Photo: SLTV
The Hearthstone roster of Luminosity Gaming undergoes big changes as they lose their headline player.
DreamHack and StarLadder champion Stanislav Cifka will no longer be playing for Luminosity Gaming, an official statement from the team reports. This ends Cifka’s five-month stint with the team after he joined in June together with Josh “Impact” Graham and Nuno “Ignite” Pinho.
As far as achievements go, this is a big loss for the US-based team. A former Magic: The Gathering legend, the Czech joined Luminosity shortly after his first place finish at DreamHack Bucharest in April and despite his relatively short career in Hearthstone, he was the hottest player on a roster that also contained the two old-timers in Ignite and Impact. Cifka’s consistent performance brought a number of high place finishes to Luminosity, including the bronze medals of Abios Grand Tournament and WCA EU Qualifier, as well as the gold from StarLadder Season 1.
Despite these results, Cifka and Luminosity could not agree on terms to renew his contract and the player was released earlier today. With a rich shelf of achievements, Cifka thus becomes Hearthstone’s most decorated free agent. GosuGamers' sources indicate that Cifka has already been in talks with new Hearthstone teams, though his disinterest in streaming the game is mentioned as a possible hindrance to a new contract.
Ignite will also follow Cifka out of Luminosity. The Portuguese was one of Hearthstone’s headliners in 2014 but failed to put up decent results this year. Both players are among the 32 invited to SeatStory Cup 4 but given the time of the press release, both will play their matches as free agents. This is also the second roster change Luminosity has done in the past two months, as the organization parted ways with Impact in October.
Though they’ve lost two players, Luminosity has also signed Johan “Darkwonyx” Hansson to fill the gap as best as possible. A long-time competitive gamer, Darkwonyx gathered fame in the early days of Hearthstone, favoring control decks like Warrior and Priest. In the fall of 2014, he made it to the top 8 of two of the biggest tournaments that year, WCA and WEC. Darkwonyx has remained inactive for most of 2015 and only now is he looking forward to a return into competitive HS.
