Heroic bench Snappi and es3tag
Danish CS:GO team Heroic have announced they have moved Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer and Patrick "es3tag" Hansen to the inactive roster with immediate effect this Sunday, April 5.
The news comes during a tough period for Heroic’s CS:GO squad, who were on the brink of getting signed by FunPlus Phoenix, but saw the deal fall through, following es3tag's announcement he has agreed to join Astralis, which did not go well with the Chinese investors.
“Heroic has during the last month experienced somewhat of a turmoil, but is finally back on track,” read the announcement from the Danish esports organisation.
"With the already announced departure of es3tag, we also announce that Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer will be moved to the inactive roster."
The benching of es3tag should not be shocking to anyone, given that his departure from the team was already announced earlier this month. Despite that, the young Danish CS:GO pro will remain with Heroic until his contract expires, on July 1, and will then be able to join Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen, Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth, Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander and Emil “Magisk” Reif at Astralis as the sixth member of their CS:GO roster
Es3tag begun his CS:GO career in 2015, when he joined Epiphany Bolt and has later played for Team Orbit, HeyGuys, Escape Gaming and Tricked Esports. But it was not until June 2016, when he joined Heroic, that his career took off.
In the first year with Heroic, es3tag has won ECS Season 4 – Europe Development League, World Cyber Arena 2017 – Europe Main Stage, finished runner-up at DreamHack Open Atlanta 2017 and LOOT.BET Cup #2, as well as secured a top-four placement at DreamHack Open Valencia 2017 and StarLadder i-League Invitational #2. In 2018, es3tag went on to win Games Clash Masters 2018 and TOYOTA Master CS:GO Bangkok 2018, as well as pocketed silver medals from Copenhagen Games 2018 and GG:Origin.
Last year, however, was the most successful year of es3tag's career, as he won GG.Bet Sydney Invitational and DreamHack Open Atlanta 2019, as well as finished second at DreamHack Open Rotterdam 2019,GG.Bet Chicago Invitational and claimed a podium finish at GG.Bet Ice Challenge 2019, GG.Bet Beijing Invitational and EPICENTER 2019. Since the turn of the year, Heroic won GG.Bet Winter Cup and finished top-four at DreamHack Open Leipzig 2020 in late January, however, have hit a slump as of late, when they failed to make much noise at ICE Challenge 2020 and Europe Minor Championship – Rio 2020: Closed Qualifier, where they finished seventh-eighth and ninth-12th respectively.
Snappi, on the other side, joined Heroic in August 2016, left for OpTic in April 2018 and reunited with his former team in August 2019. He has before played for a plethora of Counter-Strike teams, including Team X, unu.AiN, Copenhagen Wolves, No Problem!, Eternity Gaming, Xapso and Anexis eSports, TCM-Gaming, as well as Ravens and Playzone during the early days of his professional career as an esports athlete.
The poor results and the controversial decision of FunPlus Phoenix to step away from the deal to acquire the roster, seemingly ushered the Danish CS:GO team to start from scratch and since they will be losing their best-performing player comes summer, some huge changes are needed to keep this boat afloat.
Heroic have yet to unveil who will replace the benched Snappi es3tag, however, claimed the announcement should come sometime this week.
Heroic CS:GO roster is now:
Martin "stavn" Lund
Johannes "b0RUP" Borup
Casper "cadiaN" Møller
Frederik "LOMME" Nielsen – coach
Patrick "es3tag" Hansen – benched
Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer – benched
