Nemesis make their first roster changes less than three months after entering Counter-Strike as they replace James “bevve” Slinn and Roberts “Frip” Poļakovs with Roman “n0te” Hamze and Bram “Nexius” Campana. This leaves IGL Thomas “Thomas” Utting as the only Brit on the roster.
It has been a rocky time for Nemesis as they haven’t been able to find their footing in the European Tier-2 ecosystem. Like many teams, if you don’t have a preexisting VRS core, starting from scratch can be challenging. Due to this, Nemesis has only made one online HLTV appearance in Exort Series 16, an unranked event.
In ESEA, Thomas and co made an impressive ESEA Season 54: Entry Division run, finishing third. This did automatically qualify them for ESEA Main in Season 55, but for a team of this calibre, not securing the win and progressing to Advanced can be seen as a disappointment.
In the hunt for those coveted VRS points, Nemesis travelled to two open LANs, Birch Cup 2025 in Poland and Urban Riga Open #1 in Latvia. Coming in with high hopes, Nemesis came away from their travels with little to show.
In their first outing to the Birch Cup, Nemesis didn’t make it out of the open qualifier; luckily for them, the opening stage was covered on HLTV. Needing five ranked matches in total to gain a VRS rank, Nemesis claimed their first three in Gdansk. Even though AWPer Joey ‘CRUC1AL‘ Steusel spearheaded an opening victory over Betclic Apogee, Nemesis would promptly fall to Inner Circle and ESC.
Nemesis’s trip to Latvia, however, was a complete failure. Going from event to event, Nemesis wouldn’t even make it to the HLTV portion of the event as they got knocked out 0-2 in the group stage. Losing out to EYEBALLERS and Fingers Crossed, the squad travelled home without a VRS rank.
bevve’s short time on Nemesis comes to an end
Now, heading into the end of 2025, Nemesis are taking a new direction as they replaced both Frip and one of their two British players, bevve. Fellow countrymen of Coach Rupert Roop, n0te and Nexius will be joining ahead of EPIC.LAN 46, searching for a VRS rank and hoping to end the year on a high.
Nexius is a headline name to be signing, as he has played at a Tier-1 level with OG, peaking at 27th in the world. Alongside that, he has stepped in for MOUZ while he was on their academy team and even qualified for the IEM Sydney 2023 semi-finals. The 21-year-old rifler has been destined for great things since his time winning online Tier-2 events on MOUZ NXT, but hasn’t played a game on HLTV for over a year. If he can shake off the dust, this could turn around the results for Nemesis.
19-year-old n0te completes what is now a Benalux core for Nemesis. Not as experienced as CRUC1AL and Nexius, the rifler has been bouncing around in the European Tier-3 teams since starting his career regionally. Over the last two years, he has represented Monte Gen and 9INE Academy, most recently playing on the Ukrainian side Lazer Cats. What he lacks in experience, he makes up for it in his firepower, as he departs Lazer Cats with a 1.11 HLTV rating across his tenure.
UKCSGO can confirm that we will be seeing this squad attend EPIC.LAN 46, as they hunt for their final two VRS games to gain an official rank.
Returning to LFT status, bevve has joined Owen “smooya” Butterfield on the mix team Fish123 and has already won their first online event, European Pro League Regular Season 1.
Nemesis will end 2025 as such:
Thomas “Thomas” Utting
Joey ‘CRUC1AL‘ Steusel
Dawid “tein” Śladkowski
Roman “n0te” Hamze
Bram “Nexius” Campana
Rupert Hoop (coach)
