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Astralis have recently gone through a few organisation changes, which resulted in a surprising decision not to participate in the second European Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournament for the ESL One Rio Major in November.
Because of Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander and Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth taking a break to recover from burnout, Astralis would have to play with their current substitutions Jakob “JUGi” Hansen, and Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer. This kind of change in team composition would cost them 960 out of 2400 RMR points they earned by winning the first RMR tournament of the year – ESL One: Road to Rio Europe.
Sports Director at Astralis, Kasper Hvidt, explained today for French esports website 1pv.fr:
“We can confirm we have decided not to participate in BTS, which was added rather late to the calendar as a part of the Major Qualifiers. This is due to our general planning around the team and the way we would be punished for substituting players. Unfortunately it would make no sense for Astralis to play this tournament under the given circumstances.”
Not to mention that any further changes made before the final RMR tournament would mean another punishment for Danish team. They would lose 20% of their total points per each player swap, which means they could possibly end up with less points they have at the moment.
cs_summit 6 hosted by Beyond the Summit (BTS) will kick off in Europe and North America on Monday, June 22nd and will run for two weeks. Astralis are currently dominating in European rankings, leading by 720 points over second-placed G2. Their lead allows them to skip cs_summit 6 and still be able to participate in the last RMR tournament this fall in their classic formation without any penalties.
Currently, Astralis are playing with their stand-in players at DreamHack Masters Spring Europe and BLAST Premier Spring Showdown Europe and so far they have significantly less wins than losses.