Honestly I would bump the non-emea chances given there is a strong probability that a lot of visa issues regarding Russian players could almost nuke 2 EMEA teams leaving fnatic as the only hope for EU. There is decent odds KRU will be the highest placing team at Champs to be able to play at iceland. Feelsvisaproblemsman

So basically from I can tell ownership behind Andbox, NYXL (the owl team) and Subliners (the CDL team). Has made the call to push their whole org around their most successful branding NYXL I'd say its for multiple reasons. A. NYXL was easily the stronger brand than ANDBOX B. It allows them to pivot their stronger NYXL branding into venturers other than Overwatch which diversifies their presence and has them less tied to a games esports success (which given the stability of Blizzard higher management is very smart from a business perspective). C. It allows them to conveniently close the chapter business venture of ANDBOX as a clothing line which I'm assuming wasn't super successful

wait until M3 qualify and can't make it, that day will be actual pain

Easy Gunba stonks, hope the man does well with his return to Overwatch League

Its time for an old copy pasta from trills Overwatch days

ʕ ͡·ᴥ ͡· ʔ YOU'VE BEEN VISITED BY TRILL SMASHER OF GOODULTS. CLAP YOUR PAWS AND COPY PASTE THIS MESSAGE 5 TIMES WITHOUT GETTING BANNED BY MODS AND GOOD SMASHES WILL BE WITH YOU FOR THE NEXT YEAR ʕ ͡·ᴥ ͡· ʔ

Don't spam it to much I would like to spread the history

Its kind of just an Australia moment tbh... great potential then through a bunch of non game related obstacles in the way give it 5 years and the talent will have integrated through into other region teams and Australia will return to being a farm region for the very few players lucky enough to escape the island.

kind of hit in CSGO with 5 aussies mixed across t1 cs. Idk I don't know much about CS

definitely happened in Overwatch with Team Australia putting up a stellar run at multiple world cups blizcon but only 4 players total making it the league and only 2 really getting play time (Rip Trill and Adam). Then another OCE player colourhex making it to the league then imediatly getting flexed onto a completely different role because they needed someone to fill the gap...

fighting game players are all still stuck on the island

no, unfortunately he could not get a passport. Big sad

Ez for Bonkers again

Easy for Bonkers, 1st stop on their way to crush gambit at masters

I can not discriminate on who it is that I hate, everyone needs some hate in their lives :)

Can I write for over.gg instead?

There results and eye test have definitely improved since they moved Bazzi over to Jett. It's really nice to see the return to his days on C9 Korea

Feelsbadman for bonkers :(

Just a heads up this speculation is in relation to association to current world events in the Ukraine and Russia*

If I'm repeating something that been bought up prior then I apologies but as a person who follows motor racing I'm seeing a lot of rumors surrounding governing bodies restricting drivers like Danil Kyvat and Nikita Mazepin from competing. And though I would hope Riot don't follow suit in preventing players of Russian citizenship from competing at offline international events the precedence would likely be there in other sporting/(esports with the blast premiere restrictions in CSGO).

To circle back to Version 1, given they are currently looking like a very strong contender within NA to make it to Master 1 a potential outlaw of Russian players could unfortunately hit them with the same issue they had on their last trip to Iceland with Wippie being unable to compete. However the more unfortunate issue I would like to raise is the potential for the current situation to not result in a blanket exclusion of Russian players, however the political nature of the conflicts having an adverse effect on Russian Visa's and travel which is an issue Wippie has already had in the past (pre-conflict) which I could only imagine could result in him missing Masters 1 if the team did qualify to represent NA.

The key word there being 'were', didn't say they are anymore. It's amazing the difference playing Ardiis on Jett made for FPX's results but also it shows that they're not allergic to duelist's anymore. If only a certain other team would follow the same lesson.

It's pretty unlikely we see hiko out, from what I remember hearing they need to retain at least 3 players to maintain their invite to VCT (granted no idea how that effects them after they've started playing, though its likely a similar rule to prevent invite spots being sold to organizations without the majority of the roster having in some way earned that spot). So with steel and seven on T1, boi (actually I don't know what his doing), dicey on Faze and Nitro playing CSGO. They really can't sub hiko out and can probably only replace him in VCT with a temp stand in for exceptional circumstances

G2 were the TSM of EU, really good at the start of the game then trying to constantly throw a bunch of new talent at the issue while still holding onto their broken core of players. Giving you just enough hopium to keep the fan base alive

FPX were the soniqs of EU. Clinging onto former glory while barely fighting in the T2 scene, Throw some roster changes in around the core but it doesn't make a huge difference and an unknown allergy to playing duelists.

Here I was thinking G2 were the TSM of EU, When really they were the 100 thieves of EU. Unfortunate really

Um, ok but like are these boys the 100t of EU now

I hope that link is a rickroll

Lorde, Solar Power is what you need right now my guy

From a results perspective it's pretty undeniably 1st place Engh. Then the other big hitters would be Sliggy (liquid), NBS (Ascend), Mini (Fnatic) and Onur (Ex - KRU).

I'd also like to shout out the former immortals coaches Gunba and Packing10 who have since their start on the LA Valiant in Overwatch had an amazing eye for player scouting. (some of the top of my head, asuna, dicey, neptune, JCstani, JonahP and Genghsta in Val. aswell as KSP, Dreamer, Shax, Lastro and Rain in Overwatch league)

Coaching is really hard to judge without an inside perspective in how the team operates but all of the above have very good references from their players and other coaches, with the results to back them up.

