The Danish organization have confirmed the signing of Patrick “es3tag” Hansen on their twitter which now makes them to have a roster with six active players. We will get to witness es3tag featuring in the team’s official practice schedules and matches starting from the 1st of July. After nearly two years since the signing of Emil “Magisk” Reif from OpTic in 2018, this addition marks the first roster change inculcated by the Danish side. With es3tag joining the force, Astralis will now be looking forward to field a six-man roster where the players would be provided with a certain flexibility to take a break from the Pro scene and easily recover from the mental stress caused throughout the tournaments and travel schedules. We did see Dennis “dennis” and Ruben “RUBINO” Villarroel filling in the shoes for Nicolai “device” Reedtz at Blast Pro Series Copenhagen and at the ESL Pro League Season 6 Finals respectively after the latter went on a Medical break Edman Patrick will be joining his new Danish home when his contract will come to an end with Heroic.
In a statement, Astralis’s CEO Nikolaj Nyholm did add: “Our work with Astralis and all our teams is focused around performance and health. It’s our responsibility as an organization to secure optimal conditions for our employees on all levels, and especially our players, who on a constant basis experience the highest pressure to perform. Increasing the roster size to six players is something we have worked on for a long time with relevant stakeholders in Counter-Strike.”
“This approach is no different than in traditional sports, but it’s new to Counter-Strike, and a change like this will take time to optimize for full advantage. The players, coach and our performance team have been involved in this decision and everybody agrees it is the way to go.“ On his twitter, he did provide an explanation for further questions raised regarding this move after it seemed to have put the relations between Heroic and Chinese side FunPlus Phoenix in Jeopardy where the latter have considered walking out of the deal.
