Heroic have announced that EWC 2025 will be Andrey ‘tN1R’ Tatarinovich’s last appearance with the organisation due to an unknown organisation triggering his buyout clause.
According to the self-titled “CIS influencer,” harumi, tN1R will be heading to Team Spirit with Major-winning anchor, Myroslav ‘zont1x’ Plakhotia, losing his spot in the lineup. If so, Spirit will have to make adjustments to their roles, with tN1R typically taking more active positions.
tN1R will be tasked with bringing more firepower to the Spirit roster, who have traditionally lived or died based on the performances of their rifling prodigy Danil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets.
Despite winning IEM Cologne in Ivan ‘zweih’ Gogin’s debut tournament in the roster, the organisation were clearly not satisfied with the overall complexion of the team going into the second season of the year as they look to challenge Vitality’s dominance at the top of Counter-Strike.
Where does the move leave Heroic?
Heroic have now lost their best performing player. Initially added due to personal circumstances that kept Linus ‘nilo’ Bergman out of the roster, tN1R turned into a revelation for Heroic where he averaged a 1.17 HLTV rating with the organisation, claiming the spot for his own.
The Belarusian rifler’s replacement at Heroic has already been announced as Yasin ‘xfl0ud’ Koç, who had only been benched in Heroic in mid-June. The news is unsurprising as Heroic were essentially forced to return xfl0ud to their active roster because of VRS.
As a result of Heroic’s recent roster changes, Heroic had to rely on reintegrating xfl0ud to keep their VRS ranking. The only remaining players in the roster upon tN1R’s removal would have been Linus ‘LNZ’ Holtäng and Simon ‘yxngstxr’ Boijefor, unless xfl0ud returned.
At the time of his benching, xfl0ud was also performing well, making the move surprising to onlookers. The motive of the move seemed to be primarily to reintegrate nilo into the starting roster, as he had been on the bench following his aforementioned issues in his personal life.
With his replacement in tN1R performing so well in his roles, the Swede was left on the sidelines, so Heroic made space for nilo in the roster by benching xfl0ud.
nilo has been unspectacular since the start of the second season of the year, averaging 1.01, however, he has the excuse of playing out of position after his six months on the sidelines. He will not have that any more, he will have to step up and fill tN1R’s overperforming boots.
For xfl0ud, the question will be one of motivation and form. With the Turkish player being so recently benched by the org and his coach, can he play with the same confidence and motivation in the server that we saw in the first half of the year?
Considering the org would have known tN1R’s buyout clause, one wonders whether they regret demoting xfl0ud now that they have to go through the messy process of reintegrating a player they so recently demoted.
Are Heroic in disarray?
The announcement of tN1R’s departure comes mere days after Heroic benched Gleb ‘gr1ks’ Gazin, who had only joined Heroic in late June, with both the player and the organisation attributing the decision to playstyle differences, with gr1ks seemingly preferring to be an active AWPer and Heroic wanting a more passive AWPer.
Heroic backed their coach and his vision in the statement regarding gr1k’s benching, only weeks after his arrival, stating, “We trust TOBIZ’s direction and are therefore making adjustments to support the team’s long-term growth.”
gr1k’s was replaced by Älımjan ‘alkarenn’ Bıtımbai of Spirit Academy, who recently made his debut against Passion UA in the CS Asia Championships 2025 Europe Open Qualifier, through which Heroic progressed as expected, considering they were one of the favourites on esports betting sites.
The 18-year-old Kazakh came into Heroic with far less experience and hype than gr1ks, presumably chosen as he fitted the required style.
While these moves seem rational in their own right, and Heroic certainly are getting a lot of money for tN1R, the sheer amount of changes to the roster is highly unusual, especially the benching of gr1ks so soon after signing the highly-rated AWPer. The overall picture of the roster is one of instability that may hurt them competitively.
Heroic still has a strong roster on paper, with talent throughout it and a well-regarded coach in Tobias ‘TOBIZ’ Theo, but the group will have to deliver with no room for error now, as their VRS core is effectively only three players. This means they cannot change one of LNZ, yxngstxr, or xfl0ud without having established a ranking with the other players in the roster.
Earlier this year, Heroic also lost Alvaro ‘SunPayus’ Garcia and coach Eetu ‘sAw’ Saha to G2, again for a hefty sum in return, so the organisation will have no issue with their finances, but a roster as a unit can only go through so much instability before it hurts their competitive potential.
Can this Heroic roster rally with the return of xfl0ud, or will losing their best performer be a breaking point?
Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.