*UPDATE* Western teams shuffle players « News

After the recent announcement of Team Secret giving up on the StarLadder XI LAN finals due to roster changes, various key figures in the scene have made it known that they won't be the only team updating their roster. Check this article out for a summary of all the rumours. *UPDATE*

Rumours were confirmed earlier today when an announcement on dac.dota2.com revealed extensive roster changes in the western scene.

Cloud 9,

Team Secret and

Evil Geniuses have all been effected, as names like

Artour ”Arteezy Babaev and

Johan "BigDaddy" Sundstein have been confirmed as affected players.

Soon after dac dota leaked the announcement Team Secret’s social media confirmed the news, ending over a week of speculation. Team Secret have opted to replace both BigDaddy (AKA n0tail) and recent addition

Rasmus ”Misery” Filipsen, who initially replaced

Tal ”Simbaa” Aizik some months ago. Replacing them will be the now former Evil Geniuses players Arteezy and

Ludwig "zai" Wåhlberg. This leaves two spaces open in the North American team, with dac dota reporting that both

Kurtis ”Aui_2000” Ling and

Sumail ”Suma1l” Syed Hassan will fill the gaps. However Evil Geniuses have not as yet made an official statement regarding possible replacements for their departed players.

Team Secret Roster

Clement ”Puppey” Ivanov

Kuro ”Kuroky” Takhasomi

Gustav ”S4” Magnussson

Artour ”Arteezy Babaev

Ludwig "zai" Wåhlberg

Alleged Evil Geniuses Roster

Clinton ”Fear” Loomis

Peter ”PPD” Dager

Sumail ”Suma1l” Syed Hassan

Kurtis ”Aui_2000”

Saahil "Universe" Arora

With a bit of downtime for most teams before any major competitions, it makes sense that things will change, with certain teams' morales dropping low and wanting a new challenge. Naturally, the idea of fan-favourite teams and players swapping teams sent fans into a craze, desperate to get any information they can. But shotly after the hype started, NADOTA personality Barnyyy shed some light on the situation with this tweet:

So we definitely know the teams involved so we can infer the players switching, but the identity of the 'new guy' remains unknown. It's possible that the infamous mercenary

Jimmy 'DeMoN' Ho could step in, but he's neither new to the scene or to

Evil Geniuses, having played with them a couple years ago, but the term could still be applied considering he's been without a team for some time and isn't currently attatched to any organisation.

DeMoN entering the mix certainly isn't the end to the shuffle, with a lot of possibilities and combinations being rumoured. Let's take a look at everything that's been suggested the past few days, and what that could mean.

-One of the earlier claims was made by ex-EG player

Mason 'Mason' Venne on the NADOTA forums. He says that the players leaving EG for Team Secret will be

Ludwig 'zai' Wåhlberg and

Artour 'Arteezy' Babaev. They will apparently make way for

Johan 'BigDaddyN0tail' Sundstein and

Rasmus 'MiSeRy' Filipsen. While all of this is possible, he makes no mention of

Cloud 9, who would replace zai and Arteezy on EG. Mason is also infamous for being a troll, but certainly has links in the scene, so who knows if he's lying or not?

Mason attempting to speak English

-Other sources say Arteezy is likely to rejoin his old teammates and be a part of C9's roster. This would take him back to the days of MLG Columbus, where he joined

Jacky 'EternaLEnVy' Mao and friends back when they were named Speed Gaming. This would most probably mean the kicking of

Johan 'pieliedie' Åström, and Envy moving to the support role so his beloved Artour can carry. The fate of pieliedie if this happened would be unsure, but he could join Secret's roster and they could shuffle roles.

-Outside of C9, EG and Secret, it seems Alliance's roster has also taken somewhat of a shape. It seems

Jonathan 'Loda' Berg and

Joakim 'Akke' Akterhall will remain with the team, and will be joined by previous stand-in

Johan 'Mynuts' Andersson. New faces in the squad will be the well-known

Per Olsson 'Pajkatt' Lille and

Sebastien '7ckngmad' Debs. This comes from various tweets from Kellymilkies of scrims and team news.

-A tweet from manager of

Alliance, Kellymilkies complimented rumours of

Henrik 'AdmiralBulldog' Ahnberg joining Team Secret. The tweet could be seen as a callout to Secret for poaching two of Alliance's players (with

Gustav 's4' Magnusson leaving earlier this year), but could also be interpreted as an acronym, with various players forming a new team or joining an existing roster.

-It seems very likely that

Team Tinker will disband, after a run of poor form and no tournament success. The fate of Pajkatt seems to be decided, but for the other 4, they could go their separate ways, or even get a new 5th member and start again.

-Cloud 9 player

Adrian 'FATA-' Trinks confirmed on his Twitch stream he will stay with the organisation, but this could cause a clash in roles should Arteezy join the team.

-Arteezy's Twitch stream today brought some good insight. He implied repeatedly he would be changing teams, and also that him and zai will be playing together. But we currently don't have the information to know whether this will be C9 or Secret.

-With players apparently departing, it's hard to see who EG will bring in as replacement. However, one of the names being thrown about is Sumail, an upcoming NA player who is well known in the community.

UPDATE 31/12:

-The Facebook page of rumoured new EG player Suma1l has posted that he will standin for the team in the D2L finals in Las Vegas. He also appears to have been given some new sponsor gear, strengthening his possible ties to the organisation.

UPDATE 1/1:

-According to this image from the iLeague website, Swedish team

Lajons will be picked up by Swedish sponsor Ninjas in Pyjamas, their first venture into DOTA2. This comes as no surprise considering the great form Lajons are on, convincingly qualifying for SLXI and playing in iLeague.

-In response to this rumour, NiP have offically confirmed the acquisition on their website

-This moment on

Kurtis 'Aui_2000' Ling's stream could be a sign he's going to EG. He says he needs to 'take a selfie for Charlie', who is of course EG's manager, for 'the Chinese tournament', indicating he could be travelling to China to play with EG.

Last updated: 2/1

Of course new rumours and information is thrown around regularly, so this list will be kept up to date as new stories come to light. Make sure to discuss in the comments this roster shuffle, with thoughts on who should go where and who will go where.

This article was written by

Felix Hanif-Banks, joinDOTA's Senior Writer.Raiko got into DOTA and eSports in general just before TI3, where he gained a love for the game and especially the competitive side of it. He's currently living the student lifestyle while desperately trying to break 3K MMR.Location: London, UKFollow him on @RaikoDOTA.

UPDATE Western teams shuffle players

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