Kasper Hvidt: We're not going to make any roster changes in the near future
Astralis’ Sports Director opens up about the decision to let gla1ve AWP instead of Lucky and more.
On Wednesday, the new Astralis roster got their much-awaited debut when they battered their Nordic rivals from NIP 2-0 at BLAST Premier Fall Final. It was Astralis’ two new poster boys in Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke and Benjamin “blameF” Bremer who ended up being the highlight players, as they both stepped up massively in their inauguration match.
Despite, the former Complexity duo playing some insane Counter-Strike yesterday, they were not the one’s who made the headlines. Instead, the focus was on Phillip “Lucky” Ewald and Lukas “gla1ve” Andersen.
Because, quickly during the NIP match, it stood clear that Astralis had decided to replace Lucky as the primary AWPer, with the captain picking up the sniper rifler on both Nuke and Overpass instead.
Today we got the chance to talk with Kasper Hvidt, Director of Sports at Astralis Group, where we asked him about the reasoning behind the decision to let gla1ve AWP instead of Lucky.
- The funny thing about the situation we’re in at the moment with our recent roster changes, is that it gives us opportunities to actually consider what tactical tools we want to use in the future. The change (bringing in k0nfig, blameF and ave) happened two months earlier than we expected, which gave us a couple of bonus months, in order to find the perfect tactic for the team on every map, Hvidt said and continued:
- Yesterday it was gla1ve (playing the AWP) – actually, it was also k0nfig as well in some moments. (…) We didn’t just swap the AWP role because one had a bad start on the map or anything like that. We have thought about all these changes for almost a year now to assure that Astralis is one of the top teams in 2022, 2023, 2024 and etc. What we are seeing at the moment, is just the start of the project – the very first steps in a long way towards the result.
- In the past, we didn’t see a lot of changes because the team was fixed and set, but we know that Phillip (Lucky) is playing really well with other weapons as well. For us, it’s quite natural. It’s kind of going into the engine again to find out how to play the best way possible.
Will Lucky be able to grab a permanent seat on Astralis without his beloved AWP in hand?
If you don’t find the right solution for the AWP role, would you consider looking for a new AWPer in the near future?
- No. The five players we have now, are the five players who we are going into 2022 with. I have noticed that many people have thoughts about how the best options for Astralis – but we strongly believe that the guys we have at the moment are the best players we can have. And that is the Astralis team, Hvidt said.
You can watch the entire interview with Kasper Hvidt here.
