Train will replace Vertigo for the Austin Major

Valve have announced on January 6 that Train is replacing Vertigo for the BLAST.tv Austin Major, catching the entire CS2 community by surprise.

It's unclear at this point if Train is joining the map pool straight away or if Train will only replace Vertigo before the Austin Major kicks in. The latter seems suboptimal as teams would not have enough time to practice and play officials on Train before the Major.

The change comes at a time when Vertigo is the least-picked map across various tournaments. The map has been heavily criticized by pros for years and despite Valve's best efforts to fix the map with updates, it didn't work. Vertigo has been in the map pool since it replaced Cache in March 2019.

Train has been out of the map rotation since May 2021, when Valve removed it to make way for Ancient. Fans were expecting to see train again when CS2 released in September 2023, but the rework only came out in November 2024. The last Valve-sponsored event to feature Train was the StarLadder Berlin Major in 2019.

The main changes made to Train in CS2 include the removal of the ladder in Pop Dog as that portion of the map became Long Dog and Valve also ironically removed several trains from Yard, opting for a more clean layout.

Should Valve not make further changes to the map pool, the BLAST.tv Austin Major will feature Dust 2, Mirage, Inferno, Nuke, Ancient, Anubis, and Train.