With the first fixtures of the Overwatch Open main event set to begin in three days' time, Immortals have revealed that their longstanding tank David "Nomy" Ramirez will not be able to compete in Atlanta due to visa issues.
It is only ten days since Immortals picked up the battle tested Sodipop roster who managed to qualify for the offline portion of ELEAGUE and FACEIT's $300,000 tournament where they now find themselves grouped with Cloud9, Method and Fnatic.
The team have acted quickly to draft in a replacement in the former Colorado Clutch tank Wolfgang "wgb" Braun. The Immortals announcement on Facebook also reveals that wgb is current contracted by Gale Force eSports:
"Hey IMT Overwatch fans, we have a quick adjustment for the roster we’re sending to the ELeague Overwatch Open.
Though we’re eager to see the team compete together, tank player David “Nomy” Ramirez won’t be able to join us in time for this event due to visa complications. Taking his place as a temporary sub will be Wolfgang “WGB” Braun on loan from Gale Force Esports.
WGB joins us for the duration of the Overwatch Open, and is already on-site with the rest of our team in LA to undergo bootcamp training in preparation for the upcoming competition. With the help of our support staff, the modified roster will be ready for battle come September 25th.
We’d like to thank Gale Force GM Freddie Crespo for generously lending us a contracted player during our time of need, and of course WGB himself for taking time away from his team to practice with Immortals."
I caught up with wgb on Discord to find out a little more about his current situation…
How did it come to pass, did they approach you or did they approach you? What is your history with the Immortals / Sodipop guys?
Well, I was approached asking to sub for ELEAGUE because they said Nomy had visa issues and couldn't attend. I've been friends with pretty much all of the Immortals guys and they have been one of my main scrim partners since closed beta so it was super cool to be asked to sub for them. I believed they asked a few others as well but they declined.
And main tank players are hard to come by in the competitive scene, so the list available is quite small I imagine.
What can you tell us about the team's bootcamp and preparations? How long have you been playing with the roster? What kind of hours have you been putting in? How ready do you feel for that first match against Fnatic?
I was approached last Thursday night at about 10pm about subbing, got flown out to the Immortals bootcamp 6am Friday morning. Since I've been here we've been following a daily routine, working with various coaches, and putting in roughly 8 hours of scrims per day. I feel like I have meshed very well with the roster in this short amount of time and feel quite confident going into our match versus Fnatic. The Immortals support staff and owner have been awesome about everything!
That is a pretty quick turnaround! Where did you fly from? Where are you based normally?
I'm from Portland, Oregon, but I was living in Denver, Colorado (where I flew out of) for the last few months as part of the Colorado Clutch team which I recently parted ways with.
Yeah! The Immortals announcement has also let the cat out of the bag regarding the return of Gale Force to Overwatch. What can you tell us at this stage?
After I parted ways with Clutch I started talking to the Gale Force eSports guys about building a new team as they wanted to get back into the scene. With about a week of work and some tryouts I believe we were able to create a roster than can compete with other top NA teams! The full roster is still unannounced but definitely something to be watching for in the coming days!
The Immortals roster for the Overwatch Open finals is now:
- Christopher "GrimReality" Schaefer (DPS)
- Brady "Agilities" Girardi (DPS/Flex)
- Athen "Aythen" Zhu (Support)
- Jeremy "Jer" SantaCruz (Support)
- George "Hyped" Maganzini (Flex)
- Wolfgang "wgb" Braun (Tank)
Discord