The HellRaisers Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team is receiving yet another shakeup.
The organization has announced the addition of a new player, Ĺ˝ygimantas “nukkye” Chmieliauskas, on its website. The Lithuanian replaces Abay “Hobbit” Khasenov, who has been moved to the team’s transfer list.
Nukkye joins HellRaisers following a short run with NoChance, but is best known for his time with The Imperial. The European team performed well at a number of European regional tournaments last year, most notably taking first place at the Copenhagen Games 2018 and DreamHack Open Summer 2018. During that run, Nukkye played as a substitute for HellRaisers at DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018.
Though he is a new addition to the HellRaisers lineup, the team is still reeling from other recent roster moves.
In 2018 HellRaisers climbed its way up the European CS:GO hierarchy with a number of first-place performances at smaller events and a top-eight run at the FACEIT Major: London. It began competing at premiere events shortly after but wasn’t able to find the same sort of consistent success against more established opponents.
The wheels officially came off after an early elimination from the 2019 Katowice Major. Ă–zgĂĽr “woxic” Eker left the team to join Mousesports, longtime player Bence “DeadFox” Böröcz was benched, and coach Amiran “ami” Rekhviashvili was released. HellRaisers plugged the gaps from there with the additions of Christian “loWel” Garcia Antoran and Tomáš “oskar” Ĺ ĹĄastnĂ˝, but the extensive changes to its roster now leave the team’s place in a competitive CS:GO scene unclear.
The new HellRaisers will begin to reestablish itself at WePlay! Forge of Masters, an event featuring a number of other CIS staple teams. From there, the side is scheduled to begin its run in the ESL Pro League Season 9 Europe division on April 23. Those events will provide a good temperature check on the potency of its new lineup.
The odd man out in this equation is Hobbit. The former Gambit Esports player joined last November and generally performed well for HellRaisers during his six-month run. He moves to the bench alongside DeadFox and awaits a move to another team.
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