The rumors that were circling around the professional scene of Counter-Strike yesterday have just recently been confirmed: the sudden burgeoning legend of Patrick ‘Es3tag’ Hansen is being shifted from Astralis to Cloud9.
As Astralis has recently been brought back to full strength with the return of Andreas ‘Xyp9x’ Højsleth coming from leave after a string of burn-out left Astralis woefully under strength and dropping matches left, right, and center that saw them drop below the top ten for the first time in years. Now, the Danish legends of the scene are getting ready for the return of the pristine Counter-Strike.
Unfortunately, this means that the growing legend of ‘Es3tag’ is apparently coming to an end as far as his stint with Astralis is concerned, as rumors have finally been confirmed: ‘Es3tag’ has been sold to Cloud9 to ensure he has an opportunity to continue to compete at the highest level.
We’ve discussed how Astralis could possibly juggle their star-studded roster when Xyp9x returned, as Patrick Hansen had more than proven his ability and competence on multiple servers against some of the greatest teams, and managed to out-frag storied veterans across the continent in online formats; meaning that there was a slew of things needed to contend with such as latency and bouncing across servers for the necessary communication with admins.
We literally have yet to see Patrick Hansen’s full power.
With this in mind, it’s widely considered that Patrick Hansen has merely just begun a new reign of what could turn into dominance, and now he’s shifted over to the new Cloud9 roster.
Lukas ‘Bubzkji’ Anderson is still on the Astralis team, making him the proverbial sixth wheel; the Danish player noted that he has been offered ‘the same solution’ as ‘Es3tag’ to ensure that the player could ensure that he gets his fair share of game time; he has thus far declined, as nothing entirely interesting has come across.
https://twitter.com/Bubzkji/status/1316655427266977792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Now, this all boils down to if the classic Astralis line-up will be able to match against Cloud9 picking up Patrick to round out what is becoming a star-studded line-up that has some speculating may be able to bring down massive names within the European scene.
Others are pointing to a case of C9 simply having too many stars without enough metaphorical mortar to help bind the massive names together, willing to obtain information during matches by taking unfavorable duels.
We’ll find out soon enough how this effects both teams; it should be an interesting few months within the pro scene of CS:GO, at the very least.