Tempo Storm have picked up the dominant number one team in Oceania, Untitled Spreadsheet, as the first of their two planned rosters in Overwatch. Tempo Storm are an organisation famed for their success within Blizzard games but also with experience in the FPS genre, having owned the up and coming Brazillian CS:GO team now under Immortals.
Whilst signing with Tempo Storm, their new Overwatch team decided it was a good opportunity to also move Gnb back to flex to aid in the calling and overall synergy. This move pushed new addition ConRoar out of the team and led to Tempo Storm signing dps player tjk from rivals Wood Cucks.
Tempo Storm have managed to stay on top of the Australian scene since establishing their dominance at the beginning of July. Despite multiple patches and subsequent meta shifts, the team has continued to improve their game and stay ahead of their opponents. A fair amount of that can be attributed to their dedication and attitude to practice; their previously eponymous Untitled Spreadsheet is a document that they use to record hero picks, map wins, team strategies, and more for every major game that occurs - in NA and EU as well as their home region.
Despite having a team who are unable to commit full-time to Overwatch unlike their global competition (with a software developer, a loan writer, and an accountant on the team), Tempo Storm manage to practice with the necessary attitude and for enough time to make them the primary force in the Southern Hemisphere.
Alongside this dedication, they have been prepared to make roster moves whenever required to keep the talent high. At the end of July the team cut two of their players to make way for new talent, bringing in LUSH and ConRoar. The team used this roster to win the ZOWIE Gamestah tournament, coming back from 2-0 down against JAM to win 3-2. Those were the first maps they had lost in the playoffs, having rolled through Orbit and Chiefs on their way to the Grand Final, but it did not stop the team making a change and picking up famed McCree tjk to improve further.
Just after making their most recent roster change, Tempo Storm (then still competing as Untitled Spreadsheet) competed in the ESL August Major. They were upset in the Upper Bracket Final by JAM, and had to fight their way back into the Grand Final where they came through with yet another tournament victory.
Despite losing the UBF and looking distinctly beatable, Gnb says they did not doubt the need to change their roster: “JAM Gaming made some significant roster swaps as well, and they became a much bigger threat as a team pretty much overnight. Without the roster swaps I doubt we would have won ESL at all." Regarding the recent Australian shuffles that have seen top teams reinforcing their rosters, he added, “It's just the nature of the Australian scene to cannibalize lower teams in order to form teams that could potentially be relevant internationally.”
Tempo Storm have managed to remain unbeaten in ozfortress Heroes League so far, currently 12-0 in maps, despite their various rosters and in the face of stiff competition. They go into the playoffs this weekend as first seed and will be attempting to win the lion’s share of the $3,000 prize.
Gnb spoke about the roster changes:
We found to a large extent that the synergy wasn't there. I was put in a position of having to shotcall while also playing mechanics centric heroes (i.e. McCree), which is not ideal and takes away a lot of the brainpower required to make good decisions.
I have a history of playing flex heroes, especially Zarya who is quite relevant at the moment so it was an easy transition. We had also been trying to recruit 'tjk' for quite a while he is the best McCree in Australia so the timing aligned quite nicely.
He elaborated further on the relationship with Tempo Storm:
We have our Manager, Redact, to thank for doing most of the research regarding sponsors - he was the one who set everything up so we didn't really directly interact with the org or know much about it beforehand.
What I can say about the other offers we had is that they seemed fairly deceptive - offering some T-Shirts and 'free travel' (but there is no big LANs in Australia, which of course these orgs know), or a percentage of merchandise (which is not actually being sold) and so on. These kinds of offers are fairly dangerous for players as they involve contracts that essentially offer you nothing.
It's only recently that we started to receive more serious offers. We ultimately chose Tempo Storm because our manager has some ties with people who play for the org and they only had good things to say about their experience.
This arrangement also comes at a good time for both parties publicity-wise as five of our players are nominated for Blizzcon (with one player unfortunately setting his region incorrectly on Battle.Net and being excluded).
The nature of our agreement with Tempo Storm includes content production and social media. It's a bit of a different dynamic compared to most international teams. There's definitely a demand there for high level input on the meta and guides and that sort of thing - the game is quite new so people are still learning. I feel that it makes sense as an investment.
Tempo Storm’s announcement stated that the organisation “plans on signing two rosters", with this as the first. Players from the Australian side have revealed that the second roster is a North American side and that the organisation is in talks with a specific NA team.
The North American side will find themselves hard-pressed to replicate ex-Untitled Spreadsheet’s success relative to their region, but that is unlikely to matter. The Oceanic region is smaller and has less opportunities despite having a great talent pool, and Tempo Storm will get the benefits of having both a top team and a team with larger exposure.
The teams will use identifiers in their name alongside the banner of Tempo Storm to differentiate the teams, but specifics are not yet known. An official announcement is expected “soon” from Tempo Storm announcing their second roster.
The Australian roster for Tempo Storm is:
- James “yuki” Stanton (dps)
- Brett “tjk” Bell (dps)
- Jordan “Gnb” Graham (flex)
- Kyall “Mosh” Margitich (tank)
- Sam “Refz” Rogers (support)
- Andre “LUSH" Ricardo (support)
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