For all their deep playoff runs, for all their grand final appearances, it will never not be a surprise that Heroic only have two trophies to show for it. Considering they’re both BLAST trophies, we think they’re pretty big deals, but we won’t blame Heroic if they don’t exactly quench their thirst for more glory.

Home to five of the best Counter-Strike players from Denmark, Heroic has arguably been the best team since the return to LAN in late 2021, and very few tournaments since then have not seen Heroic reach the playoffs.

The fact remains, however, that when the going gets tough, Heroic often fail to get going, but their end to the first season of 2023, and the changes to other teams seen in the off-season, could see that all change very soon.

Photo: Michal Konkol

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes

Heroic aren’t the first great Danish team to be labelled as chokers. Long before they became the greatest team in the history of Counter-Strike, the legendary four-time Major winning Astralis team were also tarnished with the same brush.

Perennial playoff contenders, try as they might, as both TSM and then as Astralis, the core of device, dupreeh, and Xyp9x would seemingly never be able to push past that barrier and actually take home the trophies they fought closely for.

For Astralis, it took years and multiple roster changes, a leadership change when gla1ve arrived in place of karrigan, and an injection of youthful exuberance as kjaerbye replaced cajunb.

Shortly after, Astralis would claim ECS Season 2, and immediately after that, their first Major trophy at the ELEAGUE Atlanta Major. Of course, it would still be another year and a roster change before they became the dominant team that reshaped CS:GO forever, but it was these early victories that empowered them to do so.

The grandest stages come with the largest amounts of pressure, and with Magisk making them a more balanced team, Astralis already had the experience to understand how to deal with that pressure. Where they had previously crumbled, they would do so no more, and after that, trophies seemed to come easy to them.

Heroic have already made their perfect roster move, they did so when they added Jabbi a year ago, and now they have won their second trophy as a unit, they may also have finally learned how to overcome pressure too.

Photo: Stephanie Lindgren

Heroic’s hunger to win

While Heroic may have won two trophies, they haven’t yet won any of the big prizes on offer. There are no IEMs, no BLAST World Final, no Major too. Considering they are helmed by a man with a story such as cadiaN’s, their hunger for trophies won’t be satisfied until one of those trophies are in their grasp.

That unsatisfied hunger will be key to overcoming this obstacle for Heroic, but so too will the outside factors caused by rostermania. Even before almost every team in the world decided to make changes, Heroic's chemistry was unmatched, now with so many teams having to build their chemistry back up, Heroic will find one of their strengths to be stronger than ever before.

Heroic play the best brand of Counter-Strike in tier one, and they have done for a while. Their proactive CT side is meta defining, and it is a style that they are so good at that no one could ever hope to truly recreate it.

On their day, they are unstoppable, and the extra advantage they get from only having one nationality in their team is a rarity in the modern era of international teams. With even more teams taking the plunge into international squads over the off-season, that is an advantage that will have only grown in strength as a result.

For a team with as much talent and a style as distinctive as Heroic’s, trophies are somewhat of an inevitability. Learning to win them, however, takes time, but after heartbreak in both Rio and Paris, and glory straight after both of them, Heroic may have finally gathered enough experience to feel jubilation far more often than heartbreak.

Photo: Stephanie Lindgren