OpTic Gaming CS:GO announce two new players as part of roster overhaul

North American esports organization OpTic Gaming have made some major roster changes to their CounterStrike: Global Offensive professional roster.

On March 28, OpTic Gaming announced that they had signed Mathias ‘MSL’ Lauridsen and Nikolaj ‘niko’ Kristensen to their pro CS:GO team.

As part of this roster overhaul, OpTic also revealed that they had parted ways with Rene ‘cajunb’ Borg, who will take on an inactive status for the time being.

This, of course, leaves OpTic with six active players on their roster, as they already had Kristian ‘k0nfig’ Wienecke, Marco ‘Snappi’ Pfeiffer, Jackob ‘JUGi’ Hansen, and Ismail ‘refrezh’ Ali.

Both of OpTic’s two new players join from Rogue and boast years of impressive competitive experience on their respective resumes.

Nico, of course, rejoins OpTic after having just recently left the org to join Rogue on January 31, and is now back with the team he had placed second with at the c_summit3 major tournament last November.

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As for MSL, the seven year veteran has numerous accolades and achievements to his name, including first place finishes in three premier tournaments and seven majors.

It was a relatively short turnaround for him at Rogue, where he spent just six months, after having played for North for just under two years prior.

Niko rejoins OpTic Gaming after having left the org to join Rogue less than two months ago.

OpTic will certainly hope that the addition of these two stars will help bolster their team going forward after what’s been a pretty up-and-down period for them over the past few months.

After a disappointing 7-8th place finish at the Europe Minor Championship in Katowice 2019 the team put in several positive performances that yielded good tournament results.

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The placed 1st-2nd placing at the second stage of the IEM XIV Sydney: European Open Qualifier, top four in the WePlay! Lock and Load minor, and 5-8th in the World Electronic Sports Games major.  

Unfortunately, their string of positive results ended with a lowly dud at the Dreamhack Masters Dallas 2019: European Open Qualifier, where they ended up placing dead last at 33rd-64th.

Mathias ‘MSL’ Lauridsen joins OpTic Gaming have spent the last six months playing for Rogue.

The word on the street, however, is that OpTic are not done with their roster overhaul. As of now, their roster consists of six active players, which means that one will likely have to be dropped sooner rather than later.

According to rumors, OpTic may end up parting ways with not just one but two players – Snappi and JUGi – and will end up recruiting another player to round off their roster moving forward.

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Many had speculated that k0nfig would also end up being dropped as part of this overhaul, although all indications now are that he will remain on board with this new roster.

The release of cajunb caught fans by surprise as many expected him to have been part of OpTic’s newly built roster.

As for Rogue, the loss of the two prominent players does put a cloud over their future in CS:GO esports, as their roster now just has one active player – Spencer ‘Hiko’ Martin.

Fans will just have to wait and see what tricks the org has up their sleeve when it comes to recruiting essentially a whole roster for future tournaments and events.