Last week French organisation Team LDLC, best known for their legacy across the Counter-Strike series, announced their arrival in Overwatch with the pick up of Le Mixx - a team that have been poised on the fringes of Europe’s top ten for some time. The move marks the return to professional play for Guillaume "KabaL" Ettori nearly two months after he handed in his notice at melty eSports Club, but the history of the team goes back further still.

Towards the second half of June Tarek "kr4tosdigga" Ekmekci was faced with the prospect of being made teamless as he had become surplus to requirements at Graviton Surge (who would go on to become Misfits) where he had played stand-in support almost since the team’s inception.

Unperturbed, he found his way on to Team Hybrid TM where he would make the acquaintances of klanton and Mezamorphis. That particular roster was not long for this world, but it’s spiritual successor would emerge in July under the Le Mixx moniker. The core three would be bolstered by two talents plucked from the MasterOverwatch leaderboards, Ube and later Mete.

At the time speculation placed them as the prime candidates to become mousesports new Overwatch team with Klaus “frag^m” Wiedemann featuring on the roster. However, the performances didn’t materialise and after the team failed to make it through the open qualifiers for the Atlantic Showdown (despite several attempts) they dropped frag^m, passing on the prospect of representing German eSports royalty and setting out to wander the sponsorless wilderness.

Their search was to be a short one though, because around the same time the final piece of the puzzle had already fallen into their laps - KabaL, who parted ways with melty citing a lack of time and unfavourable schedule, only to join forces with Le Mixx barely a week later. What was not apparent at the time was that the French support shotcaller had also been headhunted by the LDLC organisation to deliver their debut Overwatch roster, as the man himself lays out in the official announcement:

"Hello ! Today is a good day ! LDLC got an Overwatch Team and i’m very happy they picked us for this new adventure. When I left melty in july, I got two offers that were important for me. First, kratos asked me to join as support a mix team call “Le Mixx” and secondly, LDLC contacted me to create an Overwatch team.

We are now playing together since the start of august and if we refer to our officials matches and scrims results, the team level is currently between the top8 and the top10 EU. This team has good potential. With LDLC’s support, we can invest ourselves 100% in Overwatch. Thanks for all !"

The team will be bootcamping for a week in Paris at the start of October, which will be the first encounter for all but kr4tosdigga and KabaL who met as opponents at TaKeOver back in May. With the Overwatch Open having already passed them by, their main focus for the weeks ahead will be qualification for MSI’s $75,000 Master Gaming Arena 2016 Championship.

The Team LDLC roster is:

  • Tarek "kr4tosdigga" Ekmekci (Support)
  • Mihail "Mezamorphis" Păunecu (Tank)
  • Rikard "klanton" Lundberg (DPS)
  • Toni "Ube" Häkli (DPS)
  • Metehan "Mete" Aksüt (Flex)
  • Guillaume "KabaL" Ettori (Support)