, would you like to hear the scores or my predictions again? Tell me the scores, yeah, and then tell me if you got it right or not. There we go. To be honest with you, I was here for the podcast last week. You might remember I was also... That wasn't the chat GPT, no? No, that was genuinely me. It wasn't like, hey, I brought a new bro. But at the same time, mate, I've slept since then. I can't remember what your predictions were. You've slept since then. That's nice to know you've slept in a week. That's real nice. You're like a goldfish, bro. Information goes in one ear and comes out the other. The recording stopped. What was that last hour and a bit? I probably nodded off during the recording. Oh, thanks. One, though. Right, we're back to soccer Saturday. The score announcements, ready? Oh, mate, an absolute liberty has just occurred to me. Okay, what's happened to you? I pipped coffee down my grey hoodie. Sorry, go on. Is that hot coffee, cold coffee? No, it's cold now because it's freezing in my flat. How long have you been sat with coffee in front of you? Um... Hang on. I'll tell you exactly. So I made it at, like, quarter to eight. How do you know exactly? Because I made it literally just before I messaged you. You're not one of those weird bonuses with timers on. No, I have instant coffee, bro. I don't have time to be fucking... I appreciate that shit. Like, nah, bro. Aldi Goldblender. Shit goes stupidly hard. I can't even lie to you, bro. For all the American listeners, Aldi is a really high-end brand. So, you know, he's a bit... He's got too much money, is what he's saying. Anyway, um... It's called League. Starting the Friday. Heretics 3, Legion 1. So it's a Heretics win, which I predicted correctly. I'm one of Heretics. LAT versus Boston. LAT 3, Boston 0. LAT 1, and I predicted Boston. Was it LAT 3, Boston 0? Yeah. That fucking... came out of fucking nowhere. Which is more surprising. I've had such a weird weekend. I didn't get onto that. That's a fucking surprising result there. Um... Then I went to Optic 3, Surge 1. With an Optic win, which I predicted correctly. That was a big game that week, on the Friday. Because, obviously, it was the... The return of Hook, Illi, and Rambo Ray. Against Optic, who they were all on last season. He's not called Rambo Ray anymore. What is he? Money Ray. No, wait a minute. I looked this up the other day. I wanted to see if he'd been dropping any more, like... Knowledge bombs on YouTube. But, like, no. He's now just called... Wait a second. Rambo Esports. Rambo Esports? Rambo Esports on YouTube. Go check it out. Especially when the ranked playlist drops. Ah, that's going to be so good. Money Hill. I'm excited. Then we're going on to Saturday. We've got Heretics 3, Rocker 1. Another Heretics win. They were first in both the Friday and the Saturday. They lost the first round both games. And then proceeded to get three maps in a row on each of the next games. So that's big from Heretics. I predicted Heretics to win that one as well. Seems to be quite a... Quite a sleeper team at the moment. I say sleeper in the sense of nobody thought they would be really good because they're a new Spanish team into the league. But they just skyrocketed. I feel I've... We need to chat about Heretics in a second, bro. After you've run cast scores. So then, next game. New York Subliners 3, Legion 0. Subliners win, which I predicted correctly there as well. Not surprising. We'll get on to that. Next we've got Phase 3, Surge 1. So a phase win, which I predicted again. Easy win. That's an easy fucking given 1-0 to phase. Then we've got Ravens 0, Ultra 3, so an ultra win. Presented that one correctly. That one was fucking fireworks. And you were out at the time that game was over. Oh, yeah, no, yeah. Literally just... I was sat in the bar absolutely steaming off my nut. Whipped out my phone. Twitter. Literally saw the photo of Scrap being 3-0. And I was just like, they must have won. You sent me the video of it. You sent me the video, bro. The video... Oh, mate, I love that energy. After the game as well, he was like, did you expect to win this? He was like, well, yeah. The stats don't lie, this team is pretty ass. Like to the casters. And then, the tweet that came afterwards that was like, GG's to London or whatever they're called now. I all into the ground with a 3-0 or something. It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. Then it takes us on to Sunday, which, as you said earlier on, was a very quick Sunday for those games. Yeah, it was. Ravens 0, Optic 3. Optic win there. Good prediction. We need to speak about that as well in a second. Oh, yeah, definitely. Then you go on to LAG 3, LAT 0, which I got wrong. I went for LAT there. That one came as a bit of a surprise, because LAG, they've got this notion in the community of being a really shit team. That was mostly because of last year. They're doing OK this season, I think, so far. Do you see draws this week? Yeah, where he said, as soon as I leave LA, guerrillas are winning. Yeah. Mental. And then, onto the final game of the Sunday, and for the year, Boston 3, ULTRA 0. It's a Boston win, which I got wrong on that one. I went ULTRA for that one. That one surprised me. That one surprised me a lot. Yeah, that one was fucking mental as well. That's ridiculous. Yeah, that did surprise me. Would you like the table? Yeah, go on. Tell me... I'm not really that bothered about who's at the bottom, but what have we got, bro? How many games has everyone played? Has everyone played three times now, four times? No. So, there is... Some of them have played four, some have played three. Right. So, at the top of the table just now, I'll tell you... So, there's only three teams that are still unbeaten, which are Heretics, Faze, and New York Subliners. All three and O's. No dangers. That's like that fucking... I feel like going back to what you were saying before about Heretics being a sleeper team. You know the picture of the three dragons? Yeah. The two proper hard looking ones, and then there's the mental looking one at the end. That's Heretics in that situation. No disrespect to that organisation and those players, because they are balling right now. I expect them to come out fucking guns blazing. You know what I mean? Mate, it is nuts. I can see a similarity to a different team that's very close to our hearts. Another European team? Another European team. They all speak one language. You know what I mean? So, that's the top three. I'm going to add just a little optic in here. They're fourth with three and one. So, it's not been that bad. Are they in their own category then? There's no one else three and one? No, nobody else is three and one. Oh shit. The teams that have played four times is Optic, Surge, Boston, Legion, LAT, Ravens. So, out of them playing four games, they're sitting fourth. The only team that could get close to them just now is Ultra, who are currently two and one. Two and one. Then the bottom three, so third bottom, LAT, Ravens second bottom, and stone dead bottom with no wins so far out of three games, ROKR. I'm not surprised by that, to be honest with you. ROKR and being last is like... ROKR's previous games have ended in a 3-2 loss to Legion, a 3-1 loss to Optic, and then a 3-1 loss to Heretics. Yeah, man. It's Diamond Con on ROKR. No, Diamond Con is LAG. Oh, it's Assault, isn't it? Yeah, Assault and Buzz. Assault's on LAG. Mate, who's on ROKR, bro? I can't say. Astral. Oh, who's the other two donnies? Vivid. And somebody else. I can't remember his name. I don't know. I can't remember him. I haven't seen these boys play at all. But somehow they've 0-3. They've held three series losses, and I don't think I've seen them play anyone. The thing is the teams they've played the Legion one, that's probably their worst one, their worst game so far, because it was a 3-2, and Legion's in their bracket for beating, where Heretics and Optic are not really in their bracket. Yeah, yeah. A little note on that is for where LAT is in that third bottom, that's also technically tied by Legion and Boston, who are all 1-3. Okay, yeah. They're in a certain order due to the league points based on map count, but I've not written down the map count because I didn't think it was really relative. It's too much information to digest. Just before we move on, just on these top three teams, I'm trying to work out, in my mind, which ones are the strongest right now. Who have Heretics played? Heretics have played Ravens, and then they've played Legion, and then they've played Rocker. And who have... They've played all bottom set teams. Which is... This is what I was getting at, because I don't think FaZe have played a top team yet, have they? FaZe have played... Where are we? They've played Boston, 1-3-2. They then played LAT in 1-3-0. And then they played