HEROIC change two of five in a day: yxngstxr out, xfl0ud benched

Early in the afternoon of July 7, 2026, HEROIC had three active players. yxngstxr, the Swede who had spent the first half of the year filling in with the team's sniper rifle, had just stepped down from the active roster, HEROIC announced that Tuesday according to HLTV, the reference news site for Counter-Strike. A little over an hour earlier, the club had moved xfl0ud to the bench.

The gap did not last the day. By the evening HEROIC had announced two arrivals and presented a complete lineup under a head coach named the night before.

Two of the five players who represented HEROIC at the IEM Cologne Major in June are therefore out of the lineup, and the three who remain, nilo, susp and Chr1zN, start again with new teammates on both sides.

Five announcements in less than a day

HLTV published a report for each step, and the times printed on them show how quickly the old lineup was taken apart and a new one put together.

The two arrivals are signings, announced by HEROIC as such. MartinezSa, a 25-year-old Spaniard, comes from Gentle Mates to use the AWP, the game's sniper rifle. Brollan, a 24-year-old Swede, comes from MOUZ, where he had been benched in April.

The two departures from the five are of a different kind, and each has its own wording.

yxngstxr, six months in a role that was not his

yxngstxr, 21, joined HEROIC in early 2025 as part of a group of players who moved together from Sangal. His 2026 began with an unusual sequence, which HLTV retraces in its report. He was briefly benched when HEROIC signed susp. About a week later he was back in the five, this time with the AWP.

The reason was an absence. Alkaren, the team's AWPer, was sidelined by visa issues, and HEROIC had nobody else for the role. The AWP is a specialist's weapon, and a team builds part of its play around the player who holds it. yxngstxr took that place on short notice, TOBIZ, the coach at the time, later told HLTV. He kept it for about six months, and the site describes him over that period as a makeshift sniper.

HEROIC acknowledged that in the message it posted on X, which HLTV reproduces. The club thanked him for changing roles in a difficult situation.

The coach had already said as much in public. In an interview published by HLTV on June 5, after HEROIC's exit from the Major, TOBIZ praised the work yxngstxr had done in the role. He added that the change of AWPer could no longer be the main explanation for the team's results, and that the losses came from mistakes made elsewhere in the lineup.

Over the three months before he stepped down, HLTV credits yxngstxr with a 0.89 rating across 29 maps. A rating is the single figure the site computes for every professional player from his statistics.

xfl0ud, benched at noon and signed elsewhere by evening

xfl0ud, a 23-year-old Turkish player, arrived in January 2025 in the same move from Sangal. HLTV describes him as an opener, the player who goes first into a contested area to make space for his teammates. It was not his first time on HEROIC's bench: according to the site, he had been benched in June 2025 and brought back into the lineup two months later.

HLTV's report of the benching gives no reason for it. The player's next step came within hours. At 17:26 the site reported that FUT had announced the signing of xfl0ud to complete its own roster. FUT were ranked 13th in the world on July 6, twenty places above HEROIC.

That report also sums up his time with HEROIC. Over about 18 months he averaged a 1.08 rating, and he helped the team reach two Majors, the BLAST Austin Major and the IEM Cologne Major. HEROIC won two tournaments in that period, DraculaN Season 5 and MESA Nomadic Masters Spring 2025, and stood around the top 20 of the ranking for most of it, with a peak just inside the top 10. Over his last three months with the team he posted a 1.00 rating across 29 maps.

From a Major place to four matches in Cologne

The changes follow a spring that went wrong. Under TOBIZ, HEROIC had qualified for the IEM Cologne Major, the season's main tournament, sponsored by Valve, the publisher of Counter-Strike. HLTV lists two other results from his time in charge, a title at DraculaN Season 5 and a second place at the CCT Global Finals.

Then came a run of five lost series in a row between PGL Astana and Stake Ranked Episode 2, HLTV wrote on June 4. The Major did not stop it. HEROIC entered in Stage 1, the first of the tournament's three opening stages. Valve's Major rulebook describes each stage as a bracket of 16 teams in the Swiss format, in which teams with the same record meet each other. HEROIC lost both of its matches on the first day, June 2, to Sharks and Lynn Vision, each played as a single map. It beat Gaimin Gladiators the next day. On June 4 it lost to Liquid in a best-of-three series, 13-5 on Nuke and 13-11 on Inferno, and was eliminated with one win in four matches. Liquid were ranked 25th on June 1, two places above HEROIC, and Gaimin Gladiators, the only team HEROIC beat in Cologne, 142nd.

The last series still showed what the club keeps. Chr1zN finished it with a 1.33 rating, the best of the HEROIC five, and nilo with 1.09, according to HLTV's match report. yxngstxr, with the AWP, was third at 1.01.

TOBIZ called that exit symptomatic of the whole season in the interview of June 5. He said the year had been turbulent since Alkaren became unavailable, and that the team would go home and evaluate everything, himself included. The interviewer noted that HEROIC had earlier announced the roster would stay together until the end of the season.

The ranking followed. HLTV placed HEROIC 27th in the world on June 1 and 33rd on July 6.

The lineup as it stands

Set next to the five that played the Major, the new roster keeps three names.

The three who stay are young. nilo and susp are both 21 and Swedish, and Chr1zN, a Dane, is 19. With Brollan, the lineup counts three Swedes.

Roles are only partly settled. MartinezSa takes the AWP, which gives HEROIC a specialist in the position for the first time since Alkaren's absence began. Alkaren himself remains on the bench, HLTV's roster shows, with 14 maps played over the past three months. Brollan called the tactics at MOUZ until April, but HLTV writes that he will move away from the role of in-game leader, the player who directs the team during a match. HEROIC said the roles would become more defined with practice and official matches.

The bench decides who coaches as well. doto, a 30-year-old Finn, knows the club: he coached HEROIC's academy team for more than a year, until the organization ended that project, HLTV reported on July 6. He played for HAVU and ENCE before coaching ENCE Prospects. He replaces TOBIZ, who had arrived in June 2025 when the previous coach, sAw, moved to G2, and whose one year in charge was his first job at the top level. Before HEROIC, TOBIZ had coached only MOUZ NXT, the academy team of MOUZ, HLTV noted. On X, he wrote that the club had told him it wanted to go in a new direction.

What the numbers say about the new five

HLTV printed the recent rating of each member of the new lineup with its report on Brollan.

The chart mixes three different settings, so it compares players more than it predicts a team. MartinezSa's figure covers 59 maps with Gentle Mates, twice the 29 that the HEROIC players logged in the same period. Brollan's covers 20 maps, played for MOUZ.

Within those limits, the top bar is the newcomer's, and the player he replaces with the AWP stood at 0.89. Gentle Mates were ranked 37th on July 6, four places below HEROIC, and MOUZ 10th.

A first tournament in Barcelona

The new five has an event to prepare for. HLTV names Stake Ranked Episode 3, a tournament in Barcelona with US$100,000 in prize money, as the lineup's first. paiN, Ninjas in Pyjamas and 3DMAX are also in the field. On July 6 they were ranked 19th, 27th and 29th, all above HEROIC. The event is also the first for doto as head coach of the main team, after more than a year with the club's academy players.

For yxngstxr, nothing beyond the step-down has been announced. He is on HEROIC's bench with Alkaren, the player whose absence put the AWP in his hands in the first place.

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