Wildcard announce new Counter-Strike roster

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 02/01/2026

Wildcard have announced their new Counter-Strike 2 roster, creating a new VRS core which will have to start from fresh.

The roster has stuck to its NA roots, featuring Jaxon ‘Peeping’ Cornwell alongside new signings Ethan ‘reck’ Serrano and Anthony ‘CLASIA’ Kearney.

The Americans are supplemented by Wildcard Academy Europeans, Miłosz ‘mhL’ Knasiak and Simon ‘sSen’ Solnæs Iversen.

Wildcard rebuild will struggle to replicate previous success

Following the benching and transfer listing of their entire roster in November, Wildcard will aim to recover from what was an infamous stint of mismanagement in 2025.

The organisation’s 2025 saw the org destroy years of progress for nothing in return, with AWPer Love ‘phzy’ Smidebrant claiming that the org had used ChatGPT to make roster decisions.

However, in the same interview phzy asserted a change in management. Regardless, that was not enough to heal the roster that was essentially sabotaged by its org.

That rebuild will struggle to emulate Wildcard’s success under Peter ‘stanislaw’ Jarguz, with the roster featuring in consecutive majors in Shanghai and Austin.

They will try to do so by reinstating Peeping to the active roster, with the ex-Nouns player being joined by CLASIA, who also made his name in that org.

reck joins following his benching from M80 in August, making the team an NA core and eligible for placement in the Americas region of the VRS.

Former Astralis academy player, 18-year-old sSen graduates from the academy.

mhL is also technically a Wildcard Academy graduate, but that fact is very misleading.

The Polish AWPer has already had a long and storied career, jumping from AGO to Mouz NXT, to Endpoint, to Falcons, 9ine, and recently Talon.

As such, mhL wasn’t so much in Wildcard Academy as an academy player, but as a veteran force in the young team and an available AWPing replacement for Sebastian ‘fr3nd’ Kuśmierz.

Wildcard fans will remember fr3nd as the academy AWPer that Wildcard’s management believed so much in that they benched phzy, jeopardising the whole roster.

phzy was later restored to the active roster, cutting short his time at 9ine, seemingly against his own wishes, before Wildcard’s full roster was benched in November.

While the new roster’s core is proven in the NA CS domestic scene, the organisation may take time to build up to the progress that was lost by the org’s own decision-making.

Wildcard are now:

Ethan ‘reck⁠’ Serrano
Anthony ‘CLASIA⁠’ Kearney
Simon ‘⁠sSen⁠’ Solnæs Iversen
Miłosz ‘mhL⁠’ Knasiak
Jaxon ‘⁠Peeping⁠’ Cornwell

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

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.

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