Astralis sign es3tag to create the first six-man top CSGO team

Astralis have signed Patrick “es3tag” Hansen to their roster. The rather peculiar move has made the CSGO powerhouse into a six-man roster. The core Astralis players will continue being a part of the team with a new addition.

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es3tag joins Astralis as sixth player

The Danish player, coming from FunPlus Phoenix (former Heroic), will officially join Astralis starting July 1 following es3tag’s current contract termination. An official statement by the organization explains the main reason behind this decision is to provide a window of recovery for players. Both “physical and mental recovery” are being taken into account. Interestingly enough, Kasper Hvidt, the director of sports at Astralis Group, claims that this is not an abrupt decision: “Increasing the roster size to six players is something we have worked on for a long time with relevant stakeholders in Counter-Strike.”

Apart from an additional player to change up the core roster, es3tag is definitely an experienced player with quite a few achievements whilst on Heroic. A sixth brain on the team may bring new perspective and fresh ideas to Astralis, expanding their range of possibilities and approaches.

A new trend in CSGO?

The idea of having a six-man roster was pondered by German organization BIG in the past, when the team had signed Can “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş to its roster, making for six players at the time. However, this idea was ultimately scrapped.

Potentially a 6 man roster and swap for tournaments to be more creative and not readable. Maybe cs will be a 6-7 player game. At some point we will have the opportunity to change lineups during a game( different players for ct and t)

— tabseN (@tabseNcs) December 23, 2018

Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz’s take on six- or even seven-player rosters is to enable better creativity within the team and reduce readability by opponents, including potential counter-terrorist and terrorist player swaps mid-game. It is difficult to predict whether this would be allowed at all right now in CSGO. One thing is for sure though: Astralis are the pioneers among top teams to adopt a six-man roster. It will be interesting to see how this idea will pan out and whether other teams of a similar level will follow suit.

What do you think of Astralis’ six-man roster with the addition of es3tag? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Follow Daily Esports for all your latest news in CSGO and other esports.