But I can save them, and here’s how I’d do it.

A fading flag

Throughout the previous iterations of Counter-Strike, the Danish flag has always been raised higher than most others. There was SK Gaming and mTw in 1.6, and Astralis and HEROIC in Global Offensive. Even outside of those teams, Danish players stood tall - and not just because of their freakish Scandinavian height thing - but because they were genuinely good players.

Chief of all of those teams and players, of course, is the Astralis team that won three Majors in a row. device. dupreeh. gla1ve. Magisk. Xyp9x. The greatest team of all time. The five players who revolutionised - and to some, killed - Counter-Strike.

The game wouldn’t be the same without them, but ironically, neither are Astralis. The mountain that they built as they went to the stars is now a shadow that looms large over the organisation, one that makes each failure of each new lineup seem all the more disappointing.

But is that not their fault? You can, of course, blame the players for their poor performances on the server, but look at the players they’ve had in the last few years. They don’t exactly scream ‘good GMing’, do they?

Keeping Bubzkji caged for so long he eventually packed it in altogether. The clusterf-ck that is their academy team. Holding onto gla1ve and Xyp9x until their legacies were all but diminished. Never truly providing blameF with a capable team. Signing stavn and jabbi. Allowing device to IGL. Trying to make Staehr happen. We’ve missed a bunch. The list is still long. You get the point.

Then again, all of that, although some of that is down to their own making, is a problem that they are bound to. Astralis is a Danish organisation, with a Danish team. Anything otherwise would be sacrilege. Imagine Eternal Fire without Turks, or The MongolZ without Mongolians. It feels wrong, doesn’t it? But in the case of Astralis, maybe it shouldn’t.

It’s undeniable now that the Danish flag is one that’s fading in Counter-Strike. Just like the Swedish, French, and Polish flags before it. It’s no longer hoisted so high, it no longer flows so freely in the wind.

Astralis hanging on to talent for so long probably contributed to that, their not-so-well-kept secret clashes with the former HEROIC guys probably did, too. But even then, is there anyone out there that is really going to suggest that the new guys coming up are capable of turning things round for an elite organisation?

No? I didn’t think so.

Because that’s the truth of it. Denmark doesn’t have a new device, it doesn’t have a new dupreeh, it doesn’t even have a new Xyp9x.

All those that had promised to be have ultimately failed. Just like when Sweden tried to look past f0rest and GeT_RiGhT, and when Poland had tried to look past pasha and TaZ, all that there is to see in Denmark is mediocrity. And mediocrity is not enough for Astralis.

Illustration by Andy

But is it really that hopeless for a nation that lives and breathes Counter-Strike to such a degree that it might actually be cool to play it over there? Maybe not.

The last bastions

It’s true that Astralis might actually have the basis of a good team.

To be clear, that doesn’t mean they have a salvageable core, because they don’t. But they do have salvageable figures.

First off, they have device. He may not be six-time top-five player of the year device, but he is still device. And even a ‘washed’ device is better than most AWPers. Just look at the stats. Even torzsi, who is often heralded as a top five AWPer in the world, just scrapes ahead of device on CT sides and lags behind on the T side.

Of course, there’s something to be said about the level the two players are playing at, but that does get slightly balanced out by the fact that device is playing for a much, much, worse team.

Then there’s HooXi. The Gigachad. A pragmatist might suggest cutting him in favour of someone younger like Chr1zN, but I’m only half-way to a pragmatist. Also, I quite like HooXi, and that goes a long way.

He’s also genuinely improved the team since joining them. Not that it was too hard of a task - they were awful prior to his arrival - but the difference is night and day. That alone should be enough for him to earn some time on a new and improved Astralis.

As for the other three - or four, if you want to count both stavn and Magisk - bin them all off. Seriously. All three of them. Staehr isn’t that guy, he never will be, he’s just too inconsistent for it. As for jabbi, he might have improved under HooXi and is actually playing the best CS of his career right now, but what happens when that form disappears as it has so many times before?

Then there’s Magisk, but let’s be real here. And stavn? Give us a break.

So, who do you bring in to replace them and stay Danish? It should be obvious, really.

The first two names are the same two names they should have signed over the stabbi duo, TeSeS and sjuush. The real stars behind HEROIC. The type of soldiers you need to build a team that can be successful despite not being able to match the firepower of the international teams or donk.

Two players happy to be supportive elements of teams, they’ve both evolved into stars this year, but neither of them carry the ego that typically comes with a star player - looking at you, Twistzz and EliGE.

Prying them away from the organisations might be hard, at least in the case of sjuush, anyway. We all know that TeSeS will be the next on the chopping block as Falcons make another million dollar signing. But they’re exactly the type of players Astralis need. Players without egos. Players who step up. Who step up and activate the abilities of the real stars on the same.

That leaves us with one spot left. A spot that can be filled by the one player Astralis should never let go. The best player in Denmark: blameF.

Yeah, I know - “But he’s baitF!” - and you’re a f-cking idiot. That’s not my problem, nor is it blameF’s.

The last, real star left in Denmark. He’s been in solid form for fnatic this year, putting up a very solid 1.20 rating. Far too good to be languishing in the awkward VRS blip that lies between tier one and tier two, it’s time for him to be recalled to his nation’s greatest CS organisation and feast on the space TeSeS and HooXi can provide for him.

Admit it. You like the sound of it. Or, you at least like the sound of watching it fail. You sick b-stards.

The modern meta

So, what happens if it does fail?

Well, that would spell the end of Danish CS. And no, that isn’t an exaggeration.

Sure, you could try again with jabbi. You could even give Chr1zN a go or someone from ECSTATIC. But you don’t need a crystal ball to see that it won’t go any better.

If, in this hypothetical world where the attempt at saving Astralis actually did happen, and in that same hypothetical world it didn’t work, there really is only one option left: going international.

I’m not going to entertain the thought experiment of who you would sign in that eventuality. That would involve pretending I know enough about tier two to suggest adequate arrivals. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know enough, and I don’t care to, either. We only deal with the big leagues here at TLDR.

The younger, lazier me would have suggested REZ and PR - and come to think of it, they probably would work - but who they would sign in this version of the hypothetical world doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they would have to do it at all.

Astralis are the only tier one Danish team left. They outlasted Dignitas. They outlasted North. They outlasted HEROIC. But it still feels like their time is running out. It has for a while.

Maybe it’s a result of that shadow they built years ago. The four Majors. The Intel Grand Slam. But just like with fnatic and NIP, it will never feel right to see Astralis just be another team that makes up the early exits at every event they attend. Astralis is a team that is meant to be fighting for trophies, and just like fnatic and NIP found out as they bid farewell to Swedish CS, they may have to leave behind their national roots in order to do so once more.

For Astralis, that must be an impossibly hard decision to make. They are Danish Counter-Strike. The Danish team. The team that every Danish player dreamed, or perhaps still dreams, of playing for. Their DNA is etched into the streets of Copenhagen, their star once shined so brightly that the Danish Prime Minister went to play CS with them, but that star has been dimming for a long time now. And the star of the international meta burns brightly.

It’s sad, really. The death of national CS I mean. But we’ve all known that for a long time. It’s obvious in how dearly we all hold onto the likes of Aurora, The MongolZ, and TYLOO.

But, that said, it’s also sad to see a star burn out. And as someone who really got into CS off the back of a 1hp Xyp9X 1v3 on Overpass and a bold rush onto the A bombsite of Train one cold night in January 2017, I’m not ready to see that star burn out just yet. Not without one last real attempt at reaching to the stars.

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