Illuminar announce new CS:GO roster
Polish team Illuminar announced a new-look CS:GO roster with the signing of Mikołaj "mouz" Karolewski, Arek "Vegi" Nawojski, and Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski on Friday.
Illuminar went through quite a few roster changes since the turn of the year, starting on February 10, with the benching of Daniel "STOMP" Płomiński Oskar and "oskarish" Stenborowski, who was later acquired by AGO. At the start of March, more roster changes were announced, when Illuminar acquired Grzegorz "jedqr" Jędras from Wisla Krakow, who has now found himself benched alongside Illuminar's former in-game-leader Michal "mono" Gabszewicz to make space for Vegi, Snax and mouz.
Although seeing so many roster moves in such a short period is rather unorthodox, based on Illuinar's poor performances in recent weeks, it's safe to say the changes were fairly expected and a long time coming.
Since Illuminar acquired x-kom Team roster in July 2019, the Polish outfit put up two failed attempts at qualifying through ECS Season 8 – European Challenger Cup: Open Qualifiers, finished seventh-eighth at ESEA Season 32: Premier Division – Europe, ninth at European Champions Cup, fifth-sixth at DreamHack Open Atlanta 2019 and closed out the year with top-four placement at ESL Mistrzostwa Polski – Fall 2019: Online Stage, a gold medal from ESL Mistrzostwa Polski – Fall 2019 and top-six finish at DreamHack Open Sevilla 2019.
Although Illuminar picked up the pace in the final months of 2019, they returned to their old ways in early 2020, by finishing ninth-19th at DreamHack Open Anaheim 2020: European Open Qualifier, 25th-32nd at Flashpoint Season 1: European Qualifier and most recently 14th at ESEA Season 33: Premier Division – Europe, which are not all too inspiring results.
Illuminar are currently ranked 57th in the world, which is miles from where this team hoped to be but on a more positive note, they are still the second-best Polish team behind AGO, who are ranked 41st in the world. The new roster changes, however, give Illuminar new hope that they can climb the rankings, overtake AGO and cement themselves higher up the global rankings.
Undoubtedly the biggest addition to the team is snax, a very experienced Counter-Strike pro, who has spent last nine years competing for some of the strongest CS teams including mousesports and Virtus.pro, with whom he won ESL One: New York 2018, DreamHack Masters Las Vegas 2017, ELEAGUE Season 1, ESL ESEA Pro League Invitational, ESEA Season 18 – Global Invite Division and ESL Major Series One Katowice 2014, just to name a few of his accolades.
Illuminar's first test with the new team will come at LOOT.BET/CS Season 6, which is a B-Tier online European league that runs between April 5 – May 8 and will feature 20 CS:GO teams, who will duke it out for the lion's share of US $50,000 prize pool. As of today, there are 15 teams confirmed to be in attendance, including BIG, GODSENT, AGO, Copenhagen Flames, Endpoint, ESPADA, Gambit Youngsters, Hard Legion Esports, Nordavind, pro100, SKADE, Sprout, Winstrike Team and HellRaisers, who recently announced massive roster changes, which included the departure of Kirill "ANGE1" Karasiow and Žygimantas "nukkye" Chmieliauskas.
Illuminar CS:GO team is now:
Paweł "innocent" Mocek
Paweł "reatz" Jańczak
Mikołaj "mouz" Karolewski
Arek "Vegi" Nawojski
Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski
Adrian "imd" Pieper – coach
Grzegorz "jedqr" Jędras – benched
Michał "mono" Gabszewicz – benched
