It has been officially announced that Volodymyr "Woro2k" Veletnjuk will play as a replacement at IEM Cologne 2024 for HEROIC. He will play in place of Abdulkhalik "degster" Gasanov, who will miss the third tournament out of five since joining the roster due to visa issues.

Background

For HEROIC, this tournament will be the second tournament in a row where they will play with a substitute. At the last BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024, the team played with a coach and finished in 9th-12th place.

This time around, the team decided to rent a player from Monte in order to not play with a coach and have a better chance of advancing to the main stage of the tournament. Woro2k has been on Monte's bench since July 2024 and was rumored to be testing for different teams, but there was no official announcement about his transfer.

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Performance Details

Insiders recently reported that Woro2k will replace degster, and now the rumors have been confirmed. It will be a temporary replacement for one tournament, but there is also a rumor that degster can get a visa at any time and join the team during the tournament.

But what they will do with Woro2k is unknown, maybe he will play the tournament until the end, or maybe only for a while until degster arrives. Also the organization said that this is a rental only for this tournament.

But the opinion of the community when they found out that degster will not be at IEM Cologne was that HEROIC should find a replacement for degster. So with a good performance from Woro2k, he could potentially replace sniper going forward.

Community Reaction

The reaction of the community was positive and everyone was happy for the Ukrainian player and wished good luck to both the team and the player. But some people think that the team on the bouquet period will become champions, which is funny.

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Tournament info

In the first round of IEM Cologne 2024 Play-in, HEROIC will play MIBR in BO3 format, because BO1 format was removed. If they win, they will meet the winner of the BetBoom/9z pairing. HEROIC need two Play-In wins to advance to the main stage.

The Play-In stage starts on August 7 and will run until August 9, where the first 8 teams out of 16 will advance to the main stage. The main tournament begins on August 10 with a prize pool of $1,000,000 and a spot at IEM Katowice 2025 and BLAST Premier: World Final 2024.