Surge in 1-3-1. So, again, Surge is middle of the road. They're 6th in League. Everything else is down below. Looking at Subliners, they played Optic, 1-3-2. Yeah, because Subliners is Optic's only boss, isn't it? Yeah, and then Subliners played 1-3-2 against LAG, and then they won 3-0 against Legion. So, Subliners have played a top tier team, but then the rest of the time. That's the thing, man. There's not been any big bangers yet? No. I feel like the FaZe thing, FaZe will be competitive with everyone, I think, so that's not really a worry for me. But this Heretics roster, they've only played the bottom three teams in the League and battered them. It's like, yeah, they're good. Don't get me wrong, they're good, but their run is pretty easy. You know what I mean? So far, their schedule has probably been the easiest to get a 3-0 out of. Yeah. You can only play who's in front of you. Yeah, that's the other thing. It's just the way this cookie crumbles. Battering easy teams is obviously very good for them because it means that they get more favourable bracket. They'll start in the upper bracket, potentially. All of this stuff. But it'll be interesting to see how competitive they can make it when they play a FaZe or an OpTic or a Subliners or... I'm trying to think who else is a good team at the moment. Ultra. You know what I mean? When they play one of these really good teams, it'll be interesting. I think when the pressure's on, it'll be interesting to see what they're made of. You know what I mean? No, I get that. There's a little concern about Heretics. They seem to drop a map one and then just ruin them ever since. Yeah. Their go-to map just now is Invasion. And once they get set up for a rotation or a point, they're incredibly hard to break down. Yeah. If you can keep them on that rockiness of, we're not fully set up how we want to, you could get wins out of them. Yeah. You can snatch the wins. As Rocker did, I can't remember which one Round Rocker won. I think it was Round 1, so it would have been a hard point. Their weakest game is a hard point. That's the only... That's the two games that they've lost out of the three matches are hard points. Their winning series is on hard points as well. Well, yeah, that's the thing. They're slow heating up, but as soon as they're hot, they're fucking white hot. I feel to beat a top team, it's going to have to be a reverse sweep out of Heretics. Because I'm thinking now, Braham, they play Phase, right? If their trend continues, they historically lose the map one. Yeah. The problem with the top teams is that they'll just make that first game so uncompetitive. Who did they play this weekend? Legion. That was a Friday night, wasn't it? I watched that game and I was literally going to message you and just be like, what the fuck is going on with Heretics? What is happening? These guys, I thought they were good men. Then it's just like, the search starts and I'm like, okay, let's see what's going on here now. If you remember last week, I was gassing up Legion's ability to play search. Then Heretics get the win and then they win the control and I was just like, oh shit. Then they go and win it. I'm glad that I didn't message you and then have egg on my face when it came time to have a little chat later on in the evening. But I don't see them. If they're going to lose game one to like a phase or a subliners or an optic or an ultra, because of how badly they could potentially get beaten, I then do not see them getting into it in game two. Okay, yeah. Then it's like, well, then you have to win the control or else you're fucked. You're just done. You see what I'm saying? After suffering two losses, do they have the mental to be able to make the game to one of these top squads in the control? Yeah, no, I get that. That's my biggest question about these boys right now. They're only going to have to wait and see when they actually come up against one of the bigger teams, which the time of recording is a week before Christmas and there is no game for the next three weeks, unfortunately, which is what it is. So we're going to have to wait a while to see if they actually come out with anything. Has the game schedule been released for this? No, not yet. That's the thing, I can't do next time's predictions, which my little side note there, I've got seven out of ten this week. That's alright. I've got the whole Saturday, right? A lot of dones. But yeah, I don't have that predictions this week, unfortunately. But that predictions little section that we could have can now be taken up with the conversation about Carolina Royal Ravens. Oh, mate. Like... That's a shot, bro. That fucking Optic game was woeful. It was like... Well, I'm sorry, I'll even take this further back. You didn't see it. The fucking Ravens Ultra game. It was the control game. It was 2-1 Karachi. They had to win to go to 2-2 and take it to overtime. It was the B-Hill and the Cafe. They'd already got an A. Four stack in the B. Thinking, this is it. We've got our chance. We're doing this. And they fumbled it. Somehow they let, I think it was Insight or Kleenex, I think it was Kleenex I think, round to the side of them next to the bus, into the open windows, sprayed them down, and then they just lost it. You can't be letting Tobias Juljansen do that to you, bro. Why do you know his name, like, off the clip? Because he'd be like, oh, mate, because it's such a sick name, innit? Tobias Juljansen. It's such a sick name, bro. Nah. That just is a sick name, mate. It just rolls off the tongue, bro. You know what I mean? Shut up, my Danish brother. I think he's Danish. Danish brother? Oh yeah, because you're so Danish, aren't you? I like Danish pastries. That doesn't make you Danish, though, does it? No, but I never said it did. Mate, you said Danish brother. Yeah, brother from another mother. Oh my god. You walked into that one, bro. What are you doing to say about your poor mother, eh? Oh, your poor father. Huh? Mr. Worldwide. My dad is Mr. Worldwide, bro. But that's not a conversation for us to have. We've got to get into the details of my family tree. So, moving on to the Ravens versus Optic. We've watched that. Oh, mate, it was so bad. So bad. To the point where just Clayster was screaming his fucking down his mic, what the fuck are we doing? Yeah, man. It was literally like, after every round, right, like, obviously Optic... I will say this, yeah, right? Hit me with it. I would, if I was the Optic coach, I would be very wary about complacency setting in after that result. Because after the end of every game, Optic, yeah, they were still, you know what I mean, they were still, they had the small talk, they were still discussing what was going on, they were getting their plans down, their play calls and stuff, right? But like, what, like four records, like four KD records were set in that three days? Yeah, well, yeah, the top three of the KDs for the weekend was Optic. Right, so it's like, you know what I mean? And Dashie was in the top five as well, he was fifth, I think. Like, personally, this is all now like, this is ringing alarm bells for me now, right? You've got Dashie dropping massive KDs. It was an uncompetitive series. They looked like, like, Optic looked like they were coasting the whole time. Yeah. Especially, like, not necessarily in the way they were playing, but on their player cams, they looked like they were coasting. You know what I mean? Yeah. I would be very worried about a level of complacency setting in, especially after a three-week break. Because what you don't want is for them to go away for three weeks and constantly tell themselves that they're the shit, only to come back and have to play a phase or an ultra and just get fucking railed. Because that's just not going to do anything good for, like, the board. Yeah, I understand what you're saying, but what I will add to that is that there's apparently meant to be a patch in between now and the next games played. Oh. So, don't know what that patch is going to be to change stuff, and I don't know if they're just moving up to this next patch that we've most recently got, which changes something, possibly. Yeah, like, I was going to say to you, like, is that I would imagine that would be what it is, because they play on, like, half a patch behind, don't they? Yeah, so there's obviously, there's going to be patches and then it's going to change, it might change certain things around, and it might change entire playstyles and whatever else, maybe. That's waiting to see. But I get what you mean, like, it's, you've gone off of Raven's win, you've gone, this is just fucking piss easy, we've walked through it, we're just the best. But they're going to look at it and go, Raven's have not been great. No, like, and this is the thing, man. They, a 3-0 loss to Heretics, then they won 3-2 against Legion, but only just with a reverse sweep. Lost 3-0 to Ultra, and then lost 3-0 to OpTic. So you're looking at it, you go, they're not winning rounds unless it's a below-6 team. Yeah. So it's not really like it's that much of, you're going to look at it and go, it's like Man City going to fucking Burnley, pumping them and just going, well, it's fucking, they're bottom of the league, they're struggling, we're not really going to take it much longer and go, we're the fucking big boys. You know what I mean? Yeah, like, it's, you know, it's not, but I mean, it's good, you know, go and enjoy it. Fucking don't listen to me. Yeah, but the thing is though, you fucking want OpTic to take that sort of stance of, we're the big boys, we can play with whoever we want, we're going to coast it. It's not that I like it. It's not that I want them to do that, it's just like... But you're... Don't get me wrong, right, don't get me wrong. If they did that, I would fucking love it. But I don't want them to do that. There is a difference. You know what I mean? You would like it to happen, but you don't want to see, you don't want to endorse it. