Danish Counter-Strike: Global Offensive organization Astralis and European team FaZe Clan have agreed to transfer former Astralis in-game leader Finn "karrigan" Andersen to the FaZe squad. Karrigan, who is replacing French player Fabien "kioShiMa" Fiey, will debut as FaZe's new in-game leader at this weekend's Turner Broadcasting and WME|IMG's ELeague Season 2 debut in Atlanta.
"The brand FaZe is very unique and I'm very excited to represent FaZe," karrigan said in a press release on the team's Facebook page. "This team is very talented and I'm here to win titles. I believe we have very good mix of players, therefore this was a easy choice to team up with FaZe. With only [one] day [of] training, we will improve for every game we have and I will lead the team as [well] as I can."
With the move, kioShiMa moves to an inactive role in the team and will likely look to join another squad to continue his playing career. Karrigan comes as the second FaZe Clan Counter-Strike roster move in the last few months, with former Ninjas in Pyjamas and ENCE eSports player Aleksi "allu" Jalli having joined the squad in August.
The development comes after FaZe has had mixed offline results in the past few months, taking fifth-sixth at DreamHack Bucharest after falling to Team Dignitas. It also took ninth-tenth in the first season of ELeague and ninth-twelfth at the most recent Counter-Strike major, ESL One Cologne 2016.
The team's first matches with Karrigan will be this week in ELeague's group A. The team will play against North America's Cloud9, Brazil's Immortals and Germany's mousesports beginning on Friday.