Team Liquid have joined the ravenous ranks of North American orgs snapping up Korean free agents. Following in the footsteps of Immortals recent acquisition of envy, Liquid have snapped up his fellow Rhinos Gaming Wings exile, Fury, to be their 7th man.

The announcement is short and to the point, but contains a few interesting details. If you trust the opinions of a Lucio/Winston main on mechanical skill, here's what their new head coach, INTERNETHULK, thinks:

"I'm extremely excited to have Fury working with us in the next couple of weeks. His raw mechanical skill and dedication towards the game is amazing while his hero pool is exactly what we were looking for."

The press release clarifies further:

"Fury will play the flex position with tanks and the occasional DPS hero. He gives us that added bit of versatility and an injection of fresh ideas."

It is also revealed that Fury is already with the team at their Nvidia bootcamp in North America, which ties in nicely with this recent tweet from shadder2k celebrating his barely legal ping:

The team are set to bootcamp together "over the next few weeks" which should give them a real edge when competing in Contenders and the BEAT Invitational. Liquid barely scraped in to the Contenders group stage, having to play off against Seagull's stream team Kelvin and the Chipmunks to avoid the bubble.

Having spent months in the doldrums, Team Liquid's form has looked vastly improved since picking up shadder2k, albeit slightly erratic. Their first fixture today sees them face off against NA's new darlings FaZe Clan, who topped the qualification seeding. Their last meeting was in that same qualification run, with FaZe wiping the floor with Liquid in a decisive 2-0, but this time shadder2k has the ping advantage over ShaDowBurn.

The newly expanded Team Liquid roster is:

  • Kevin "AZK" Larivière (DPS)
  • Andrew "iid" Trulli (DPS)
  • Adam "MESR" De La Torre (Tank)
  • Shane "rapha" Hendrixson (Support)
  • Tim "DaHanG" Fogarty (Support)
  • Robert "shadder2k" Mocanu (Flex)
  • Kim "Fury" Jun-ho (김준호) (Flex Substitute)
  • Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka (Head Coach)
  • Alex "Aurace" Nguyen (Coaching Staff)