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I am a Fates fan. You know what I mean? But I want to see competitive games over everything. Yeah, for the state of the league and the state of games, you want to see 3-2s, reverse beats. Yeah, I want to see 3-2s. Game 11s. I want to see, yeah, Game 11s, Search, 1v1, like, you know what I mean? 1v4, whatever. This is what I want to see. Like, I want to see the best players in the world doing their thing. Like, you know what I mean? I want my mind to fucking blow every single time I'm watching this shit. Yeah, you don't want to have another Sunday where every game is over by 11 o'clock. Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, like, it was class because I got to watch all the games. Yeah. But I didn't really see anything where I was like, yo, like, you know what I mean? But then again, like, we were busy, well, I was busy playing Search when I was, so. Was I? Or whatever I was doing. We were busy playing Search. Yeah, we were, just you, sorry. We were both there. Yeah. We were both there getting abuse off random donnies off the internet because we were better. A lot of dons. Let's go. Um, yeah, like, sorry, going back to the point before I went on that massive fuck off round about optics. In between the rounds, like, Ravens weren't chatting to each other. It was Clayster going, like, you know what I mean? It was Clayster doing the talking. The other three of them were just sat there, like, no emotion, staring at the screen. Was it Clayster doing the talking or Clayster doing the lecture? No, it was Clayster doing the shouting, like, you know what I mean? And it was literally just like, there was just, it was like, there was like nothing going on up there. Like, they'd already resigned themselves to the fact that they'd lost. Yeah. After, like, game one, they were like, no, we're done. We're out. This ain't, this ain't it. Like, no. Yeah. Bit off a little bit more than they could chew at that point. Exactly. Which is, I get it. Like, I understand that. Because, you know, this is, this is the big dogs now. Like, you know what I mean? Like, this is the CDL. Like, this is where the top sweaters are. You've got to be able to hang with them. You know what I mean? Like, and if you can't, then serious issues. Serious, serious issues. Definitely. Like, but I don't know what's going to happen with that team. I feel like the, like, I feel like if they keep losing and they go to LAN and get, like, double first rounders, like, I would expect a change, a massive change in that lineup. I can't even lie to you. Oh, yeah. There has to be at some point, Nick. Just get Bans, Hicksy and Beans out of the fucking Challengers, bro. Bang. Job sorted. Yeah. Beans. That's what I'd do if I was... Who's GM of the Ravens? I couldn't tell you. Nah, I couldn't either. I was going to say it's Oga too, but he was GM of Miami, wasn't he? But he's not anymore. No, I'm not at all. Oh, well, that's the Cod news. Well, that's the competitive Cod news, anyway. One thing I do want to touch on. If we touched on it last week, the whole... Snake shots. Please don't say snake shots. I've still got PTSD, bro. That's fucking Warzone, but we'll get on to that if you really want to talk about snake shots and fucking dog shit. Fuck no. Like, let's just do it now. If you don't play Warzone, don't play it, because you're going to get gunned by a shotgun from across the map. Done. Right. A little context for people who have not played Warzone in the past week, would you say? Since the update. Yeah, it's probably about a week now since... I think it was that Balance pass was on Wednesday, I think, the patch came out. Okay, so since Wednesday on the last patch, they switched the meta up entirely. Took away the... Yeah, the MTZ went down from a two-shot to a three-shot. It made a difference. It is what it is. Took out the fucking BASB, really put it down. DG as well. Changed it up. Decent. Nice to see a little bit of change. Nice to see a little bit of competitive getting new guns in. Happy days. Yeah, because now we've got six-shot LMGs. Yeah. What they did in the process of that was ruin the game. Ruin the close range. Yeah, ruin the close range meta, which Snake Shots, for the TYR revolver pistol, made its comeback for the third time in a row. Third year in a row. To the point where you could put on certain attachments to make it a negative reticle. The secret sauce loadout. What in the fuck? Yeah, the secret sauce loadout was grim. I remember seeing an Iceman Isaac video where he was on top of a building and the boy was in the middle of the road at least 50 metres. One shot him. What is that? Why is that a thing? It is dual-wield pistols. I did not see that one. I'll find it and I'll send it to you. It's mental. You drop into a Warzone game, you get your loadout, and then it's essentially of who's got the faster reaction and who can hit shots. And then it's just trigger. Pull trigger, kill. Pull trigger, kill. Not even any skill involved or any effort involved in hitting shots or movement or whatever else. Ridiculous. That same day that we were playing it, which was... Friday. Friday. Friday night. We were like, right, we're not playing this, we're gonna go play Search. Play in Search, and then all of a sudden a patch comes in. Straight off the bat, they're like, yeah, we're sorting this. They've been disabled. Not a fucking chance of you using this shit. I do like that, though. I do like that. I feel like this attachment is not operating as intended. We need to get it out because we don't have time before we go away for Christmas to fix it. It's turned off. Fucking huge room to actually be proactive about something that's broken. Yeah, 100%. Massive. Which now has proceeded a couple of days later, this is now Monday, that was Friday. It came out yesterday? The shotgun? Yeah, yesterday, because we played yesterday and we were like, yeah, we're not playing that because you got killed by a shotgun. Back in Warzone 1. Back in the Warzone 2. I don't know if it was yesterday or Saturday. It was yesterday because we were playing. I know yesterday I got banged by one. I don't know if the people on Twitter started being like, use this. We experienced it yesterday because you were outside and we didn't play any Warzone. Yeah. Sunday comes about, we're playing, and then back in the Warzone 2 on Ishika Island, when they brought out the Doom Pack for the game, they released the dual triggers for the shotgun. Which then proceeded into this shotgun becoming a one-shot anywhere with slug rounds. Which was removed and fixed. Which then, with the new patch on the new Warzone, Warzone 3, with the removal of the snake shots, which has somehow inadvertently reactivated the dual triggers and the one-shot shotgun. I saw someone on Twitter say that it was somehow the damage range nerf of the actual weapon has been reverted by its pre-nerf standards. Yeah. Which, how? Maybe it was like that since the start, but no one was looking at that gap. Maybe. Yeah, true. So this dual trigger, long-range shotgun, with the right attachments can one-shot at 50m with fully plated. And it's stupid. Because it's just snake shots, but on a shotgun. And it's all it is. It's ridiculous. So don't touch it unless it's with a bar pull. Even then, don't even bother. Yeah. I wouldn't... It's not worth it. I haven't been enjoying Warzone that much anyway, I can't lie. Like, it was fun for the first few days, and then it's just... I don't know. It's definitely a me problem. Like, it's to do with my mentality when I play the game, but like I just don't find it as fun as I used to do. You know what I mean? No, I get