CS:GO General News

Miika ‘suNny‘ Kemppi is a 24-year-old player from Finland. He’s been part of the Counter-Strike scene for some time now. His break-out performance happened alongside the mixed European team of Penta in 2017. The team started from ground zero and just 4 months in their inception they qualified for the PGL Krakow Major. Albeit, they didn’t accomplish much, but the feat was impressive none the less.

suNny at DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018. Image via https://dreamhack.com/

His next big hit would happen in the Mousesports roster, where the team would begin contesting for big victories and titles in tier one events. However, at the start of 2019 the Mousesports roster was revamped entirely, after their exit in the European minor. Almost 6 months have passed and there hasn’t been a team to pick him up. In this current landscape of team, is there a team out there who could use a sunny?

Fellow Finnish Folk

One of the obvious destinations was the Finnish team ENCE. They’ve proven to the world that their roster is capable of winning trophies, by securing StarSeries i-League Season 6 against Vega Squadron in a bo5 grand final. But there was still room to grow. The team had an early exit in Epicenter 2018 and even though they secured another win in Dreamhack Open Summer, the competition there was weak.

The odds of sunNy really dwindled after ENCE’s performance in the IEM Katowice Major. The team battled their way through the European minor, major qualifier and even reached the Legends stage. When it looked like their run will come to an end, they beat the two best teams in the world below Astralis, Liquid and Na’vi. Sure, their run came to an abrupt end in the grand finals, but their achievement was unprecedented.

If a team would drop-off after the major, they might want a replacement. However, the opposite happened. ENCE would continue to win a tier one event and make big grand final appearances, the most recent being in Dreamhack Masters Dallas.

So, no. It looks like ENCE do not need the services of suNny. They already have a capable roster on their team and it’s hard to say what piece should you remove. Keeping AleksiB is a must due to his IGL’ing, Allu is a very capable AWPer plus he brings a certain ten-year. One of the moves you might consider is removing xseven, but even that is questionable. As of right now, their having some great performances, so is it’s questionable whether you want to break a working machine.

New Home In FaZe Clan

FaZe clan has had a rough time at the start of 2019. The lack of a proper IGL, ynk just joining the position as a coach have all been part of their lackluster success this year. But there is another issue that has plagued this star-studded team – the lack of a talented 5th.

The first player to attempt to fill-in for FaZe was AdreN. He was a player available in the market of free agency. If FaZe clan just wanted to a secured a 5th quickly and look for better opportunities later down the line, that’s not a bad idea. After all, AdreN has played a big part in the success of Gambit’s run in 2017, but that was almost 1,5 years ago.

Even though the team chucked along with AdreN as a 5th, it wasn’t a good move. The team had 3 group stage exists, in BLAST Pro Series Sao Paulo, StarSeries Season 7 and IEM Sidney (the last they didn’t have Niko, due to Visa issues). It’s true that the other players on FaZe were struggling and it looked like this is the opportune time to get some fragging power in the form of suNny. After all, he had about two years of experience in international teams and he has his bearing on how these teams tick. Unfortunately for him, the next individual to step in for FaZe was NEO and suNny was out of another roster move.

Happy Ending For sunNy?

There has been some recent twitter activity from suNny intimating a possible move somewhere. For him, the doors are shut for the teams in the top 10, as they desperately want to keep their competitive rosters. But everything below the top 10 is fair game.

There could be a possibility of him joining a revamped Cloud9 roster. Maybe some of the mixed nationality teams in Europe are willing to give him a go. After all, teams like cr4zy, Hellraisers and GamerLegion might make some convincing offers for him to join. One way or the other, a previously 16th player in the world shouldn’t spend the last days of his career sitting on a bench.