Sunday, the 14th of December 2025. It’s the ESEA Open10 Grand Finals, and the UK & Irish core, FastLearners, have found themselves up against the French team Project Conquerors. It’s quite simple: the winner qualifies for ESEA Advanced, whereas the loser has to play ESEA Main in Season 56.
In the end, it’s not even particularly close. FastLearners demolish the French mix 3-0 in the BO5 grand finals and take the Advanced spot for themselves. Fast forward to today, and FastLearners play under a new name: SUNFALL.
Captained by Veteran British IGL Ben “Benzki” Price, SUNFALL will be led by a player with experience in competing at high levels of Counter-Strike. Benzki has made the rounds in the UK scene, playing in multiple seasons of ESL Premiership and EPIC.LAN for the likes of The Last Resort.
This marks Benzki‘s official return to Counter-Strike after moving to VALORANT, where he played under the banners of K10 and WYLDE. K10 was owned and founded by Ethan “fl0wZ” Rogerson, who also returns to Counter-Strike brand ownership with The SUNFALL Corporation.
Whilst playing VALORANT for K10, Benzki was on a team with Irish player Sameem “Merix” Hussein, who joins him on the transition back to Counter-Strike, taking up the AWP role.
The final member maintaining the core from Season 55 of ESEA is the talented Swedish youngster Emil “Forzen” Karlsson, who is just 15 years of age.
Benzki, Merix and Forzen are the core of the FastLearners team that qualified for ESEA Advanced. With the new rules in place regarding VRS, three of the five members from the previous season must be part of the roster to maintain a spot going into the next season. Opposed to the old rules of only 2/5ths needed if one of those two is the captain of the ESEA page.
To round off the roster, SUNFALL are joined by August “Straxy” Canavan and Zygimantas “RedRush” Navickas. The former notably played for Metizport academy in 2024, winning the Norwegian regional league, Good Game League Fall Finals. And RedRush, unorthodoxly, has transitioned from Fortnite. He had a fairly successful career, competing in Fortnite World Cup Finals 2019, and in the same year won the Fortnite Champion Series: Chapter 2 Season 1 – Grand Finals: Europe, taking home $300,000.
SUNFALL are only one player away from being a UK and Ireland core, which would make them eligible to play in UKIC Season 9 Masters and score some VRS points. However, the talent was not available at the time.
Initially, a UK core was the priority but an unfortunate combination of lack of time and lack of available players forced us to go a different route. We conducted trials as close as 3 hours before the roster lock, but sadly none of the UK players we were able to trial fit the puzzle.
fl0wZ
The last UK CS team to qualify for ESEA Advanced was Reason Gaming in Season 52. Famously, they had their spot stolen from them after the two non-UK players took the Advanced spot and kicked the UK core from the team.
The most recent UK team to qualify and play in ESEA Advanced prior to SUNFALL was Coalesce in Season 48, which contained a core of players that would go on to be a part of 8Sins. Of course, there is also Washington, flying the UK and Ireland flag in ESEA Advanced, having been there since ESEA season 36, 20 seasons ago.
After now entering Counter-Strike, SUNFALL are:
Ben “Benzki” Price
Sameem “Merix” Hussein
Emil “Forzen” Karlsson
August “Straxy” Canavan
Zygimantas “RedRush” Navickas
𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞, 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭.
Introducing SUNFALL CS2,
𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘌𝘚𝘌𝘈 𝘈𝘋𝘝, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦💫#DARETOBURN pic.twitter.com/Z8LAdpgRFK— THE SUNFALL CORPORATION ✹ (@SUNFALLGG) January 19, 2026
