Astralis Sign Buzz

On Thursday, December 22, Astralis announced the signing of Christian “⁠Buzz⁠” Andersen, who joins the Danish Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team as a replacement for Mikkel “MistR” Thomsen. With the addition of the 19-year-old, Astralis have finalized its roster for the 2023 season, with no additional changes expected to happen in the coming months.

Buzz’s signing comes just days after Astralis announced Peter “casle” Ardenskjod as the team’s head coach. Casle previously served as a coach of Astralis Talent, who recently lost against Buzz’s former team MASONIC, in the POWER Liagen finals.

Buzz started his esports career in July 2020 with Eruption Esports and later played for Madsports Esports and AaB esport before signing his first professional contract with AGF Esports. Buzz spent just one month with the Danish team, with who he failed to achieve much and was eventually moved to the bench.

The 19-year-old remained an inactive member of AGF Esports for two months before leaving to play for Los Reyes, and in August 2022, he landed a contract with MASONIC, where he made a name for himself.

With MASONIC, Buzz has achieved a lot over the second half of 2022, helping the team compete for top spots in various regional events. Most notably, Buzz reached the playoffs of the Elisa Invitational Fall 2022, made the finals of the Energive Cup, and last week he helped MASONIC win Dust2.dk Ligaen Season 21 over Astralis’ academy team, Astralis Talent.

During his stay at MASONIC, Buzz has averaged a 1.11 performance rating with a 51.6% map win rate, and played a key role in the team’s success. So it was only a matter of time before he would get picked up by another squad.

As revealed by Astralis, the Danish esports organization was eyeing Buzz for a while and have been in talks with MASONIC about Buzz’s transfer since October. The negotiations initially stalled and were close to dead, but came back to life after Astralis decided not to sign Sprout’s Victor “Staehr” Staehr.

With the addition of Buzz, Astralis have now found a permanent replacement for Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke, who left the team in October and has been since replaced by MistR as a temporary stand-in. With Buzz’s arrival, MistR will return to the Astralis Talent, which recently received a new head coach in Mathias “R0nic” Pinholt.

“I am very happy and really proud. “I have studied and looked up to the players on the Astralis team for several years, and in many ways, that has shaped me as a CS player,” said Buzz.

“The fact that I can now call myself an Astralis player on a team with several of those players and in the role I’ve always imagined is just crazy cool.”

Whether Buzz will manage to fill in the shoes of k0nfig remains to be seen, but the 19-year-old has shown a lot of promise in his CS:GO career and is viewed by many as a future Danish CS:GO star. But first, the youngster had to prove his worth at the top level of the CS:GO scene, for which he still has plenty of time to prepare.

Buzz will make his debut for Astralis at the BLAST Premier Spring Groups, slated to kick off on January 28. Meanwhile, Buzz will make his first appearance in a Big Event in February 2023, at the ESL Pro League Season 17.

Unfortunately, the youngster won’t have a chance to compete at Intel Extreme Masters Katowice because Astralis didn’t place high enough on the ESL World Rankings to receive a direct invite, nor have they performed well enough in other qualifying events.