Five takeaways from YaLLa Compass 2024

The dust has settled in Abu Dhabi, where Volna beat Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-1 in Sunday's grand final to win YaLLa Compass 2024 and the $200,000 first prize. Here are five things we learned from the Kazakh side's first big LAN title.

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1. PashaBMW is a LAN player too

Before this week, every one of the more than 600 maps on Pavel "⁠PashaBMW⁠" Tishchenko's record had been played online, and a familiar question followed him around: what happens when there is no bootcamp and no home internet connection?

The answer is a 1.55 rating over 11 maps, the highest at the event, with 108.2 ADR and a KAST of 79.5%. For context, his rating across the whole of 2023 was 1.33. He won 70.0% of his opening duels.

"I was nervous before the first match, I'm not going to lie," PashaBMW told HLTV. "On stage everything is louder and you see the opponents in front of you. But after the first map against Sashi I felt the same as online, and from there it was just about playing our game."

PashaBMW looked at home on stage from the group stage onwards

2. Nuke was a fortress, Ancient a coin flip

Volna played Nuke four times in Abu Dhabi and won all four, conceding just 26 rounds in total against ENCE, Ninjas in Pyjamas twice, and Astralis. PashaBMW went 74-49 on the map with a 1.44 rating, and the 13-6 that closed out the grand final was the most comfortable map of the playoffs.

Ancient was a different story. Both of Volna's Ancient maps went to overtime: a 22-19 marathon against Astralis that decided the semi-final, and a 12-16 defeat to Ninjas in Pyjamas in the opening map of the final. PashaBMW was not the problem on either, finishing the two maps with a combined 71-38, but both were level at 12-12 after regulation and could have gone either way.

3. Shtorm is the second star Volna needed

Ruslan "⁠Shtorm⁠" Sadykov does not get the headlines, but the 21-year-old AWPer finished the event with a 1.19 rating, the second-best on the team, and made a number of key plays in the playoffs.

"Everybody talks about Pasha, and it's normal, he is our best player," Shtorm said. "But we also know our roles. My job is to hold the angles and give him space to play aggressive. When we both play well, it's very hard to beat us."

4. The supporting cast had a quiet week

The flip side of PashaBMW's tournament is that his rating was 43% above the Volna average. In-game leader Egor "⁠brizer⁠" Kuzmin finished at 0.80, entry fragger Bekzod "⁠m0rik⁠" Murodov at 1.05, and Andrey "⁠Zefir⁠" Fedotov at 0.84.

brizer is not worried. "In my role you don't get a lot of kills, it's normal," he said. "We prepared well for every opponent and we won close maps because everybody knew what to do. The numbers will come."

The Russian between rounds in Abu Dhabi

5. The real test comes next

YaLLa Compass was Volna's fifth title since PashaBMW joined in January 2023 and comes only five weeks after the online YaLLa Compass Spring, where he posted a 1.33 rating. The level of the opposition in Abu Dhabi, with Astralis and Ninjas in Pyjamas in the playoffs, was a clear step up from what Volna usually face.

The team will be back online for CCT Season 2 Europe Series 7 in July. Whether the LAN form travels back home with them, and whether Volna can turn Ancient into a reliable pick, are the two big questions of the summer.

PashaBMW's numbers from the grand final against Ninjas in Pyjamas: