The players from up-and-coming team Cyclone have left the aforementioned Irish organisation, seeking opportunities elsewhere after their recent success. The team won the StriveWire Monthly Brawl for March and will remain together as a unit, competing in future tournaments as ex-Cyclone until a new organisation is found.
Since gathering these six players together, the team has earned three gold trophies and a bronze, beating GamersOrigin, Red Reserve, nerdRage, x4ckers and Oslo Lions throughout that run and going 1-1 with Bench Boys.
Notably this run included a victory in the StriveWire Monthly Brawl March, which saw them beat out the majority of other tier two European teams to come top of their group and then win the competitive double-elimination playoffs.
ex-Cyclone is certainly a promising team within Europe and has good results over the last month against other strong teams, but have chosen a questionable time to search for bigger and better opportunities. There have been few tournaments for Europe throughout 2017 and fewer large organisations looking to pick up teams, though this drought is unlikely to continue throughout the year.
The team is no longer with @CycloneGG, all the best to them. We are now looking for new opportunities.
— Showerg3l (@showerg3l) 13 March 2017
RT appreciated
ex-Cyclone’s win in StriveWire brought them onto the radar of the wider community, but there were some caveats to that unbeaten run. Top teams dropped out just before the event went live, meaning that favourites like eUnited, Hammers, and Dignitas were no longer obstacles for ex-Cyclone to overcome.
Their most recent tournament outing saw them fail to qualify for the Overwatch PIT Championship, upset in a best-of-one by Helsinki REDS. The Overwatch PIT Championship would have been ex-Cyclone’s perfect opportunity to show themselves off to potential organisations, but instead Vivi’s Adventure and ALTERNATE aTTax took the open qualifier slots.
People talk about FNATIC losing the Bo1 qualifier, but who really got screwed is ex-Cyclone in EU for Overwatch Pit. New team on the block.
— Jonathan Larsson (@Reinforce) 18 March 2017
Despite the four-month drought for Overwatch outside of North America and Korea, there is hope that the heavens are about to burst. There have certainly been more tournaments announced recently for lesser-known regions, and details are breaking from Blizzard about the Overwatch League. ex-Cyclone may not have to wait too much longer to prove themselves.
The ex-Cyclone roster is still:
- Tuomo "Davin" Leppänen (DPS)
- Antti "poks" Hellstedt (DPS)
- Emil "destro" Krastev (Flex)
- Tiago "mowzassa" Rodrigues (Tank)
- Isaac "Boombox" Charles (Support)
- Ryan "CrusaDe" van Wegen (Support)
- Callum "Showerg3l" Booth (Coach)