Richard Lewis: “HUNDEN still bad”

Everything good comes in threes. The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and now The Hunden Files.

Richard Lewis has done some digging, getting access to 101 pages of files from Heroic’s lawsuit against their former coach.

And, there’s some juice. HUNDEN had signed an initial contract with Astralis in April 2021, a full two months before IEM Cologne kicked off.

The full extent of the leak that caused his second ESIC ban has also been revealed, with screenshots of the Google Drive that Heroic called “strategy documents”, including a weird set of notes on Astralis Talent that even Lewis can’t explain.

A lot of HUNDEN’s communication about the leak is to VNG, the old Astralis Talent head coach — there’s clearly more to this story that has not yet been revealed.

But we know that HUNDEN was also very involved with the main team. The third set of leaks shows HUNDEN taking part in team-building scenarios with Kasper Hvidt (Astralis Sporting Director), including variations of Astralis featuring Bubzkji, es3tag, acoR, stavn, as well as how they ended up with Lucky.

blameF and k0nfig were only convinced to sign once Bubzkji was excluded, giving Xyp9x a way back in.

A lot of this is confirmation of what we already knew: Astralis were scrambling to find a team once dupreeh, Magisk, and zonic departed, and HUNDEN was a key part of that new team.

blameF and k0nfig were his signings, as was Lucky after acoR proved too expensive. Messioso, for one, was not impressed with the “unconventional” recruitment tactics.

Poaching, and early talks, are a part of every sport, no matter how hard regulators try to prevent it. With HUNDEN’s past, him taking part in some scumbaggery shouldn’t be too surprising — but it is a reminder for those who have forgotten his previous antics.

Including the ESL Pro League director who showed him celebrating after every. single. Astralis. round.

Nobody needs to see that.