Rebuilding Into the New Year

published 27 January 2025

Our new annual tradition of shaking up our CS division continues into 2025 as we start the year with six fresh faces!

And what a fantastic debut at BLAST Bounty, defeating both 3DMax and Team Liquid as heavy underdogs to qualify to the first Tier 1 LAN of the year! But if you’re wondering who our scouts have picked up, here’s an introduction to our new squad:

Firstly, a warm welcome to our new core of, Linus ‘LNZ’ Holtäng, Simon ‘yxngstxr’ Boije and Yasin ‘xfl0ud’ Koç. HEROIC fans may remember them as the trio who beat FaZe and sent us into the last-chance bracket of EPL S20, but it’s their multiple successes in the second half of 2024 that really helped them to stand out. Now showing they can go toe-to-toe with Spirit, we’re excited to see what else they'll pull off at Katowice!

Secondly, Andrey ‘tN1R’ Tatarinovich, the former CIS journeyman, finds his home with us as a well-rounded rifler, already touted as ‘the next donk’... admittedly by our Twitter admin, but check this clip out! There’s a reason he had 99 firepower on HLTV.

2023’s #6 in the world, Álvaro ‘SunPayus’ García, also joins our ranks as main Awper and reunites with his former coach in sAw. With an IEM Dallas title, a Cologne final and a clear hunger to prove himself, Álvaro is the perfect fit for our new project!

And lastly, Linus ‘Nilo’ Bergman joins HEROIC but will take some time to deal with unexpected personal circumstances. For more context, here is our official statement on the move. But after being picked five times by 2023’s Top 20 as their bold prediction for the future, there’s a reason we still see him as one of the most exciting talents in the scene.

The HEROIC Roster for 2025:

🇸🇪 LNZ - Linus Holtäng
🇪🇸 SunPayus - Álvaro García
🇸🇪 yxngstxr - Simon Boije
🇹🇷 xfl0ud - Yasin Koç
🇧🇾 tN1R - Andrey Tatarinovich
🇸🇪 Nilo - Linus Bergman

🇫🇮 Coach: sAw - Eetu Saha
🇸🇪 Assistant Coach: sheddaN - Mikael Mellström
🇷🇸 Strategic Coach: Feed - Mihajlo Petrović
🇳🇴 Team Manager: sheet - Sondre Børrestad
🇸🇪 Performance Coach: Jens Hofer

But this does mean we’ve had to say goodbye to our Shanghai Major roster. We would like to thank sjuush, TeSeS, kyxsan, NertZ and degster for everything they’ve done under the HEROIC banner including an exciting streak of stage and Major appearances, and despite not hoisting that elusive trophy, keeping the HEROIC name at the forefront of competitive Counter-Strike.

The next full-team outing will be a rematch against Team Liquid at the IEM Katowice 2025 Play-Ins on January 29th.