Usually, when you’re looking to rebuild, you get rid of difficult people to work with, weaker players, or players who don’t really fit what you’re trying to do.

fnatic are going a different way — a complete refresh of their rifle stars.

It’s a bold move, but not one without reason. Changing your support core to try and get wins is what Cloud9 did with interz, SK did with TACO, and MOUZ did with STYKO. We don’t need to tell you how those worked out.

Changing your stars can work — but how deliberate was this decision?

mezii’s departure was probably forced by the attention of Team Vitality, but roeJ heading to Preasy isn’t one that can be described that way.

roeJ was a big signing for fnatic at the time from the ever-impressive Copenhagen Flames and has generally been solid if unspectacular for fnatic. He’s occasionally brilliant, but not often enough to push them into that top tier.

In fact, that he’s ended up at Preasy probably tells that story.

This leaves fnatic with just dexter, afro, and KRIMZ — which is a solid core to build off of, with little in the way of explosive, X factor, hard-carry, I-am-HIM mentality.

Quite who they’re going to find to offer that is, as of this newsletter, unknown to the public. Brollan is available for re-signing but has been awful since moving away from fnatic. FaZe players might be available once Complexity buy them (supposedly), but surely they’d have other suitors?

We think we’ll find out pretty quickly — before the next edition of this newsletter, at least — who fnatic’s last two are, but they’re going to have to be crazy for us to really care.

You’re replacing two stars, fnatic. This better be special.