Despite winning three consecutive UKIC and EPIC.LAN titles and being the undisputed best team in UK CS, ALASKA, are going their separate ways. Cited as a result of a lack of funds, due to playing under no organisation, the team cannot continue with this roster as they have run out of money and cannot sustain playing full-time. All good things must come to an end.

Tom “arTisT” Clarke, Matas “Extinct” Strumila, Callum “Girafffe” Jones, and coach Ciaran “biscu” King have grinded from the bottom of the food chain to the top of UK CS over the last six years. Through thick and thin, they achieved their goals, becoming the undisputed best UK CS team over the last year. It has been confirmed that Girafffe, biscu, and new addition Jamie “Tree60” Callan are leaving. arTisT, Extinct, and Mason “Vacancy” Haines want to stay together, but there are no guarantees.

Regardless of outside factors, ALASKA still can walk away with their heads held high as they maintained their title as the best team in the UK after defeating 8Sins in the UKIC Season 5 Division 1 Final. Marking the final chapter in their legendary story.

This team has left in its path an awe-inspiring legacy. To fully understand this, we have to rewind the clock and look at the steps taken from the depths of UK CS to the upper echelons of Counter-Strike.

arTisT: “If I am going to quit I will be happy with what I have done, 99% of people can’t say that.”

Building the foundations

The story starts in the backend of 2019 in Season 32 of ESEA Main when arTisT, Extinct and Girafffe joined forces under Chrome Gaming. This core would not know yet, but six years later, they would be competing at an RMR, win four EPIC.LANs, three EPIC.WANs, three UKIC Leagues, one UKIC Invitational, and two international LAN events.

At the end of 2020, pieces started to fall into place for this core. Heading into Season 35 of ESEA Main playing under the organisation UMX, they had added Seth “Xetherato” Jackson, AWPer Oliver “Maza” Mazarelo, and coach Oscar “Keto” Kilvington.

UMX had an iconic and slightly unique style of how they approached the game. Furia, who were concurrently on the rise at a tier one level, were the embodiment of controlled aggression and used the other team’s naivety against them. Most people thought they were being crazy and random, but it was all perfectly strategised and calculated.

Each player on UMX would then be given a player on Furia to watch, and they just straight up copied them one for one – the defaults, the mid-round decisions, and how they set themselves up to succeed. UMX fully bought into the idea, and that’s why it worked.

As an IGL, it felt like I was cheating. FURIA at the time were on the rise because they were utilizing a unique playstyle – for example, on Overpass, they would never go A. They’d just brute force monster and get as many rounds as possible. For some of our games it worked, and others it didn’t, no matter what the outcome was, the plan stayed in place and everyone kept the faith.

arTisT

So, for the end of 2020, UMX had three goals: making ESL Premiership playoffs, making HLTV appearances, and making ESEA Advanced.

They accomplished the first two, but narrowly missed out on making ESEA Advanced after being one win away. Even though they didn’t make ESEA Advanced, this was the breakout for arTisT and co. as they had broken through into the top flight of both the UK and international scene, something they hadn’t done before.

Their style of CS being so unpredictable has massive upset potential, which is probably why a team competing in ESEA Main were getting the results they were getting.

One to watch: arTisT

Continuing on this trend of progression, UMX replaced Xetherato with Kirk “Tadpole” Stephens ahead of Season 36 of ESEA Main at the start of 2021. ESEA Season 36 was the season that they finally broke through to qualify for ESEA Advanced.

During all of their success in the international leagues, UMX achieved their first victory in events as they won three EPIC.WANs back-to-back. This was when everything seemed to fall into place, and from this point onwards, it was just about building a deeper strat book and understanding the philosophy of their gameplay more.

UMX were still falling short in HLTV events, but were certainly making a mark and establishing themselves as top UK prospects. Keto said in an interview with Demon that this team was “hitting its peak…” How wrong he was.

pic.twitter.com/dTHwuJ0jyS

— UMX (@UMX_Gaming) April 6, 2021

Striving for consistent improvement, in their debut season of ESEA Advanced arTisT picked up the AWP alongside IGLing as Maza made way for Sebastian “volt” Maloș. Unfortunately, not long after this team had to part ways with UMX due to a lack of funding.

The rise to the top of UK CS

This ended up being very fortunate for them, as not long after Coalesce was formed. This was a major development in terms of organisations in the UK scene, as many organisations that suffered the same fate as UMX banded together and created a new “super-team”. This involved other household names in UK CS at the time, such as Audacity Gaming, Electrify Esports and Peak Esports.

