Strong Opinions add Maros and adamracek; replacing Thalash and alle

The most dominant team of Highlander, ever, have now swapped two players after a somewhat shaky start in ETF2L’s Season 12.

Thalash, astt, alle, Raptor, CeeJaey and cloudy at Insomnia58.

The European powerhouse of Strong Opinions have announced the addition of Maros and adamracek to their UGC and ETF2L roster after falling short against Super Dickmann’s KANNONEN in week three of ETF2L’s Season 12. Both the Slovak Scout main Maros and Czech Demoman adamracek have played together in the 6v6 Premiership runners-up of ETF2L’s Season 26, Arctic Foxes.

Last season adamracek was rostered on a somewhat less prestigious team, inVision, fiercly fighting to earn themselves a spot in the Premiership division for the ongoing ETF2L Season 12. After winning High back in Season 11 over open_squad in the Grand Final, inVision nonetheless fell short in the Preseason playoffs against Feila eSports in the Semi-finals.

Maros on the other hand played in Premiership last season, led by the notorious b33p in Stacked. With five games played and the highest damage per minute out of all Premiership Scouts, the Slovakian player appears ready to show his worth in the overall favourites.

The original nine-man lineup that have ruled the Highlander format for over two years is no more, undoubtedly raising questions if the team’s dominant past can transition into this brand new roster.

Following the recent changes in the team, we managed to get in contact with the team’s leader, CeeJaey, to gain more infromation regarding the decision and the future of the team.

What prompted the switch between Thalash and Maros?

Thalash told me at the end of last season that he didn’t want to play Highlander anymore. After playing some of the pre-season cups, I managed to convince him to play another season, but after this week he admitted he just wasn’t enjoying it anymore. We picked up Maros after Stacked folded, as Raptor knew him from Arctic Foxes, and he’s played some games with us before. He is available to play and is a top player, so it made sense for him to main.

Why is alle no longer your main Demoman?

Similar reasons to Thalash — he’s lost interest in playing Highlander, and he has a lot of stuff going on in real life that means he doesn’t have the time to play. So far this season that’s meant a lot of step-in Demomen in scrims and warmups, which has hurt us. I didn’t want to beg him to play if he’s not having fun, so he asked to step down from being main.

You have previously stated alle being the team’s main caller on 5CP maps like cp_process_final, who will now take over alle’s role?

Emilio does most of the maincalling anyway, and in recent games on 5cp maps we’ve been missing alle so we’ve just continued as is. It’s worked out fine so far. Myself and Steve contribute a lot to the calls so it’ll be more like Season 9, which works for us.

What are your expectations of Season 12, considering the substantial change this early in the Season?

The aim is still, of course, to win. We had a similar situation in Season 10 when Korv’s internet died and we had to switch our Demoman halfway through the season, and that led to us losing two matches. We focused and recovered, and I’m sure we can do the same here with this slightly-changed lineup. We performed very well in the UGC Grand Final against SDCK with Maros and Adam, we just need to realise it might take some time for it to all click into place.

Strong Opinions new lineup is:

Scout: Maros

Soldier: Raptor

Pyro: Steve!

Demoman: adamracek

Heavyman: EmilioEstevez

Engineer: Seal

Medic: CeeJaey

Sniper: cloudy

Spy: Toast