that. So that's Warzone. And what I was going to say before was just a little note. We touched on it last week with the whole Flank and Skump getting caught, the claims and being told they can't do it and whatever else. What day was this? Friday? Yeah, it would have been Friday. Friday stream comes around. Skump Watch Party. Standard crack. It's on Twitch. They've not even got it on the fucking screen, but I think they've got it on the YouTube, like watching it with the YouTube. They get hit with a copyright strike mid-stream. And then Skump's like, yeah, Riley, shut it down. Which is just mental that they've done it mid-stream. Yeah. I think they've managed to find a workaround for now because they had the streams back on Saturday, Sunday. Fuck knows what that workaround is, but they're doing something. And I don't know how they're going to fix this entirely to get it back to what they want it to be as creators, where, as we discussed last week, as the entity of Activision, Cod and YouTube together in this contract, they're not going to want that. The thing that gets me about it is like... Wait, when were we talking about it? Yesterday? Must have been yesterday. Was it yesterday or Friday night? Right. You know, obviously I said to you that they were basically gold-bridging the Cod. You know what I mean? Yeah. A little bit of context for American listeners, if there is any. Goldbridge is a content creator that we have in the UK who sits in front of his monitor with the stream on while he watches live televised football games, but doesn't actually show the game itself, but talks about it and then puts scores and whatever else and keeps up to date and talks to people while doing so. That's soccer. Oh, sorry. Soccer for anyone who's over the pond. But yeah, you know what I mean? There's four Donnies sat on a sofa watching the Call of Duty. They're not like... They're not showing it. You know what I mean? So it's like... I couldn't quite get my head around right. Obviously they are monetizing the product on a different distribution platform. Which, thinking about it, I would imagine is the crux of the problem, right? But they're not showing it. I don't even know if they add audio for the stream available. You know what I mean? I don't know if they had the casters and you could hear what was going on and they were talking over it. I don't know. But it just seems very, very strange that they would go after that when they're not even showing anything. The other thing that I find very, very strange is the fact that it's Skump specifically that has had this. If there was anyone that I thought would have got a pass, it's that guy. Because of the amount of viewers that he brings in. But saying that, the amount of viewers that he brings in also might be causing the problem. If he had 10 viewers, they probably wouldn't care. But the fact that he has, I don't know, 25 to 60k, that probably causes a problem. Probably the problem that comes with it as well when people are dropping 100 different subs on a man who's already got enough money. That probably causes a problem as well. I don't think Activision YouTube and the CDL are bothered about that. I think Forbes E98 is bothered about that. I don't think these people are. Sorry, both of us are bothered. Don't just fucking categorize me. Both of us have an issue with that. Both of us have a fucking issue with that. I just don't get it, man. Fuck off. I just don't understand like... I don't know. We've had these conversations at great length about the motivations of people specifically dropping that amount of money, specifically with that creator. Fair enough, the guy's streaming and playing a game and someone drops 100 gifted. To me, that's a different situation. But when he's on a watch party and someone drops 100 gifted... I think it's the attention side of it. Because he gets the big fucking... If you drop 100, you get the nuke noise and then the lights change and shit like that. I mean, bro, maybe we have such an issue with it because neither of us can afford to drop 100 gifted. But then if I could afford to drop 100 gifted, I wouldn't be dropping 100 gifted. Give it to my fucking self. Nah, I'd be spending that shit. I'm not dropping 400 quid on some other donny. I can think of many things that I could buy with 400 quid. And something that is just breaking news, so we get off of that topic real quick. What the fuck did you think I was gonna say? I'll just move on. We'll move on from that. Nah, we're not even gonna fucking... We're not touching that. Now you've made it weird, bro. You've made it weird. Just very quickly. Go on, what's this made-up breaking news bulletin that you've just told us? Go on, go on. Twitter notification. You know, we're up to date. Twitter's on the page, sitting there fucking refreshing, getting the newest updates, you know? This is tweeted from the CDL Intel content. CDL Intel account. Intel at CDL. The Challenger season finished six months ago, and the league still hasn't announced anything for this season. Yeah, I saw that. I saw someone tweeted earlier, and they were like, what's the crack with Challengers? What's going on? You know what I mean? Given the fact that they downgraded the competition so much last season, I can't remember what major it was, but it went from having, like, a side station, or a couple of side stations with area for, you know what I mean, a space for people to go and watch it if they want to, so literally being eight PCs in a really small closed-off area and a side room in the basement of a different building, basically. You know what I mean? They removed it so much from what it should be, which is the secondary attraction of any CDL major, in my opinion. In your opinion, yeah. Well, I mean, the other thing is as well, bro, is like, these guys are from what I understand, the Challengers schedule is a lot more intense than the CDL schedule is, in terms of the amount of games you have to play, like, the amount of things you have to do, and bear in mind, a lot of these guys might not be getting paid a salary as well, so they're doing this ridiculous grind on top of whatever else they've got going on in their lives, you know what I mean? And they're not getting the recognition, which is strange to me, considering that the CDL uses Challengers as a feeder league. You know what I mean? It's really, really weird, that, to me, but then potentially could be symptomatic of the cashflow issues that the CDL also very clearly has, I think. Oh, fuck, guys. Like, I think there's a really big problem with them, their cashflow, which I think is going to become probably the reason why they signed with YouTube, and I think it's going to come to a head at the end of this season. 100%. Yeah, I think the whole changing over into like a franchise with the place names and whatever else, that was like a money-orientated move. And then the whole moving over to YouTube now is an even more money-orientated move. Due to also the prices of fucking league spots and league names, teams will slowly drop out. Well, you think LAG was meant to be in this year because they couldn't afford it? Yeah, exactly. Maybe they cut down on their wages and managed to pull more money together, got another investor in, fuck knows. Out of our range of knowledge, it's not really public. I could find out. If I really put my mind to it, I could find out. Yeah, maybe. Maybe I will do. Maybe this will be something we can do down the road. As we were discussing earlier, Forbes, maybe this will be, you know what I mean, a little investigative... A little investigative journalistic piece. What's it called? What the fuck's it called? Like a little side bit onto... Oh, fuck knows. I'll be like the Martin Lewis of eSports, bro. Yeah, Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert. Except I won't be saving money, I'll be investigating where the money flows. So not like Martin Lewis at all, basically. That was the only financial journalist I'd be on top of. So you're like a storm chaser, but for money. Yeah, exactly. Catch me outside. Money chaser. I'll just be in America with a mad camera just being like, look at this executive, you know what I mean. And then probably get shot, because that's what happens in America when you film people. Look at this executive. Bang, dead. That's all you're ever going to say. That's the only words you ever speak in America. Either that, or I'll put together those old school Illuminati videos, where they just proved everything was to do with the Illuminati. And I'll have the X-Files music behind it. Like the Rothschild children. