Xerxe Joins Astralis

Astralis announced Andrei “Xerxe” Dragomir as the newest member of its League of Legends roster. The 22-year-old joins the team as the starting jungler, replacing Nikolay “Zanzarah” Akatov, who Astralis cut ties with last week.

Xerxe joined Astralis’ League of Legends European Championship (LEC) roster on Tuesday as the team’s fourth member. The 22-year-old is the second offseason singing Astralis have made, leaving the European LoL squad with only one more vacant spot in the support position.

The signing got announced just a day after Astralis added top laner Kiss “Vizicsacsi” Tamás as a part of a completer roster rebuild, which will see Astralis field three new players. By joining Astralis, Vizicsacsi reunited with ADC Kasper “Kobbe” Kobberup, who he played alongside at Splyce.

And the duo will now join forces with another former Splyce player, Xerxe, who has officially returned to Europe. The newly-signed jungler has spent the last 1.5 years in North America as a member of Immortals.

Seeing Astralis make major roster moves ahead of LEC 2022 Summer makes a lot of sense, mainly because the Danish esports organization has struggled to make any noise in the LoL scene. Over the last three seasons, Astralis’ results have been rather disappointing.

It would be fair to say that the organization hasn’t seen any success in the LEC so far, always finishing at the bottom of the table. Time and time again, Astralis failed to emerge as a proper challenger for the title, lacking in crucial areas that would help the team establish itself as such.

As a result, Astralis opted to rebuild its roster almost from scratch, keeping only ADC Kobbe and mid laner Oliver “Dajor” Ryppa, who joined the team in November.

Xerxe made his professional LoL debut in February 2016 Crew e-Sports Club in the Turkish league before moving to Dark Passage for a short stint. Then, just four months into his League career, Xerxe moved to Europe, where he spent an entire season with Unicorns of Love.

After a successful stint with UoL, Xerxe got picked up by Splyce, where he first met with Kobbe. With Splyce, Xerxe placed third in EU LCS 2018 Spring and claimed another bronze in the EU Regional Finals.

Following a bitter-sweet ending to the year, Splyce found some traction in the 2019 season. The team placed third in LEC 2019 Summer and finished second in the Regional Finals, thus securing a LoL World Championship spot.

At the World Championship, Xerxe, Vizicsacsi, and Kobbe outperformed the expectations and made it all the way to the quarter-finals.

Unfortunately, they were no match for SKT (1-3), but reaching the final eight was a huge achievement nonetheless.

Xerxe left Splyce at the end of the 2019 season and spent the next season with Origen, who he helped claim bronze in LEC 2020 Spring regular season. But after a disappointing finish in the Summer, the team disbanded and sold its spot to Astralis.

Xerxe was initially moved to Astralis but left the team before the season started. Instead, he traveled overseas to join Immortals in the LCS.

Unfortunately, success was hard to come by for the 22-year-old jungler, who couldn’t help Immortals compete for the trophy. During his time in NA, Xerxe was only able to reach playoffs once in LCS 2021 Summer but finished the last season in last place with a 5-13 record.

By joining Astralis, YXerxe will be given a chance to re-launch his LoL career and chase success that has been eluding him since he left Splyce in 2019. Likewise, by adding Xerxe, and Vizicsacsi, Astralis will hope to improve upon the team’s showing in LEC 2022 Spring and compete for the trophy.

But as we look ahead, there is still one more question: who will be Astralis’ new support player? It’s currently unclear who that might be, but according to the rumors, Astralis will sign Korean support player Lee “JeongHoon” Jeong-hoon.