NiP Bench r1nkle After Cologne Failure, Sign stavn as New AWPer

Ninjas in Pyjamas have decided to move Artem “r1nkle” Moroz to the bench after the team failed to secure a place at the IEM Cologne Major, closing another chapter in what has become a turbulent rebuilding period for the organization. The decision was presented by NiP as a strategic one rather than a disciplinary move: in the club’s wording, the team wants to pursue “a different direction” in terms of roles and internal dynamics. HLTV’s report also notes that r1nkle, once praised for his aggressive AWPing and fast impact after joining the roster in April 2024, had seen his level trend downward this year, posting a 1.08 rating in 2026 and a lower 1.02 against top-50 opposition. 

The timing is important. This was not an isolated roster switch made in a vacuum, but a reaction to a broader competitive failure. NiP’s hopes of reaching Cologne were effectively ended after a qualifying run in which an opening win over Gentle Mates raised expectations, only for the team to fall to GamerLegion and then HEROIC. That pattern matched what had haunted NiP for much of the season: they remained competitive in stretches, but repeatedly failed to convert close maps and key series. After the HEROIC defeat, Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer openly admitted the team kept finding ways to lose games that were within reach, while coach Richard “Xizt” Landström described the same issue as the story of the entire season. 

That context helps explain why r1nkle became the player sacrificed in this reset. NiP had entered 2026 hoping to build on what HLTV described as a promising 2025, but the project never fully stabilized. The organization had already made one major adjustment before the current move, benching Michel “ewjerkz” Pinto late in 2025 and then signing Artem “cairne” Mushynskyi in January 2026 to fill the gap. HLTV reported at the time that cairne arrived as the replacement for ewjerkz, which meant NiP were already trying to rebalance the lineup before the spring campaign reached its decisive stretch. In other words, the team’s problems cannot be reduced to one player’s form alone; this has been an ongoing attempt to find the right structure around Snappi, sjuush, xKacpersky and the newer pieces. 

There were signs along the way that the lineup might still come together. In March, NiP won HyperX Roman Imperium Cup VI, beating Gaimin Gladiators, Alliance and OG in the playoff run and briefly pushing themselves back into the Major invite conversation. But that trophy did not become a turning point. Only days later, their defeat to Liquid at BLAST Open Rotterdam left the team dependent on open LAN results to keep the Cologne dream alive, and the later elimination by HEROIC finished the job. The sequence made the March title look less like the beginning of a breakthrough and more like a short-lived surge that could not be sustained against stronger opposition. 

NiP’s follow-up moves make the organization’s thinking even clearer. On the same day the benching became public, HLTV reported that Martin “stavn” Lund signed with NiP as the team’s new primary AWPer, directly replacing r1nkle in the active lineup. The same report also stated that NiP had converted Kacper “xKacpersky” Gabara’s long loan spell from ENCE into a permanent transfer as they looked ahead to the road toward the Singapore Major. That shows this was not a temporary benching without a plan behind it. NiP are not merely removing a player after a bad result; they are reshaping the team around a new AWP solution and confirming which core pieces they want to keep for the next phase. 

From r1nkle’s perspective, the move is still significant. His overall career page on HLTV shows a stronger long-term average than his recent form suggests, which underlines why this benching will likely be read as both a performance decision and a stylistic one. He was once one of the few constants expected to survive deeper roster surgery; as early as the 2025 overhaul reports, HLTV described him as the only likely holdover from a struggling previous version of NiP. That makes the current move notable not just because a starter was dropped, but because one of the project’s earlier pillars has now also been moved aside. 

The broader takeaway is that NiP appear to have concluded that incremental fixes were no longer enough. The team had already replaced ewjerkz, integrated cairne, retained faith in Snappi and Xizt, and formalized xKacpersky’s place in the roster. Yet the same weaknesses kept surfacing in high-pressure matches: inconsistent closing, recurring narrow losses, and an inability to turn respectable performances into qualification success. Missing Cologne seems to have been the result that forced a harder reset. With stavn now arriving as the primary AWP option and r1nkle shifted to the bench, NiP are effectively betting that a change in role distribution can succeed where smaller adjustments did not. 

Viewed as a whole, this is less a story about one failed player than about an organization that kept trying to patch a fragile competitive identity and finally chose a more radical solution. r1nkle leaves the active lineup after a stretch in which his individual output no longer outweighed the team’s structural issues, while NiP move forward with a roster that is being streamlined for the next Major cycle. The club’s message was respectful, calling him professional and a strong teammate, but the competitive meaning is straightforward: after the Cologne miss, NiP no longer believed the current setup could take them where they wanted to go.