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one I can think of the most is the Monster Energy Drink one. And where it always goes like, 7 plus 3 equals 10 plus 1 equals 11. What has 11 letters? This, and this equals that. And therefore, Illuminati confirmed. Like one of them videos. Maybe I'll just do that. Right. I'll be making a scheme, bro. Right, good. Oh mate. Why did you put up with this bullshit, bro? See, unfortunately, we're not on the stage of editing these yet. But I feel like I need like an hour break to sort of digest what you've just said to me. Because that is wild. Because I don't know what the fuck to reply to that. If you don't reply to anything, bro, it's because you're in the Illuminati. I'm done. I'm seven in. I'm seven in and done. We've got it, ladies and gentlemen. We've finally broken. Yes, now. Let's go. Why don't you take it away with the halo for today? Take it away with the halo for today. Stop fucking chatting shit and chat some information to the people. Alright. Say less. Let's get into it. Today's halo segment is mostly going to be focused on the business of the halo esport. Power of Formula felt like you were about to do a sponsor bit. This section of Halo is sponsored by Manscaped. The best in below the belt grooming. Manscaped, you want to sponsor us, get at us. Twitter coming soon. Don't forget that. I still need to set that shit up. When that's set up, you'll be able to get at us at the email address for business, which I'm not going to say out because someone else will go and take it and that's not happening. I ain't the one, gad. I will fight you to get you in the court. I won't. On what grounds? We've got seven episodes. Steal an IP. Exactly. We're getting sidetracked again now. One of my favorite content creators or people that create with Halo is HCS Pro Talk. I think these guys are fantastic. I love them. I literally can't get enough of them. I don't know when this episode came out. I think it might have come either Wednesday last week after the Rostamania news or this week's episode. I'm not quite sure. As of this morning, so today is the 18th of December, as of this morning, it was the newest episode on Spotify. Okay. Do with that information what you will. On this episode, obviously they were talking about the different roster changes, optic dead zone, native APG, etc. They actually interviewed the, I think, he's either the vice president or he's the head of eSports at Native Gaming. On his LinkedIn, it says he's the VP of eSports at Native Gaming. I think they introduced him as something else. Yeah. Brian Cobb seems like a nice guy, very knowledgeable guy. He spoke a lot about what Native Gaming wanted to do, why they picked up the players they picked up. A lot of just like, not like PR stuff for the team, but you could tell he was like about this, which would make sense because one of the things that I absolutely loved about the interview was at one point they asked him what the day-to-day looks like as someone who's a VP of eSports for a North American eSports org. The very first thing he said was, well, it's busy because I have another job. You know what I mean? I love that because it's like, I feel like the amount of money that you see people getting paid, which is something we're going to be getting onto in a minute, the amount of money that you see dished out in prize pools, like the companies that are involved, you know what I mean, like these big organizations, I feel like there's an expectation that everyone who's involved with this is drawing a salary. A livable salary. Yeah. Which is just not the case I find in the vast majority of situations. See, that's surprising to me because the normal is to expect that this is quite a profitable sector and that everybody is on the money. Yeah, exactly. From the research that I've done and from some of the other things that I've seen and some of the arguments, some of the articles that I've read, eSports is nowhere near as profitable. In fact, it probably operates at a net loss industry-wide. Really? Yeah. Fucking hell. Which is why you get situations where, you mentioned the LAG thing a minute ago, their parent company, which I think when you peel back the layers, was the guard or is the guard, and they obviously laid off a load of people. The evil geniuses laid off a load of people. Organizations having to downsize their support staff because they expanded too aggressively when the interest was there. Then through other things, this is kind of getting into the right words to use, like market conditions. That was it. Market conditions, things outside of their control. The money just went away overnight. Investors weren't seeing returns. A corporate investor that doesn't see returns is not going to want to continue pumping money into something that effectively is a passion project because they're big corporate investors. They don't do passion projects, they do profit. You know what I mean? Moving past all the doom and gloom about the current state of eSports as a money-making enterprise. Right at the end of the interview, he says to the two guys on HCS Pro Tool, he goes, thanks for the questions, guys, but I thought you were going to ask me something spicy. The main boy, he goes, okay. Salaries league-wide, fuck you. Tell me the answer. Go. Fair play to Brian, Mr. Cobb. He answers that he's just like, yeah, okay. This is something that I found interesting. Now, anyone that's a long-time follower of the HCS in Infinite will probably remember when Spartan decided he was forcing his way out of his contract with E-United, which was a big topic of conversation because a lot of people were saying, he's going the wrong way. He should just shut up and play. I support Spartan. There was a lot of different discourse. One of the most interesting things that came out of that was, I think it was on a Reddit thread that I read this, and it was from Spartan himself, where he said that on E-United, he was earning 60k a year, which I thought was interesting. It's free. Now, obviously, Spartan is a top-tier player. He's very, very, very good. He also has his own personal brand, which is something that kind of goes hand-in-hand with when you're talking about the money and stuff in East-West. The Native Gaming guy, when they were talking about it, he said that in a team that is top six in the league, they probably pay their players $4,500 a month plus with a couple of things depending on that. So it's $54,000 a year, right? If you're on a top-six team. Did you know that the league minimum in Call of Duty in 2022 was $55,225? That's the league minimum? That's the league minimum. Fucking hell. For a COD player. Jesus. In Halo, the league minimum is $2,000 a month. Sorry? Yeah. And he said, yeah, that you would only get league minimum if you were on a top-12 team. So he said some of the other partnered teams, that's what they're paying their players. Jesus. But to be honest with you, $24,000 a year? Okay, I mean, I don't know how much $24,000 a year goes in America. Where? Yeah, you gotta pay for your own health care. Yeah, some things are more expensive. Some things are a lot more expensive. Some things seem a lot cheaper. Don't get me wrong. You know, obviously $24,000 a year over here goes a decent distance. I wouldn't say it doesn't. That's not terrible money to be getting paid. You know, I think $24,000 is £24,000, I should say, if we're looking at it from our perspective. It's a very livable wage to be on. Oh yeah, definitely. I think depending on where you live. That's the other thing. You live in London and you're on 24K a year. Yeah, it's a bit dodgy. Good luck. I still find it mad that if you study in London and you get a student loan from the government, they subsidise it even further than they would do normally based upon their sliding scale for what your parents earn and stuff. You get an extra £1,500 to £2,000 every three months because living in London is so expensive. Which I find mad because they're just putting you in even more debt, which they're then going to cripple you with interest rates. Shout out to student loans, man. Shout out to the UK government. No, fuck that. We're not shouting them boys out. No, don't shout out the UK government. Remind me later, I've got to tell you something that came in the post with me today which I was very shocked about. So yeah, these numbers are... I didn't think that Halo players were going to get a massive amount of money. Standard. Yeah. But I was surprised by the fact that when you look at some of the salaries that players are getting paid, like Valorant players for example, I think I read in an article somewhere that most of them are on six figures a year. Okay. I would imagine that would be very similar sorts of money for Counter-Strike players. I would imagine it would be similar sorts of money for League of Legends players. It surprises me that in Halo the wages are so low, but then at the same time it doesn't surprise me at all because I feel it doesn't have the same level of commercial