This not only meant a new home for the boys, but it was the first time they would be playing full-time. Despite playing games on HLTV at 8 am, this would previously mean people would have to take time off work and university. So this upgrade would be the difference maker for this budding squad.

With Tim “TIMMO” Musters finalising the roster, this is when this core for the first time became the undisputed best team in the UK. During COVID there were obviously no LANs, so even though they had won three EPIC.WANs, it wasn’t quite the same. Therefore, taking the opportunity to compete at EPIC.LAN 34, the first back since COVID, Coalesce dominated. This was also the first event Ciaran “biscu” King coached Coalesce as he took over duties from Jack “Zerpherr” Kelly, who had a short stint with the roster after Keto.

Their time with Coalesce may have been sweat, was not long. The roster departed from the organisation at the end of the year due to a lack of support, a seemingly common theme with UK organisations.

But before they left, this squad travelled to Malta with their earnings from EPIC.LAN 44 to compete in the SiGMA Esports Technologies Cup 2021. This event ended up being a real breakout for this team because they progressed from winning regional LANs, to international LANs.

This event was even more impressive when they shouldn’t have even been at the event, and were using two stand-ins. TIMMO had been dropped from the roster after EPIC.LAN 34, but brought back in for this event. The other was Javier “Ping” Griffiths, whom they had never even played with before.

None of us will ever forget the feeling of getting champagne blasted at us while they played Sweet Caroline in the background. We had played with TIMMO before, but we had only met Ping one week before the event. Immediately, we had the Ping effect on our side.

arTisT

You have to lose to win

After their stint on Coalesce, they went under the banner of FAMBIT. Continuing on with Ping, FAMBIT made a stellar run in the playoffs of ESEA Advanced Season 40. Picking up some serious upset wins, they made it to ESL Challenger League Season 40 Europe Relegation, but unfortunately were stopped one win away from qualification. Even if they didn’t qualify, this was an important chapter in the history of this team’s achievements.

FAMBIT round out roster with Gizmy and Mad

Attempting to carry this success forward, FAMBIT would have a new challenger arise in UK CS, Into The Breach. Entering Counter-Strike in June, this team ended up being the kryptonite for FAMBIT. In back-to-back UK tournaments, Insomnia 68 and UKIC Invitational Spring 2022, FAMBIT would lose to ITB.

There was a silver lining on the horizon; FAMBIT found a home with EKO. Less than a month after joining, EKO had qualified for alpenScene LEVEL UP 2022, an offline tournament in Salzburg, Austria. Playing the Grand Finals in front of a crowd, EKO dispatched of the Austrian mix-team “murders2002” 2-1 to walk away with first place under their belts, as well as a sweet €3200 to boot.

arTisT cited as his best moment of his career in an interview he did with UKCSGO:

I really liked the LAN we played in Austria. I was a beautiful country, beautiful city, hilarious people. That whole event for me was the number one, the most enjoyable event from my whole experience.

arTisT

Unfortunately, even if they could win internationally, these issues of second-place finishes regionally would continue to haunt them.

Heading into Insomnia 69, they were seeking to right their wrongs from their last trip to Birmingham. After getting to the Grand Finals quite comfortably, they would face off against Temperate. Cited as clear favourites, Jack “Gizmy” von Spreckelsen had even said to UKCSGO, “It would be embarrassing not to win.”

Despite going up 2-0 in the best-of-five, EKO were reverse-swept on the subsequent three maps and were forced to walk away with second place once again.

We were all shell-shocked and didn’t know what to do.

arTisT

After suffering regionally, EKO would at least end their time with the organisation on a strong note by winning two UK events in a row. Facing off against their demons, Into The Breach, in the Grand finals of the GAM3RS_X EU Champions: Fall 2022 – British Qualifier and the UKIC Invitational Summer 2022, they finally found solace.

Up to this stage, 2022 had been a rather rocky year for this team. A lot of finals were squandered, and a lot of roster changes showed they were struggling to stabilise after their success in 2021. This was accentuated further after they decided not to continue with EKO.

But another silver lining on the horizon as they find a new home with Viperio.

SOS find a home and recruit MMS

The unexpected run to eternal glory

Not only was this a new home, but it was the roster would change the course of their careers in a way they could never anticipate. This move to Viperio did break up the core of arTisT, Girafffe and Extinct, as upon joining their new organisation, Extinct departed the team for a period.

