Masked, subtLe, Tectonic shake-up rosters
As the start of Season 30 draws near, three Advanced teams have shaken up their rosters as they prepare to fight for a chance to qualify for the MDL. First, after a disappointing season which saw subtLe fail to make playoffs and bow out after an 8-8 season, the team has been massively overhauled, with Kyle "OCEAN" O'Brien being the only member from last season guaranteed a spot in the new roster.
For now, subtLe's roster is:
Kyle "OCEAN" O'brien
Anthony "Nervous" Boring
Michael "chelleos" Hawkins
The most interesting of these additions is chelleos, who is no stranger to the MDL, having played three seasons over in the Australian division with seadoggs and madlikewizards. It is unknown what impact he will have on subtLe this season; however, he was a key member of the madlikewizards squad, maintaining a 1.20 rating over the last three months. The other addition is Nervous, who also has MDL experience with Blight/Big Frames.
subtLe will need one more member from last season to join their roster, however they have many choices on who that can be as nearly a dozen players linked up with subtLe over the course of Season 29.
Second is the newly reformed Tectonic squad, which desi and daws played in last season, and are another lineup looking to climb back into MDL after falling into Advanced after Season 28.
Tectonic's squad looks as follows:
- Arya "arya" Hekmat
- Derek "desi" Branchen
- Steven "rooRoooo" Herrell
- Josh "Wade" Wade
- Dawson "daws" Branchen
Three of the team's members previously played on on of Splyce's squads before the organization disbanded their CS:GO division. Since then, desi and rooRoooo have been far less active, with arya being the only member with recent MDL experience, playing with ETHEREAL last season.
On the other hand, Wade and daws are less known players, with the latter being desi's brother and having played his first season of Advanced last season with XFORCE. Wade on the other hand is an old timer by MDL standards, having played in that division all the way back in Season 21 with WinOut.net. Since then, he has been largely quiet, having played the last few seasons in Main.
Finally, we come to the most successful of the three transformed Advanced squads from last season, Masked. Masked narrowly missed out on qualifying to the MDL last season, falling to Final Feature in Relegation.
Following their unsuccessful MDL run, Masked have decided to replace Nathan "madcow" Retterath and David "Delta9" Shafer.
Joining the team are Nathan "leaf" Orf and Alexander "zander" Diaz.
Therefore, Masked's roster for Season 30 is:
- Dion "Bl4ckiice" Mckenzie
- Joshua "Hunter" Madore
- Mike "Swisher" Schmid
- Nathan "leaf" Orf
- Alexander "zander" Diaz
Interestingly, last season leaf and zander played with blitz, a squad that ironically missed out on Relegation after falling to Masked in the fifth-eighth place decider match. As they link up with the Advanced rivals from last season, this new team will look to capitalize on their successful runs in Season 29 and attempt to make into MDL for Season 31.
Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled Swisher's last name as "Schmidt". Additionally, it incorrectly listed Tectonic as having played under the "XFORCE" name in Season 28. These mistakes have since been corrected.