appeal. Yeah, the viewership on Halo compared to other games is not as high as they would need it to be to earn more. Yeah, to earn the money. I feel like it's kind of sad because obviously back in the day Halo was the controller eSport. Way before COD took off and it was Halo I don't know what the salaries were like back in the day, but obviously they had massive sponsorship deals. Everything that was going on was happening in and around Halo. It's kind of sad to see that it's not fallen off because it's still fantastic to watch, but it's not where it used to be. It's not at the absolute pinnacle of the western eSport, like controller eSports environment. It's quite down the pecking order. It's interesting. The other thing about this interview from a personal point of view, I had the opportunity to speak to the managing director of a European eSports company. One of the things that he said to me was that for an eSports organization something that's incredibly important is obviously outreach, like social media outreach, like visibility, things like this. So players that have their own established personal brands are a lot more, I don't want to say desirable because of the impression that if you are cracked out your mind but you're really bad at streaming, you're not going to get a chance. I don't think that's the case at all. It's more the complete package. It aids you in your contract negotiations when you're talking about payment from the organization, let's just put it that way. Because you bring more to the table. Yeah, 100%. I think it's like it just creates mutually beneficial situations where you promote something, you promote the organization, the organization promotes you. You're both proffering each other up in terms of reach and gaining followers and gaining brand deals and creating more value for everyone involved. I think that's the crux of the matter is if you can create value for anyone that you're involved with, they can create value for you and therefore you can demand more money effectively. Especially if you're also cracked out your mind. You know what I mean? Yeah, I get you. One last thing I want to touch on as well is the breaking point APG episode dropped. I had no idea this was coming out. It just appeared one day on my YouTube and I was like, yo, hit that. Let's see what he's saying. The very first thing he addresses, I've only watched about half of it because they cover a variety of topics. It is very, very good. APG is a really interesting guy. I didn't know he was in a car crash. I didn't know that he then also on the same day that he was in a car crash went to an event with a severe concussion and tried to play. That's that next level dog mentality. He might have committed as fuck to just go and do that. The car crash stopped him from playing for a few years because of his hands and stuff. It's just wild, isn't it? I think this is the thing, Ray, the absolute drive that these guys have to compete is insane. I don't think I've ever felt that driven about anything in my life to get into a serious situation and then still go and do it. You know what I mean? Maybe that's just me, though. Maybe I do take the easy way out and make excuses. Take the easy way out? You don't have the drive. You ain't got that dog in you. There's no passion. What's that boy say about Chelsea? He's like, there's no passion. There's no... something else. I know the video, bro. He's screaming down the video. Screaming down the video. I know it's really mean, but I don't know exactly what he says because I've not fully listened to it and watched it. It's bad. Yeah. You sure you don't want to do a little rendition? No, I'm good, thanks. Coming up to Christmas. I like sitting in my house. The main takeaway from this APG interview was that there is no animosity between him and Norcic. I know he's spoken quite a few times about that specifically because I feel like when a player gets dropped or leaves an organization, there's a lot of discourse on the internet around the reasonings as to why that could possibly have happened. But he says that effectively it came down to a situation where after they lost Worlds to FaZe because of the manner in which it happened, Formal, Trippy, and Lucid all decided that they needed another player. A different player. Someone that could bring something slightly different to the table. And it just so happened that APG was the only one that was saying that he... I get the impression that when they had this conversation, the three of them were saying, we need to change, and APG was like, nah, I'm still good enough to compete with you. We just need to work harder as a unit. I don't know how that decision was made. I don't think it was a straight up, well, we all want to change and you want to stay, so in a bit. I don't think it was that. Those four players, those four guys, they don't strike me as people that would ever look at a situation like that. You know what I mean? Obviously, Formal and APG are boys from ages ago anyway. So, like, literally, so they're not, there's not gonna be it's not like Formal's just gonna turn around and be like, yeah, yo, you suck dude. Like, no, that isn't what happened. I liked the accent. It was good, wasn't it? It was good. Um... So, yeah, you know what I mean? He's out now. I'd be interested to see how he does. I think Native Gaming played in that off-season thing yesterday. I think they got like 7th or 8th, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe it was like 6th or something. I'm not sure. I did see the table, but like, I can't lie. I haven't really been paying attention to that. I just don't like... I'm not really sure how much you can take away from it when you've got teams from Europe playing on AEMS. Like, you know what I mean? Teams that aren't even teams like competing together like Frosty and the boys on Solitude. That's definitely not gonna be a team because Frosty's not leaving Fez. You know what I mean? I think Stella's on that team. Stella's not leaving SSG. We know Stella's not leaving SSG because OpTic... OpTic tried. They couldn't work the contract out, which, reading between the lines, I would assume means that SSG turned around and went, yeah, you can have him for a massive buyout. And OpTic just went, yeah, no, we're not doing that. Like, you know what I mean? So we'll take Deadzone instead. So we'll take Penguin instead because he didn't want to re-up his contract. Also, I did see on Twitter today, KingJ tweeted that he was like, oh, GG's Quadrant, when they played yesterday, he was like, GG's Quadrant. Also, yeah, KingJ, who was like, I'm not competing anymore, but now he's back. You know what I mean? The GOAT, bro. I love KingJ. He is the best player in the world. He just gets unlucky a lot. It's just bad timing constantly. Bad timing, bro. An old woman's cursed on him for bad timing. Don't worry, we're not getting into that. I don't know what happened the other day. Hey, yo, what? I told you about it, bro, when I had that mental dream about that woman cursing me, but it's like 6.50 in the morning. You've got fucking bad timing on that. Bad timing, bro, exactly, from the curse. Let's not get it twisted. It's one of them inter-dimensional curses. Actually, don't drive me up the wall today. Inter-dimensional curses in your dream. What was I saying before you started wigging me out with talks of service revolvers and curses and stuff? KingJ. Oh, yeah, right. KingJ. So he said, he tweeted and he was like, You know the sort of thing that they say crap or someone who just loves talking shit. Those guys are correct, man, but we were better on the day. Yeah, exactly. I saw a video the other day and it was like, top 50 trash-talking incidents that went wrong. Then I was like, well, nothing bad to do. Go on then. Number three was Crimsex calling. Crimsex because Formal said that Dallas Empire were onliners only and that's why they won the World Championship. Then they turned up to LAN in the next season and they battered Optic or they battered Huntsman or whoever it was and Crimsex was just like, when's Jumanji 3 come out, you blackjack looking motherfucker? Don't speak about me. And I was like, yo! Like, holy shit! That is a violation out of Crimsex. My man's off to race proper cars now, huh? Be interesting to see how that plays out, bro. Well, he's shitting the racing sims, so I mean every time I watch him scream at that sim he's smashed up his Porsche every single time. Actual cars worries me. He might actually be a better actual driver than he is a sim driver. I mean, potentially. It could happen. I wonder if he's raced Verstappen in the sim? Because he plays Rennsport, doesn't he? Can't tell you. I don't know. We'll have to do some research on that. Max Verstappen, eSports icon. Oh, shh. Get out. You love him, bro. Hang on, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to do one thing that'll really annoy one person. Abu Dhabi. There we go. That's it. That'll do. Are you done? Yeah, that'll do. That'll really annoy one specific person. And he knows fine well who it is. He knows fine well who it is and right now he's raging in his fucking, wherever he is. Headphones are raging. Rent free. Rent free. Abu Dhabi. Make a note of the timestamp, bro, and just send him the link and 52 25. See, that's that interdimensional shit. I was a rebro. You know what I mean? That's what I got. I got cops out of that dream. Anyway, going back to the King J story, you remember that one? We started talking about that about like three years ago. Here we go. King J. GG's Quadrant, standard nice one, whatever, right? So Quadrant, specifically Quadrant Halo, because I don't see them engaged with literally anything else, has a... I don't even know what you call them, to be honest with you. It's just just like a, they're just like fans, I guess, like and they're called like, I don't even, I'm not even going to try and pronounce it because I always get it wrong. But like, I want to hear it though. It's like squad chair or quad chair or something like that. But I can't remember which one it is and I don't want to say it's this because I'll get it wrong. Like, you know what I mean? I thought it was going to be like some French word that you were going to try and butcher. No, no, no, no. But they were like, when I went to the European... they had the flags and the jerseys and you know what I mean? They just fucking love Quadrant. Like, it's wild, right? But one of them, yeah? Who is like big in the scene tweeted King J and was like yeah, this isn't Quadrant. And I was like, okay. But I don't believe you. I do not believe you. I believe that legend is leaving, bro. You reckon? Yeah, I believe it, man. I don't know. Because obviously the big elephant in the room, who is SSG's fourth player? Who is it? You said to me that the video has been created publicly. The video has been created. It is there, ready to go. Yeah, it's created, edited, it's just not listed yet. It's not public yet. But... Do you reckon... I didn't even mention this, bro, right? The other piece of supporting evidence for my argument. Yeah? Uh-huh. Na'vi. Yes. The Na'vi roster of Jimbo, Snipedrone, Mighties and Glory, that was the most recent Na'vi roster. Yeah. They're now all free agents and Glory is not teaming with them. Now, Glory is disgusting, mate. He's genuinely disgusting. His career trajectory has been nuts. I do not see him saying he doesn't want to play with those guys. This is an established team. These are players. Like, realistically, when you look at the top 8 players were on 2 teams. Yeah. Glory, by definition now, is one of those top 8 players. 100%, I believe that. Right? Why would he bun off 3 of the top 8 players to play with who? You know what I mean? Yeah, you'd have to I don't see it. Yeah, like, I don't see it. Like, you know, maybe he's decided he wants to do his own thing because they're out of contracts or Na'vi. I don't even know what that situation is. Jimbo just tweeted one day. He was like, yeah, like, look at and it's like, that's wild. You know what I mean? Na'vi are a partnered team, so what are they going to do? What's their next move? Are they exiting completely? Which I would find surprising because they've been supportive of European Halo activities. Their team isn't terrible. You know what I mean? Their team's good in the scheme of things. Yeah. Yeah, okay, they're not as good as Quadrant, but then some American teams aren't as good as Quadrant. You know what I mean? And as everyone who is American Halo fans love to tell everyone from the US that the American teams are just better than everyone. It's like, you know, I don't know. I don't know what's happening. This was something that I didn't even see remotely coming. Like, there'd been no whispers of it, apart from HES Pro Talk where they retweeted it and were like, this was the big news of the offseason. I'm just like, how do you boys know this shit? Yeah, but they've got the inside knowledge. Yeah, they do, man. They really do, as is evidenced by the fact that they're interviewing vice-presidents of esports for Native Gaming. Exactly. But you know what I mean? Even still, curveballs are coming thick and fast in Rostamania. Do you reckon SSG will announce the newest player before the end of the year, or do you think they'll wait until the next year to do it? I feel the problem is ... Number one, to answer your question directly, I don't know. I couldn't tell you. And I couldn't tell you purely because they keep sort of like milking the reveal. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like, who is it? Who's it going to be? Is it going to be this guy? Like, literally, you've placked that there, a video editor tweeted, the video is ready, it's been done. I'm just waiting on the GM to say I can post it. And the GM retweeted it and was like, this has nothing to do with me. I don't know what you're talking about. But it was very obviously like, you do know what he's talking about. You know what I mean? Because they were both SSG official people. So it's like, this is very clearly like a marketing PR exercise. Yeah, trying to draw up the hype. Yeah, it's like literally trying to draw up the hype. So I can't tell you because they're doing it, they're not doing it. It's this guy, it's not this guy. You know what I mean? They're baiting people in, me included. No. They're quite a thinker. They were selling and I bought, just like that boy in that search lobby the other day. For fuck's sake. Search lobbies are mad. I was selling, that guy bought, and then I sold. The thing is, you were selling, he bought it, but in actual fact he stole it. He stole it because you decided to not bother with it. Man, right here trying to sell on the street and then gone, you know what? I'm going to not pay attention to my stock. Oh, it's gone. How's that happened? Let's find out why them shoplifters got away with so much when I used to work in the store, bro. Oh, fuck. So, no one from corporate listens to this. Or else I'm getting a fucking invoice. But it's alright, you're so incognito and mysterious. We don't know who you are or where you worked. Apart from the fact that you've mentioned it at least five times. I've not. You know me. I've never mentioned where you used to work. I've never mentioned where you used to work. Can't be. You're speaking all fucking lies now, eh? Yeah, I do. Have you not got it yet, bro? It's taking you seven efforts to come to the conclusion that I'd make this up as we go along. Mate. We're trying to steal a living here, eh? Like, shut up. Stop breaking in the wall. We're not trying to steal a living. We're trying to earn a living. I'm trying to steal a living. Shut up, Manscaped. Raid Shadow Legends! Now, if you've got a podcast co-host that you can't deal with, you should take contact. Better help. Mate, like, you remember when that Far Cry 5 advert kept playing on Switch? Yes. I turned my Xbox on the other day because they've added it to Game Pass and I saw it and I immediately was just Yara! Like, immediately. Game Flashback to Yara! Fuck. What was it? The Far Cry 5 audiobook. Oh, going back to Carolina, bro, right? Back to fucking King J for a fourth time. Going back to King J, yeah, you remember that. Going back to Carolina, right? Carolina Royal Ravens. They might not have won this weekend, but do you know who did? And that's the end of the podcast. Thanks for having me. Mate, like, oh, fuck you, bro. The Carolina Panthers were a football game. Monodons. Like, it was 9-7. Did you see how they got that 9? Do you know? No, it was... What was it? Do you know how they got all their fucking points? Yeah, I know Bryce Young got a 95-yard game-winning touchdown. No, he didn't. Mate, you're fucking lying to yourself. It was 3-6. Oh, well, fucking whatever. Bro, like, I love the Panthers, yeah, but if you think I'm watching that shit on a Sunday afternoon, you have got something else fucking coming, bro. What way am I watching that? All the way you scored fucking points. This is the thing, bro. I'm so tired of, like, watching fucking Carolina play football for three bastard hours, and the only thing we do is kick field goals. Because we traded away the best running back in the league, and we traded away our best wide receiver. I mean, yeah, we traded away our best wide receiver so we could get Bryce Young. But, like, fuck me, bro. McCaffrey's made a glass, he's passed it. Like, hello? Like, hello? Like, what the fuck is going on? Like, bro, like, mate, I'm still so sad about that. Especially the Carolina Panthers. It's got the person making the same calls for the Royal Ravens as well. Scott Ferrer is the GM of the Royal Ravens. It would explain a lot. It wouldn't even surprise me, bro. It wouldn't surprise me if Dave Tepper buys the Royal Ravens franchise spot and then pays loads of money to get them, like, to get them grass in the practice facility, because he won't fucking do that for his NFL franchise. And then, right, he buys, like, Faze out of their contract. It would not even fucking surprise me. I can't wait for it. I can't wait for next season. At least they're playing quarterbacking. You've got Bryce Young, the IGL on fucking Cod. You know what it is, bro, right? He'll trade Bryce Young to the Cardinals for Kyler Murray, and then Kyler Murray will play on the fucking Cod team as well. Oh, we need to get, oh, we're gonna trade Bryce Young for Abizi. