ENCE have announced that legendary IGL, Lukas ‘gla1ve’ Rossander has been benched. Ex-Bad News Eagles rifler, Rigon ‘rigoN’ Gashi, joins the new iteration of the roster with Viktor ‘sdy’ Orudzhev taking up IGL duties.
gla1ve, a four-time major winner with Astralis, moves to the bench after 19 months in the active roster, with the Finnish organisation stating that he is “allowed to explore new opportunities.”
Viktor ‘sdy’ Orudzhev returns to IGL duties, having been IGL during a relatively successful period at Monte, where the Ukrainian swapped and shared IGL duties with Woro2k in a period which saw Monte reach the quarter-finals of the BLAST Paris Major.
ENCE Academy graduate, Ville ‘myltsi’ Vilkman, completes the roster following Kacper ‘xKacpersky’ Gabara’s move to NiP at the beginning of July. ENCE added that the Finn’s promotion is on a tryout basis as “myltsi and the team to assess their compatibility and long-term potential.”
gla1ve’s ENCE high points were few and far between
Under gla1ve, ENCE had their moments, but they were surrounded by months of stagnation, which stole any possible momentum away from the roster.
At Katowice, the roster made a memorable run to the quarter-finals, with a hugely emotional victory over G2 guaranteeing a playoff berth. The majority Polish roster erupted in emotion, with gla1ve and Paweł “dycha” Dycha especially exuberant.
Playing in front of an enthusiastic home crowd at the Spodek, the fans cheered their every kill against Team Falcons, but the roster fell in three maps.
At the time, the result felt like it vindicated ENCE’s faith in gla1ve, that class is permanent and the results would naturally follow. In truth, ENCE would continue to go nowhere fast, playing dozens of online tournaments which bore little fruit.
Another high point came in October 2024, as ENCE upset heavily favoured rosters The MongolZ, and then Heroic 3-1 in the Grand Final at Elisa Masters Espoo 2024, with Paavo ‘podi’ Heiskanen being a popular home favourite in front of the Finnish crowd.
Yet the pattern re-emerged again. The community celebrated gla1ve’s success, but the victory was an isolated success in a sea of mediocrity, with ENCE’s results before and after the event including losses to ATOX, Red Canids, 500, and academy rosters in Spirit Academy and Navi Junior.
The ENCE roster wallowed in tier two, with very little hope of breaking through to the tier one scene – something the organisation will seriously have to address if they want to be back at Counter-Strike’s top table.
ENCE have a rankings problem to solve
ENCE’s announcement includes the following quotation:
“After a competitively challenging year and a half, we are adjusting our financial investment in the game to better align with our current position in the global VRS landscape, while laying the groundwork to build new momentum and climb the rankings.”
Clearly, the roster moves have a financial element, but one wonders whether there will also be a change of direction in ENCE’s approach to tournament selection. ENCE’s VRS rank has been largely stagnant for most of 2025.
The org has taken part in a plethora of low-value online tournaments. Despite the number of competitions, they have seemingly been unable to make substantive changes to their VRS fate. For example, ENCE’s victory in the YGames Pro Series Season 5 gave them only 11 VRS points, despite winning the event.
Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.
