It's just a few days back that we announced the release of Bjorn 'threat' Pers, but we are now happy to welcome back a familiar face to the starting five of our Counter-Strike team. FnaticMSI are both excited and proud to welcome back Rasmus 'Gux' Stahl.
Share your thoughts, experiences and the tales behind the art. Natus Vincere logo, squadra, na'vi, Counter-Strike, pianeta, NaVi, NATUS VINCERE, 1.6, Sfondo HD; 1920x1080px. Konstantinos started playing online video games at the age of 13, investing heavily into Counter-Strike 1.6. He played the next four years becoming well known in the Greek scene, eventually becoming a professional traveling to LANs.
Fnatic Cs Go
With the exact same line-up, FnaticMSI.CS racked up an enormous amount of over 200,000$ in the year 2009, winning almost every tournament they attended. Records were set and broken, but the team went apart in late 2009, as Ramus went his own way. But now, Gux has come back to FnaticMSI, to reign the second part of 2010 in the same manner as 2009. Harley 'dsn' Orwall was very excited to welcome Gux back:
'Today we are welcoming Gux back, one of our core members from our success year of 2009. It feels great to have such a great player back in the team -- Rasmus is a very talented individual player and we feel that our game this year so far hasn't been as good as during 2009 when Rasmus was still in the roster. With him we are looking to bring back that magical play we had going for most of 2009, winning IEM, KODE5, e-Stars, ESWC and IEM Dubai.'
You might have also noticed that SK Gaming were not amused with our addition of Rasmus. However, we would like to share our side of the story. Rasmus was on no contract and he was free to go where he wanted. Due to SK Gaming witholding his salary and prizes of several events, Rasmus decided it was best for him to part ways, rather sooner than later. He decided to do this before Arbalet Cup Dallas. Harley also shed some light on this matter:
'The team and I really wanted Rasmus back in the line-up, and since we were a bit worried about SK Gaming not giving him the money he earns, we came up with a solution. We, the team and the FnaticMSI organization, will donate a portion of the money, may SK Gaming decide not pay the prize money he has earned, by the reason of him not having a contract.'
To explain the full situation we will first let Sam Mathews, Managing Director of FnaticMSI tell our side, followed up by a statement by Rasmus 'Gux' Stahl himself.
'FnaticMSI has always aimed to do everything by the book. We have a consistant record of buying players out of contracts, whether it was for Christopher 'GeT_RiGhT' Alesund from Giants or for Bjorn 'threat' Pers from H2K. In this situation with SK things were a little different, firstly Rasmus 'Gux' Stahl had not signed a contract explicitly with SK Gaming, and was about 10 days away from flying to Dallas. Still, FnaticMSI wanted to do the right thing by our long time rival but also fellow esports team whom we have had an amicable relationship with from day one.
So as of last Tuesday I called Alex as soon as I heard that our players had been chatting with Gux about rejoining and that Gux had no contract. We spoke about the situation and how we would resolve it, Alex said he would get back to me. We were prepared to pay for him if we had to, a nominal fee to show our respect for SK Gaming and to try and make the situation as smooth as possible as it's not easy giving up one of the worlds best players. However, this deal would only go ahead as long as they would agree to pay all outstanding prize money owed to Gux, for example from ESWC 2nd place when it is recieved. There was also the issue that Gux had not received salary for the previous two months, which meant even if there was a verbal concession of a contract, SK were still in breach of this contract.
Unfortunately we did not hear anything back from SK, and were afraid that should Gux travel to Arbalet Cup Dallas having no agreement from SK about his salary or prizemoney that he would come back even worse off, giving SK the benefit of the doubt and potentially losing any money owed to him.
So we offered an option to make himself secure, and stop SK from bullying him into going by saying that they could withold all money owed to him. Our players all pitched in to donate a fee, whilst FnaticMSI also offered to pay for his salary for this month, should SK revoke his rights to any further money. This is the money which would have gone to SK should we have bought Gux out of his contract. But with SK having no interest in dealing with FnaticMSI we had to leave the situation in Gux's hands.
