HEROIC bench academy roster ahead of rebuild to "create direct pipeline" to main team

5-9-2025 14:37

Five months after launching the academy project, HEROIC are shifting in order to build "a clearer path toward the main team."

anber & co. will continue to play together while they explore new opportunities

HEROIC have announced the benching of its entire academy roster featuring Rasmus "⁠Scr0b⁠" Poulsen, Bertil "⁠Dengzoe⁠" Dengsø Vest Hansen, Andreas "⁠anber⁠" Brandt, Vladyslav "⁠St0m4k⁠" Lykhoshva and David "⁠fnl⁠" Mușuroiu.

The only member to remain with the project moving forward is coach Joonas "⁠doto⁠" Forss, HEROIC have confirmed to HLTV.

The move comes as part of a plan to restructure the academy project to one with a clearer connection to the main team, according to the Norwegian organization's statement.

"The new structure will place more emphasis on creating a direct pipeline between the Academy and HEROIC's main roster," it said.

Key to that connection will be the main team's head coach, Tobias "⁠TOBIZ⁠" Theo, who spent almost three and a half years developing young talent at MOUZ NXT ahead of his move to HEROIC three months ago.

"With closer cooperation between Academy staff, players, and our main team coach Tobiz, we aim to give young talent a clear framework for development and a tangible opportunity to prove themselves at the highest level," the statement went on.

The last, Danish-majority roster will continue to compete together in tournaments as a mix team while they explore new opportunities, HEROIC added.

That will likely be without fnl, who has been trialing for Nexus since late last month as a replacement for FUT-bound Laurențiu "⁠lauNX⁠" Țârlea.

HEROIC Academy boasted the following roster:

Rasmus "⁠Scr0b⁠" Poulsen
Bertil "⁠Dengzoe⁠" Dengsø Vest Hansen
Andreas "⁠anber⁠" Brandt
Vladyslav "⁠St0m4k⁠" Lykhoshva
David "⁠fnl⁠" Mușuroiu (loaned to Nexus)

Joonas "⁠doto⁠" Forss (coach)

rip

2025-09-05 14:37

4 replies

these chumps really think because Doto used to play with sAw he will also be a good coach. "We can sell sAw we have another sAw at home"

2025-09-05 15:22

2 replies

Or sAw informed them that he planned to leave at the end of his contract so they sold him to G2…

2025-09-05 15:48

1 reply

your honor objection relevance

2025-09-26 14:20

Lets redefine our pipeline by BENCHING THE WHOLE TEAM. srsly?

2025-09-05 15:50

o7, Scr0b deserves a better team

2025-09-05 14:38

Academy teams are hard to build, they only signed the original roster for vrs to be fair.

2025-09-05 14:40

why would that not be the main intention of the academy team in the first place?

2025-09-05 14:41

Some academy teams built like this are made to just farm prize money in tier 2 and hope someone buys a player or two, no interest in promoting them at all.

2025-09-05 14:42

3 replies

this strategy separates the good academy rosters from the shit ones.

2025-09-05 14:43

Ye so this is what they want to address

2025-09-05 15:02

about time

2025-09-05 16:09

Everything happening around heroic really makes it seem like tobiz is a mad dictator that fires and signs players willy nilly.

2025-09-05 14:55

8 replies

That team was bought in long before him, and considering their results, it makes sense. Not to mention, it doesn’t make sense for them to be an all-Danish team when they’re international now and the organization is Norwegian.

2025-09-05 15:00

6 replies

yup! not saying this is a bad move, but considering how decisive the roster moves have been since he joined, it seems like there is a clear vision for how the org handles their players and teams. I hope this vision will work out well.

2025-09-05 15:20

The org was always norwegian though, it's just that CEO was/is danish

2025-09-05 16:32

it wasn't, it used to be Danish when it first started out. Back when it was owned by the same people that used to own Astralis RFRSH entertainment "We're bold, we're not afraid to dish out and receive, and we love to have fun. You can find us competing at the top-level in multiple game titles, reaching millions of viewers globally. This is HEROIC. Based with Nordic roots after being founded in Denmark in 2016," no.linkedin.com/company/heroicgg

2025-09-05 16:37

I misremembered :P, they still have danish CEO though

2025-09-05 16:42

ownership is Russian/Ukrainian betting site 1xBet now though cocovlr.medium.com/public-ties-between-h..

2025-09-05 16:45

They own everything, is ok

Heroic are prbly interested in keeping tobiz for a long time so he can rebuild how he wants.

2025-09-05 15:38

big is relieved

HEROIC and Mouz are the only 2 organizations with ideas and structure for the future. They are trying to build teams and to improve their players, not spend millions of dollars for "instant result", as most of those teams are total failure in long term. If they sell a player or 2, or even core their cash flow will be enough to have solid foundations for the future, not like Complexity, Astralis and etc, who are close to bankruptcy.

2025-09-05 14:59

spirit as well they have 1000 academy teams now

Yes, I don't know how I forgot about Spirit.

2025-09-05 15:01

VP.Prodigy seems to be doing decent lately, might be something for the future main roster aswell.

2025-09-05 15:12

to0ro from VP.Prodigy was just promoted to the main team, let's see if he and/or the others are the real deal or not

wait wait wait. is HEROIC themselves Tier-1 teams academy? So HEROIC Academy is Academy of Academy of Tier 1?

2025-09-05 15:05

With TOBIZ coming from the academy of MOUZ and having all this experience it's a move that makes sense. Start from scratch with all that knowledge of a working academy and create that framework. We saw how well MOUZ NX T did with TOBIZ, players went on to be in T1 - qualify to majors, it's a success. Considering Heroic plan of selling players to make a profit and still being a competitive team it makes all the sense in the world to not have to spend a dime for players and making sure the academy players get to the main team. It's cheaper, it offers guarantees of results, behaviors in a team, professionalism, and it doubles down on selling talents to other orgs either from the academy or main team. Will be curious to see how they will start their academy, will they get a core of players who have VRS points, like the old RUSH B roster who is now orgless, and fill with talents they found. Or will they go the MOUZ NXT way with no VRS points and just going to open unranked tournaments and have their players going to LAN or try to make it deep into open qualifiers. Curious to see it, CS becomes even more interesting now with smaller projects and talent pipeline.

very likely to be the nxt style considering tobiz's previous approach with nxt. it also makes sense, because wasting money on purchasing t4 rosters only to gradually replace players is a meaningless task, since the vrs gain is hardly the point of an academy roster + they're going to be reworking the system so players can slot directly into the main team, so its not like you want pre-existing strats or chemistry either.

2025-09-05 15:35

yeah academy as a selling org vs promotion org is a fine line and depends on keeping eyes on how qualification works as well as the orgs need to focus on making money from roster moves.

2025-09-05 16:46