The Ukrainian player delivered some magical moments on the Nuke map.

The Falcons got their Thunderpick World Championship campaign off to a shaky start as they lost 2-0 to 3DMAX in their opening match of Group A.

More than 100,000 people watched Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev's first official match in more than 7 months since he joined the Falcons on a short-term loan deal until the end of the year.

The Ukrainian player clearly showed instability on Anubis, a map he barely played on during his time with Natus Vincere, but his kill potential was more clearly demonstrated on Nuke, where he Looks more like his old form.

s1mple rarely participated in the action on the T side on Anubis, only having 1 opening kill in the entire round. On the CT side, he only got 2 kills, both with AWP in the same round.

It wasn't the debut fans were hoping for, but s1mple overcame a bad start and started showing signs of regaining his old form on Nuke, where he played much more comfortably.

He had a 1v2 clutch in the round with 4 kills in round 1 and some nice multi-kills in round 2, as he did his best to drag the match to map 3. s1mple had 27 kills, 15 more than his closest teammate and an average of 124 damage per round, but that still wasn't enough to force a decider as the Falcons performed poorly on their map of choice.

Falcons fall to the lower bracket of Group A, where they will fight for the right to continue playing against the loser of the match between Virtus.pro and OG.

This weekend, the team will travel to Poland for ESL Challenger Katowice, s1mple's first LAN event since ESL Pro League 18.