Shortly after signing with the organisation, the winter split of ESL Premiership 2022 rolled around and became one of the team’s most successful runs in the UK competition to date. Making it all the way to the Grand Finals, Viperio would face off against the undisputed top dogs, Endpoint. Even though it was a hard-fought match, Endpoint would ultimately come out on top. This, however, was a great litmus test that this roster was progressing in the right direction as Viperio took them all the way in a gruelling BO5.

This test seemed to stand strong as heading into 2023, Viperio embarked on their journey in the BLAST.TV Paris Major Open Qualifiers.

Before this qualifier, Viperio had James “bevve” Slinn after Ping had left. Unfortunately, bevve had a family matter to attend to during the qualifier, so they had to use Rory “cryths” Ursell as a sub. And this ended up being the craziest run of their careers.

Only signing up 25 minutes before the qualifier started, they just kept on winning, cryths had to ask for time off from his boss as they went further into the qualifier.

It was so unluckily. People don’t really understand how crazy that run was. We were not even expecting to play the qualifier, signing up 25 minutes before hand. bevve couldn’t play the qualifer so we had to get cryths. Then when we went further we needed his boss to give him time off to continue playing. To this day I still don’t undersatnd how we qualified, it was just full hype, I don’t have the words to describe it.

arTisT

Going head-to-head against some household names in Tier-2 wasn’t enough to phase arTisT. The British-Irish team scored serious upset wins against 1WIN, PGE Turow and even a #23 rated SAW to earn themselves the honours of attending the last CS:GO RMR in Copenhagen alongside fellow Brits, Into the Breach.

History made as Viperio and Into The Breach qualify for BLAST RMR

Not only was this a huge achievement in itself, but it was also the first time any Irish player had made the RMR.

Sometimes you need to lose to win. After losing to Temperate in the Finals of Insomnia 69, this was a wake-up call for arTisT and co, which led them to this point.

Then after Insomnia 69, biscu, Extinct and I went to the airport after the event, and we just had a long discussion about what to do with the roster as we just knew it wasn’t working. The number one problem was our schedule so we knew we had to fix that, so unfortunately we had to let Extinct go. From this decision, we took two steps back after letting him go, but we are thinking six months down the line as we have a schedule we can work around. After that things just fell into place.

arTisT

In the lead-up to the RMRs, Viperio brought back Extinct into the lineup after they moved away from bevve. Setting out in their preparation, they travelled to Poland for a boot camp and were playing consistently in online Tier-2 tournaments.

The RMRs proved to be a bit too difficult for Viperio as they left empty-handed, losing 0-3. However, even if they didn’t get a win, they flew the Irish and British flags at the top of the Counter-Strike world.

The road to undisputed UK CS champions

Continuing on with their year, they eventually departed Viperio in August. After spending a short period of time under no organisation, they once again hit gold.

Verdant had entered the UK CS space during this time by picking up Dripmen. However, after 50 days, their contracts were terminated after they were disqualified from ESL Premiership for stream sniping. This then created the opportunity for this legacy core to call Verdant their new home.

Their first tournament was the final ESL Premiership Autumn 2023, which was to be hosted on LAN at Insomnia 71. This debut wasn’t exactly what they expected as they lost in the Semi-Finals to eventual winners, Raptors EC.

The dip in form continued as, at the end of the year, they lost another regional title at the inaugural UKIC Division 1 Finals against K10. This loss would be the final time this core would lose on LAN.

Throughout these years, the lineup around the core of arTisT, Girafffe and Extinct had changed a lot, but through thick and thin, they were always together. The only time this wasn’t the case was at the end of 2022 when Extinct‘s schedule didn’t align with the teams.

However, heading into 2024, Verdant benched Extinct due to him once again having to focus on his university studies, a problem that has arisen before.

The next big change came a few months later as they built the roster that would rule UK CS.

By April of 2024, Verdant finalised their lineup with Mason “Vacancy” Haines and superstar AWPer Remi “Diviiii” Alexandre. Due to the Frenchman taking the AWP, this meant arTisT would relinquish his usual role and focus on IGLing.