Gotta add an amendment to the flair section that the only correct options is Bonkers

kinky?

when cars

In terms of the role, its the guy who wants to play a second duelist but spends all their time on KAYO and Skye

In terms of these boys, anyone who plays like more than 2 agents apparently qualifies

Hard boiled

Bonk

Trust me, Kone is the way to salvation big man

Bonkers, Bonkers or Bonkers

This should be difficult

G2 more like T2

Why does everyone keep calling nukkye's team G2 when its clearly pronounced T2

T200 take

Good to see Calypso leaving his days of TSM behind him for the one truth that is bonkers

Bonkers Baby, Gotta rep the boys

NRG take this tbh

nvm, I should look at twitter more

guessing probably AimDLL as the flex (kayo, skye, secondary duelist and sage) that's the role he was playing for desyre and it's roughly in line with the 2nd duelist sentinel flex role he had on SMB

can't wait to watch one half of old smb (Izzy and Brave) vs the other half of old smb (paura and Turko). All we need now is giants to make their way to EMEA challengers

smooth brain take

The coach you need is former immortals coach gunba, just gotta pull him back from his return to coaching OWL. But gunba is actually amazing
at what he does

mate just check the profile and look at the post, it truly is the one and only

I hecking love Trembolona batchest

Who knows, maybe this time he will be able to play the Jett one trick with a level of depth and entry capabilities that won't hamstring the teams secondary duelist to try and cover for his "unique" playstyle

So I'm reading this tweet and thinking 2 things

1. Fucking finally, god I hope TSM build around a regular system instead of trying to force a core around the players who were grandfathered in from the early success of the TSM valorant roster.

2. This tweet heavily implies that agency over the roster was not in the hands of the teams general manager which probably explains a lot about why Wardell and Subroza lasted so long on broken roles that didn't fit into any team system since 1st strike NA

Lowkey want my hot take to fix this roster, Sign Packing10 as coach build around Corey, Rossi (playing sentinel and secondary smokes) and Levi then integrate a regular jett entry player (there are plenty of cracked out jett players in T2 to chose from) and a hard smokes player who will commit to playing Astra/Omem/Brim/Viper. Then suddenly I think the in game decisions from TSM rapidly improve because Rossi will be calling from a normal structure instead of the broken TSM system that played so incredibly different to any other team style that any shot calling skills from other teams are basically non-transferable

Yeah they're trying to play their roles from previous teams but those roles don't work in the TSM system. For example Corey can't really play secondary duelist flex properly in a system where his not playing with a main duelist entry player,

Corey was never the entry for Faze he was the reliable clean up man who capitalized on Babybay's aggression something he can't do next to wardell because wardell is the most defensive jett in NA and recently spends 80% of his time on Chamber which is great for clicking heads, not so good for creating opportunities, as such Corey becomes incredibly inconstant trying to play sole entry from a role that isn't Jett.
Levi is actually playing really well statistically and passes the eye test on sova, I think the big issue for levi is when he has to flex of the Sova (with a side of breach and skye) role onto secondary smokes to cover for subroza being the hard dedicated skye player while also trying to be the main smoker.
And as for Rossy my god this kid has it hard because of the broken TSM system, First of he comes from immortals as an IGL and Sentinel player, now throw him into TSM and his suddenly playing hard smokes and flexing to conventional sentinels for the 2 instances where wardell isn't on chamber and Subroza isn't on skye. Now I know what your saying, ok but that doesn't make up the decision making being awful. Well of course the decision making is going to be broken. Rossy comes from Immortals who were very blatantly a farm team and ran a very normal system, the same normal system pretty much every other team uses, then you have the TSM system which doesn't play like anything else and as such has drastically different win cons, approaches a site in completely different ways. Of course Rossy (or any other IGL for the people shouting Zander at the screen right now) is going to struggle to make the TSM system work.

TSM at their best is one dimensional and inconstant at their worst is a dumpster fire of beautifully machined bolt on's attached to an engine with a hole through the side of the block.....

Guessing Texture benched him by playing better. Given Texture is playing damn well its really not that unreasonable to assume that Texture was just better in scrims

Really an unfortunate case of NA esports inflation, though most of these teams could likely afford the buyout for Zander it's generally a lot more complicated than that. Each team has a budget and different ambitions. Faze is a good example of this, realistically no matter what supporting cast surrounds babybay the brand image stays the same and the merch sales and sponsorship opportunities stay the same. Esports like all sports is 90% brand marketing and 10% results.

It's all about the simple question of investment, for an established org like Faze, TSM or 100t is the difference in results going to result in a significant enough difference in income. Is a winning roster going to be more marketable than a well branded roster (this question actually launced a legendary montage series in overwatch called "blank is marketable"). So is the difference between Zander and ec1s worth the difference in buyout.

Aswell there is also that matter of finding a player that fits the system, wants to play for the team (I could see some issues from players who don't want to have to play around the political issues of TSM and having to build around the flawed Wardell/Subrossa Core) and isn't wanted more by another team who will play more. As well some of these signings could have already been made before the prominence of Zander in T2 meaning teams are already committed

Yes, The Guard are owned by the same ownership group (Kroenke Sports & Entertainment) as the Los Angeles Gladiators Overwatch League team and the Los Angeles Guerrillas Call Of Duty League Team. (They also own the LA Rams and Arsenal F.C.)

So yeah, if they're spending in Overwatch is anything to go by money is probably not an issue