Astralis are kind of bad right now.
Their 2-0 loss to BIG at BLAST confirmed their spot in Showdown and their form since the additions of k0nfig and blameF has been - at best - patchy.
But it's not as simple as blaming Lucky - while he hasn't been great (to put it mildly), their problems run deeper. k0nfig went crazy in his first few games, but has been unable to be a consistent threat since, and Xyp9x's form has been... let's keep it PG, alright?
Role clash
As MSL said on Twitter, there's a massive role clash.
One of the key things for Astralis before, was that their roles fitted extremely well and everyone felt comfortable in their roles.
Now blameF is playing all ct roles, gla1ve used to play. On the T side, blame got atleast some of xyp roles and xyp is barely in clutches. 1/2— Mathias Lauridsen (@MSLcsgo) February 6, 2022
What he doesn't really mention is just how hard it will be to fix.
The only time blameF wasn't being a massive baiter - I mean, a clutcher/trade fragger - on Complexity was when he was entry fragging for a period. And you know what, he was really damn good at it.
Which would be excellent news if gla1ve wasn't already doing that role for Astralis, and it would be weird to stop him doing it now - and even if he did, you'd imagine k0nfig would move into that role first.
blameF is the obvious choice to be the clutch player on this team and play a few of the strong roles, because he's one of the actually good players on the team. In fact, he might currently be the only good one, albeit his stats are boosted by his role.
But with Lucky's style of play (that being, missing shots) and Xyp9x's inability to frag without his whole team dying first, you essentially have three players who want to do the same thing.
Sounds familiar.
But unlike FaZe with ropz and Twistzz, those players aren't some of the best in the world.
dupreeh isn't really underrated, because who in their right mind doesn't rate him, but it's startling to see how much harder the game is for Astralis without someone willing to be aggressive with gla1ve. Lucky needs to go, but Xyp9x is just a bad blameF tribute these days.
It strikes me as a lack of planning to have three passive players, and making one of your superstars be essentially a new, flashier version of the player you have signed until 2025.
Anyone know what Kjaerbye's up to these days?