Always the problem has been for us, Tom [arTisT] loves rifling and AWPing, but it’s very hard to IGL and AWP at the same time. There’s very few people who do it at the high level, there’s some notable examples of course but Tom wasn’t feeling as much impact as he was in CS:GO with CS2. So he wanted to come back [to rifling] but we’ve never been in a position, thanks to Verdant for this [bringing an AWPer in], to actually go and replace Tom on the AWP, adequately.

biscu

One of their first events together was the RES European Masters Fall 2024: British & Irish Qualifier, beating Endpoint in the Finals. After years of Endpoint being at the top of UK CS, this result signified the start of Verdant’s dominance.

However, the change would take a bit more time than they expected, as they fell short at the UKIC League Summer 2024. Despite domestic struggles, Verdant were making strides internationally as they made a deep ESEA advanced run in Season 49. Initially the roster struggled for consistency, but when it came to the next UK event, EPIC.LAN 42, everything clicked.

At this stage, Extinct rejoined in the place of Doron “Zax1e” Prizent. With the band back together, Verdant seemed unstoppable regionally. Firstly, storming through EPIC.LAN 42 as Diviiii took home his first MVP award with Verdant.

Yeah for sure. For me personally, the fact we just saw each other is a boost. We have a stronger connection now. They are used to seeing each other because there are a lot of UK LANs, but for me the fact we saw each other is very good – creating that stronger connection. Even though I was already confident in the team, I feel more confident now, it is a bonus. Only positives from this weekend.

Diviiii

The next stop would be the UKIC League Season 3: Division 1, as they claimed their second LAN victory over Dreams To Legends with Diviiii picking up his second MVP in as many LAN events.

Seemingly unstoppable, they just kept on going with another LAN victory at EPIC.LAN 43 with Extinct winning MVP.

Even if Verdant were currently sitting as the undisputed best team in the UK, they were honestly not looking that great internationally. This choice to bring Diviiii in looked good on paper because of his stats, but it created a big issue with rifling roles and the team’s cohesion. arTisT being on a rifle didn’t really make sense, and you can see from when he was AWPing, they had far greater results.

Alongside internal issues, heading into the later end of 2024, Verdant decided to change Diviiii out heading into the UKIC League Season 4: Division 1. Using Oliver “leaf” Jackson as a stand-in, Verdant just about edged past underdogs Belfast Storm. Continuing to use leaf for the rest of the year, Verdant achieved their best result internationally as they won the European Pro League Season 23: Division 2 on Christmas Eve.

However, Verdant had already made up their mind. Despite ruling the UK scene with an iron fist and ending the year strong, the British organisation chose not to continue with their CS roster. Even though they did end strong with regional and international wins, they just were not doing well throughout the year outside of UK events.

The last dance

Therefore, heading into 2025, the team rebranded to ALASKA and also picked up Jamie “Tree60” Callan, as leaf had to focus on his university studies.

Playing with no organisational support and with the stress of VRS points bearing down on them, there was no room for mistakes. And unfortunately, they didn’t do great in Tier-2 European events. Bowing out early on in tournaments like CCT, the only shining light was once again dominating UK CS.

Wins came flowing in at CAD February 2025, and another LAN victory at EPIC.LAN 44. The difference between this EPIC.LAN was that they funded it completely on their own, and this added extra pressure. ALASKA even tried to get organisational support just for this LAN, saying they wouldn’t take any prize-winning, but no one offered their help.

Regardless, this performance in Kettering supported their international campaigns by gaining elusive VRS points. Even then, it just wasn’t quite working for ALASKA.

UKIC Season 5: Division 1 Final Overview: The Last Dance Ends in Immortality

Heading into their third UKIC Division 1 Finals, it all started to fall apart. LFT posts start flowing from Extinct, Tree60, and Girafffe. This upcoming Finals would end up being their swan song.

Confirmed that Girafffe, Tree60, and coach biscu were leaving the project; they entered with no expectations and just wanted to end on a high. In classic ALASKA fashion, they lost the first map and had to come back from a 5-11 deficit on map three. But hey, one thing that is for certain they always made the Grand Finals extremely exciting.

For ALASKA, there is a chance that we never see some of these players on the server again. arTisT hinted at the possibility of retiring if no paid project becomes available. Outside of speculation, who knows where these players will take themselves next?

What is certain is that the legacy set by this core will forever be etched into the annals of UK CS. Starting at the bottom of the food chain, losing countless Grand Finals, they tirelessly fought through all the adversity thrown at them. These names rose above the rest and have forever cemented themselves as one of – if not the – best core in UK CS history.

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