After being in the works for about three months, Patrick “es3tag” Hansen has finally joined the Astralis roster. Es3tag has left his position at Heroic, the team he has been playing with since 2017 and is now part of the 4x Major Champions. The Astralis roster will now have a full team to represent the Stars in the server.
Es3tag’s transfer to Astralis was initially announced in March. Hansen had three months left on his contract with Heroic, but the buyout price, according to Astralis, was $800,000. Between waiting three months for his contract to expire or coughing up 800K, we can imagine Astralis made the right move. Back in March, es3tag was benched along with his former teammate and Astralis sub Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer. Now, after three months of inactivity, es3tag will be in position to compete once again.
Will es3tag Be A Good Fit?
Now this brings into question how well es3tag will be able to perform in this roster. Again, while he is filling in for the two players out of commission, he isn’t a temporary player like Snappi. With both Gla1ve and Xyp9x still out due to stress, it is possible that es3tag will be representing the team at ESL One Cologne in August along with Jakob “JUGi” Hansen. Gla1ve, however, is set to come back that month. There is no official timeline for mental health recovery, so it is anyone’s guess whether or not the IGL will play in the Major.
Without looking too far ahead, let’s look at the near future. Astralis has not competed since late May in the DreamHack Masters Spring. That is over a month of timeout for the entire squad. While es3tag hasn’t seen play for a while, neither has the team he is joining. The only question left now is whether or not this is the right decision for Astralis. It has been a deal months in the making. For it to backfire will be a blow to not only the team’s performance at events but management’s decision making as well. Only time will tell how this new pickup will perform. If he doesn’t perform well, Astralis will fall even further down the rankings.