Statistical Inspection: Magisk joins Astralis

A statistical look at Magisk rejoining the fallen Danish giants. Header photo: Stephanie Lindgren (@Vexanie) | BLAST

3 years, 10 months, 11 days.

This is how much time will have passed between Emil “Magisk” Reif entering a CS official under the Astralis banner, as he debuts at FISSURE Playground 2. After taking part in not only building an era but being a part of possibly the greatest roster in competitive Counter-Strike history in his first stint with the org, Magisk this time will look to revive not only Astralis’ former glory, but his own career after getting cut from Falcons. He’s taking the place of Martin “stavn” Lund, who’s on the bench citing “personal reasons”.

System in flux

The Danish org is, once again, in a transitional period. They’ve failed to make the BLAST.tv Austin Major under Casper “cadiaN” Møller, with whom they parted ways with after a failed Major Regional Qualifier campaign. It has been argued, that Rasmus “HooXi” Nielsen’s system simply doesn’t really fit stavn’s playstyle as well, allowing him for less opportunities at timing up flanks.

In terms of snake kills - kills which happen on an opponent that (almost certainly) isn’t looking at the attacker, stavn’s rate under new leadership declined insignificantly, while his T-sided rating actually increased. In fact, in the new system it was only Victor “Staehr” Staehr, who noted a drop in overall rating, and by a single decimal point (from 1.06 to 1.05, his T-side rating did drop from 1.20 to 1.05, although he made up for it with an increase from 0.92 to 1.05 in his new CT positions).

There was one clear benefactor to the change in captaincy - Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard. Ironically, his snake kill rate increased (massively!) once cadiaN was kicked, with the HooXi system allowing him to find 47% more successful flanks. Along with that came a 16-point rise in the brand-new Rating 3.0. The lurker went from placing below names like Denis “electroNic” Sharipov and Marcelo “chelo” Cespedes on the LAN t-side leaderboard while playing under cadiaN, to outplacing names like Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato and Nikola “NiKo” Kovač under the popular Gigachad.

A game of positions

What makes jabbi’s success really impressive, is that he kept all of the T-side positions he had at the start of the year. This means that his bump in performance can be attributed to HooXi using him better than cadiaN.

HooXi’s arrival brought just two positional swaps on t-side, and it didn’t even involve him. The captain slotted in plug-and-play to all of cadiaN’s t-side positions upon his arrival, with just Staehr swapping Banana with stavn’s middle position on inferno defaults.

Magisk will slot in seamlessly as the A lurker on both dust2 and mirage. The rest of the pool features some clashes on t-side - jabbi mans the inferno apps and nuke lobby positions, while HooXi takes control of pop on train and lurks A on ancient. One can only speculate that Magisk is capable of handling ivy left behind by stavn on train and is a sure-fire fit for the ancient A lurk.

The positional serenity after HooXi’s transfer didn’t keep going on defense - a complete overhaul on ancient put Staehr in more rotational spots, with HooXi taking over such prestigious roles as playing train’s Ivy or dust2’s long anchor. All in all, Astralis has made 20 positional swaps on CT-sides just this year, and with Magisk’s arrival, they’ll have to make at least a couple more.

Anchor on an uptick

Role clashes occur on all but ancient, with Magisk’s Falcons role overlapping with jabbi on 4 out of the 6 maps Astralis play. The new arrival improved his CT-sided play as the season went on - he noted a horrific 0.92 rating in the first 6 LAN events of the year, with a marked improvement to 1.02 from BLAST Rivals Season 1 onwards.

When looking at pre-plant buy vs. buy stats, there were two stand out maps - Magisk has been one of the top dust2 B and inferno pit anchors. He did his best work on inferno, joining Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy and Nikita “HeavyGod” Martynenko in the 100 ADR club, as well as being the only player to average at least 1 kill per hold.

Which spots should he take over? On paper, his stats look much better than the previous Astralis players on the aforementioned inferno, as well as nuke. The latter map is especially interesting to figure out, since stavn’s departure leaves a big hole - he had a 1.18 CT LAN rating on yard under HooXi. Staehr fared quite well on ramp as well (1.16), so whether you move him or the low fragging HooXi outside is a very tough choice to make.

Overall, Magisk’s arrival brings in veteran experience to the Astralis lineup while keeping the lineup speaking Danish. Whether his uptick in form was caused solely by the potential threat of losing his job remains to be seen, but the fans of the 4-time major winning org can remain cautiously optimistic with HooXi steering the ship.

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