Danish organisation ECSTATIC have signed up to EPIC.LAN 45 as the team pushes closer and closer to Tier-1 tournament qualification. This registration adds to the increasing number of European teams travelling to England to compete at EPIC.LAN 45, aiming to improve their position in the Valve Regional Standings.
ECSTATIC entered 2025 as an unlikely team to be contending top 30 Counter-Strike, but through savvy roster moves and understanding of the Valve Ranking System, they currently sit 26th in the world and 18th in Europe.
At the start of the year, ex-TSM and MOUZ NXT youngester, William “sirah” Kjærsgaard, joined ECSTATIC, replacing Mikkel “n1Xen” Borlund. For the first few months, there was very limited success for ECSTATIC; they even dropped to 91st in the world at their lowest at the end of February.
However, the Danes started to gain some impressive results online with a second-place finish at the Thunderpick World Championship 2025 European Series 1 and a win at the A1 Gaming League Season 10.
Another European team steps up to bat; Inner Circle set to make their way to Kettering
Building on this, another major boost for ECSTATIC was their victory at the $100,00 LAN, Elisa Nordic Championship 2025, and their fourth-place finish at the Glitched Masters LAN.
It was through these ever-so-important LAN wins that ECSTATIC managed to bolster their VRS ranking the most. The Valve Ranking system includes an extra modifier, increasing the relative power of LAN results over online results. Therefore, because of their success at these two specific events, ECSTATIC peaked at 25th in the world heading into the summer player break.
As it stands, using the HLTV VRS invited team predictor, ECSTATIC qualify for the BLAST Bounty 2025 Season 2 online stage, the organisation’s first Tier-1 event since the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024.
Understandably so, it might be confusing why a team pushing for Tier-1 would want to come to EPIC.LAN. The main reason is that ECSTATIC have only won eight matches on LAN in 2025. The reason why this matters is that VRS only counts the 10 best results over the past 6 months.
Thus, ECSTATIC seek to hit 10 wins on LAN to maximise the amount of points they can get.
The young Danish team joins Preasy, WildLotus, Alliance, Inner Circle, and Glitchtech, who are travelling to Kettering to compete at EPIC.LAN 45 to harness the LAN multiplier and climb the VRS leaderboard. As of now, ECSTATIC are far and away the highest ranked team to sign up.