Fnatic Lol Team
Gux therefore left an ultimatum to SK saying that either they agree to pay his salary and prizemoney owed to him once it arrives into SK's bank accounts, or he would not go to Arbalet Cup Dallas. Alex and SK chose the later option, which of course means Rasmus still will lose out in money, but at last he is back home, in an organisation he trusts. Welcome home.'
Rasmus 'Gux' Stahl:
'There are a lot of reasons why I’m back here in Fnatic. But first I want to say that I have nothing against the SK players, they are all very friendly and took really good care of me when I joined the team. I truly enjoyed playing with them.
When I left Fnatic in December 2009 it was not because of any social problems within the team it was much more complicated than that but of course it is the easiest way to explain what happened. I think the whole Fnatic team afterwards felt that it was a bad choice to split up. I have always had good contact with all the players in Fnatic and we constantly talked about old times when we met.
When f0rest came to me after ESWC and asked if I wanted to reunite with my old team, it made me think a lot. Since I left, I have always felt that I want to play for Fnatic and I´m glad that they now gave me the opportunity to join the team once again. So the reason why I’m back in Fnatic is because of the fact that I enjoyed my time there and this is where I once learned to play 'professional counter-strike' and I feel at home in Fnatic.
The main reason for me to leave SK is because we had an agreement between us that I should cooperate with them and do my share of the agreement, still they never fulfilled their part. This includes that they did not pay me any salary during my time in SK and when I told them about my plans of leaving them for Fnatic they also told me that I would not retrieve any of the prize money. After that I gave SK an ultimatum, if they did not pay me my salary and my prize money I would not go to the Arbalet Cup in Dallas and I would leave as of today.
The information about me getting paid for not going to Arbalet Cup Dallas is completely wrong, what Fnatic has offered me is to pay some of the salary and prize money that SK declines to do and owes me'
With Gux, the FnaticMSI.CS roster now looks as this:
Harley 'dsn' Orwall
Patrik 'f0rest' Lindberg
Christopher 'GeT_RiGhT' Alesund
Patrik 'cArn' Sattermon
Rasmus 'Gux' Stahl
After a 2-1 defeat to H2k Gaming in the quarter finals SK Gaming are out of Arbalet Dallas.
The all-Swedish affair kicked off on de_inferno and ended mighty quickly. SK Gaming hilariously dominated H2k 16-2 to take a rapid one map lead.
Heading into the second map, de_train, taking the assumption of your opposition being down in the dumps after such a crushing defeat wouldn't be criminal. But H2k very much saw it as, and after a very well worked 3hp-fuelled 1v2 in the pistol round from Markus 'pronax' Wallsten H2k Gaming hit back with their own, albeit brief, period of dominance and opened up a 7-2 lead.
However, SK picked up six straight rounds to take the lead heading into the second half but again H2k picked up the pistol round and took a seven point lead. Some genius flanking from Richard 'Xizt' Landström put a complete stop to SK's attack in the 22nd round and things looked bleak for the Terrorists.
But a couple of rounds hastily strung together brought SK to within three points of tying the scores. At 14-11 Robert 'RobbaN' Dahlström pulled off an insane four man before falling himself where Andreas 'moddii' Frid cleaned up the remaining single kill. The momentum within the SK side increased right up to the point where the scores were level at 14-14 before H2k halted them in their stride and secured the two rounds they needed to level the game at 1-1.
The deciding map was de_nuke and again H2k picked up the pistol round but only took a small lead. The game went back and forth up to 6-5 in favor of the young H2k side until Xizt took it upon himself to go nuts with the AWP in the A bombsite to utterly demolish SK's defences. The following three rounds all fell in favor of H2k due to their superior team and individual skills and they went into the CT side with a 10-5 lead.
The final pistol round of the match went SK's way thanks to a 1v2 from Jimmy 'allen' Allen but his SK team could only amass three rounds before H2k hit back hard and fast. Storming out to a 14-8 lead H2k were just two rounds away from advancing to the semi finals and knocking out their Swedish rivals.
SK took two rounds back, bringing the score to 14-10, but a doomed A push gave H2k their 15th round. On the back foot of all back foots SK managed to pull out four successive rounds, bringing themselves to within one round of tying up the map and taking it into overtime, but their hopes of advancing were ruined by pronax as his sharp double kill effectively killed off the game for SK.