Gamers 2 Astralis, please

The EU RMR has come to a close, and teams now know their fate.

The weaker teams like SAW, ECSTATIC, and G2 have booked their flights home. Whilst the top dogs like FaZe, NAVI, and, Sprout are on their way to Brazil.

But the 2-2 teams hadn’t even had a chance to play yet before roster-mania began.

Eternal Fire went 1-3 in the RMR and had just been knocked out when it got announced that they were parting ways with IGL MAJ3R. He'll be replaced by xfl0ud, who by all accounts isn't an IGL.

Who knows… maybe they’ll go the way of Turkish pug teams and only play D2. It always works against us on Faceit, so why not tier 1?

Another team who’s partaking in roster-mania (at least we think) is the aforementioned Astralis. And rightfully so: they were nothing short of awful this RMR. Exemplified by the fact this is the first major Xyp9x isn’t attending. So, what can Astralis do?

Well, we’ve already talked about Dev1ce’s return to the disgraced Danes plenty enough. So let's take a look at the rest of the team:

• k0nfig is rumoured to be out after his little “incident”
• Xyp9x has had the fans calling for his head because of his recent performances
• farlig will most likely be taking the bullet for the dev1ce move

So, who will the remaining two players be? Could they poach the young Danes from Sprout? Or will Astralis go international?

International teams do seem to be the flavour of the month. FNATIC, MOUZ, ENCE, and, of course, G2 have all had some form of success with the switch to international rosters. Speaking of which.

Oh G2… It would be tragic if it wasn’t so damn funny.

It looked like they were gonna get back to winning ways when they beat GamerLegion 16:3 on Vertigo. But then they turn around and get smacked 16:4 back.

Credit where it’s due: m0NESY looked damn good, and we wouldn’t expect anything else. Just like you wouldn’t expect NiKo to “just” average a 1.07 rating over the event. (which includes a 16-0 victory)

And on top of that: it looks like huNter’s cousin hasn’t taken the result well mentally. It probably doesn’t help morale that there are doubts cast over HooXi mere months into his tenure with G2. This seems harsh but to play devil's advocate, both Nexa AND AleksiB made it to the major with their new teams. Maybe NiKo is the problem after all

To finish this off, we would like to congratulate Bad News Eagles, not just for making it to the major. But also for carrying on FlipSid3’s legacy of doing basically nothing all year and still qualifying for the biggest event. Long may it continue.