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds good. Abizi playing quarterback for the Panthers. No, we don't need a quarterback. What we need is some fucking offensive linemen, bro. I'm not even gonna get into it yet. Football podcast coming soon, because I've got some very passionate fucking viewpoints about the Carolina Panthers and everything that is wrong with that organisation. It's just that we don't have enough on our plate. We've got one. Football podcast. Football podcast coming soon, bro. It's just gonna be 90 minutes of me screaming down the mic. Literally, here's the episode one rundown, right? Things I love about the Carolina Panthers. Cam Newton. Things I hate about the Carolina Panthers. Everything else. Take this fucking pig. I do not like it. Mate. But yeah, man. Team Ned podcast episode seven. You got anything else to add, bro? Twice you've tried to convict your brother of the Panthers on this podcast, and twice you've got a rant. Just behind it, bro. Like, seriously, next time, be like, no. We're not doing this, bro. We're not doing this again, man. The good thing is, though, is because no one's gonna listen to this part of it. They'll have turned off by now. Halfway through. No. They'll have at least started talking about his business, and they'll be like, what the fuck, though? We've always got one. He'll always listen all the way to the end. And when he gets to the end, he'll just hear... Shout out to Goat, man. Abu Dhabi wasn't fit. It went exactly how it's supposed to. I can tell you exactly how the conversation's gonna go, as well. You want me to tell you what's gonna happen? Yeah, yeah. Give us a rendition. He's gonna be... Hang on, hang on, hang on. Hang on. And scene. What? Mate, I'm cut out. Is that his Discord cutting out? No. I was giving you the... Oh, right, shit, right. Okay, right. Oh, fuck me. Mate, I didn't do drama at school. Nor did I, but I'm still not... Right, go on then. Crack on. Right, go on. Oh, you want me to do it now, are you? Now you understand it, you want me to do it. Right, okay. I'm not gonna do the impression, because that's Mokey Disrespectful, right? No! In fact, it's not even Mokey Disrespectful, it's fucking Barry Disrespectful. But, like... 3, 2, 1, scene. This is what's gonna happen, right. He's gonna come in, and he's gonna go, you're right, boys. I listen to the podcast. And I think... You need to... Is it... Fucking Discord, like, oh my god, like, why can't we go to a party chat? Fuck this. Right, that's what's gonna happen. A little bit of context for everybody there. Who we're talking about, he knows who he is. Our quality tester. Behind the scenes. Our OG listener. Our OG listener. What was it called? When you send shit out to, like, a small group of people to start with. What's it called? Our focus group. Our focus man. On this point, yeah, like, our focus group. Anyone that we've sent it to, privately, and you've listened to it and given us feedback, you have no idea how much we appreciate that shit. Like, 100%. Like, I love you people. Yeah, so, the focus man, the OG focus man, has a slight issue with the Discord on Xbox, due to the, I don't know if it's like the... Like that it doesn't work? Yeah, it's something to do with the overload of the mic or whatever, but he just cuts in and out when trying to have a conversation at any time. And it's the funniest thing, because in the middle of the conversation he'll just... And then you'll get Discord! Shut up, man. You know who you are. Go. Money abadabby. But, have you got anything else to add, Jade? Or... I'm literally thinking now, I don't think I've got anything else to say. Cool. Well, neither do I. At the date of recording, as you said earlier on the 18th of December, the COD League, there is nothing for the next three weeks. Likelihood, there's not going to be a lot going on in between now to Christmas and on to New Year. Christmas is only a week away, New Year two weeks away. So I think this will be the last podcast of 2023. The last episode. Future, probably back maybe just after New Year. Might have one on New Year, depending on what's going on. But it might be the week after. We could do a super-hungover New Year's date one. Oh yeah, because you know me getting super-hungover in my fucking office. Out my chair, at my desk. I'll have a hangover big enough for the pair of us, bro. Don't you worry about that. That's going to be really good content, man. I'm chatting and you're just going me, yeah man, fuck. If you like me, I'll just give you a second, bro. Me, hang on, hang on. I need a beans on toast there, hang on. No, you've got to eat beans on toast on a hangover. On a hangover? On a hangover. What's your hangover food of choice? Hangover food of choice? I generally like, I don't eat, I just drink water and you know like LucasAid Sport electrolyte drinks? Yeah. I just drink a fucking pair of that, right? Yeah, because actually you need the medicine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean not the fizzy one, you know, the still one. Oh, the still one. Advertise for people playing sports. Yeah, LucasAid Sport, shut up. Other isotonic drinks are available such as Powerade, Gatorade, anything else with the word aid on it, apart from Cherryade or Lemonade. To be fair, if it's a really bad hangover, Lemonade, a pint of Lemonade, ice cubes in it and then you stir it until the bubbles go out. Flat Lemonade? Flat Lemonade with ice. It does slap. But anyway, yeah, like that and then normally after I've stopped, and then just sleep, that's my hangover cure, just sleep it off and then I'll get up, order a pizza, fucking eat my own body weight and my super high fat cheese and then go back to sleep again. Fair. That's my hangover cure. Probably not the greatest thing to do. No, but, you know, it's your own. Yeah, exactly. What's your hangover cure, bro? I don't drink. I avoid it because of the hangover. You must be the only person in Scotland who doesn't drink. Yeah. I'm the new breed. Same with like drivers. I use my indicators. I'm the new breed. You know? I just don't know. I'm not a... I don't like the hangover because it just ruins the next day so I'm like, fuck that. Yeah, I get it. If I do, I don't even know. The hangover cure is sitting and feeling sorry for myself and waiting for it to pass. I need to have a spew. That's the game. A little game of bam or no bam. Bam or no bam. Shaggert, yes I am. Can you call me Shaggert? No you cannot. PC Jack McLaren. What's he called? Jack McLaren? PC Jack McLaren. Shut up, man. Gender? Gender. You've parted me down. Inconclusive. Do you live near to where you've been stopped? No. No. We've done it again. We did the one thing that he said don't do and we've done it. Oh, inside jokes. If you want to find out what we're on about, search Scott Squad on YouTube. You'll know from there. Last podcast of the year. Probably back next time. First week, maybe second week of next year. Yeah. Hopefully by the time we come back as well. After the winter break. Might have some big news. We'll definitely have socials. Twitter at the very least is going to be happening. I know you need that. That's getting sorted. We've got some other plans for maybe format a little bit. But obviously we need to have a proper discussion about that. Any suggestions, feedback? Anything at all that any of the listeners have got? Just tell us. Say it. We're all going to listen to it. We're always wanting to evolve make this better and make it more appealing and digestible for people. Just don't come in and be like, it's fucking dog shit. If you do say that, then get ready to have the smoke handed back to you. We're not a corporate entity, bruv. That's all I'm saying. Two Sony's and two respective households. We will give it back with words, but not physically because we're shithouses. I don't think we should threaten our listeners, bruv. Nah, fuck them. Merry Christmas from me. Don't be a shithouse. Don't be a shithouse. I think that's it, bruv. Monodons. Not monodons. You can't say monodons after that. I can, watch me. Monodons.