One of Cloud9’s star CS:GO riflers Ricky “floppy” Kemery would like Valve to put Train back in the official map pool in place of Vertigo, which entered the rotation in March 2019 and has been criticized by players over the years.
“I like Train,” floppy said in an interview with Blix.gg on Feb. 1. “I love playing the inner bombsite, it was so much fun back then. So, I would play Train again. I think Train is really good. I’d rather play it than something like Vertigo. I think Vertigo should be out of the map pool because that map is actually terrible.”
CS:GO fans didn’t see Vertigo get much playtime at the BLAST Premier Spring Groups earlier this month, which was the first tier-one tournament of the year, featuring 12 teams in total, including some of the world’s best such as FaZe Clan, Heroic, and G2 Esports. The map was played just five times, only one more than Anubis, which is still a new map in competition all things considered.
Inferno, Mirage, and Overpass were the most played maps of the tournament, having been picked 15, 12, and 11 times, respectively. All of these three maps have been a staple in CS:GO esports over the years and delivered high-quality matches, especially Inferno with the epic ELEAGUE Boston Major 2018 grand finals.
Despite floppy’s complaints, however, it’s unlikely Valve will remove Vertigo anytime soon. The developer of CS:GO replaced the iconic Dust II with Anubis in mid-November 2022, following the conclusion of IEM Rio Major. The map pool will likely stay the way it is now with Anubis, Vertigo, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke, Ancient, and Overpass until the BLAST.tv Paris Major ends in May. Popular Counter-Strike: 1.6 map Tuscan was reworked for CS:GO last year, but Valve preferred to add Anubis to the map pool instead.
