Free Agent Season Pt. 3

Back 2 Back from Tribe Gaming?

UPDATE: Everything under the video was written before Tribe’s official announcements were made. I am so pumped to get some news as for teams for VPL! While I am sad I couldn’t get this out before Tribe’s announcement, (who the hell announces something on a Thursday!?) I still want to release it. I was close to predicting everything right. ttigers with the decision to focus on school and content creation was surprising!

Players love releasing teasers about upcoming rosters for 5v5 and the new Vainglory Premiere League starting in April. Tribe Gaming was the last team to make it to worlds in 2017 and the last team standing. One thing that is really hard to do in any competitive scene is to repeat. Going back to back can be a big challenge for teams. You enter the new season on top and all eyes are on you. In esports, it seems it can be even harder with the age of the players in the scene. They are mostly young and their mental game is almost as important, if not more important, than their mechanical play. With a brand new format in 2018, anything can happen.

Image taken from Vainglory’s Twitch

It’s not often that a team wins a championship, then the format changes and you suddenly have to add two extra members. You can see in the picture above, the 5 member crew that represented Tribe for worlds last year. While MaxGreen, DNzio, and ttigers were the stars, Hotsauce and super sub Xelciar were just as important. Cannot forget to give love to Vyzeox with his mad analysis skills. The free agent scene has been crazy so far with tons of players available on the market.

In part two of these free agent speculation articles, I wrote about a super team coming out of SK Gaming in EU. In NA, we haven’t seen a team form together that just screams OP. We are getting some hints at one coming out of TSM, but that roster has a lot of newer players on it. So the big question is, who can Tribe go after to add to an already talented roster? The simple answer is the guys from the old Cloud9 roster. The issue is, there is not enough room for all six players to be stars. So with that, I’m crossing out that option. Could we see some of the members go to Tribe? Maybe. Chief Pat knows how to find talent that’s for sure. So which of these guys could we see head to Tribe if any at all?

So over a weeks span, all three players said they had this “big news” coming soon. We saw all three members tweet out that they were free agents at the exact same time, so does the timing of these tweets mean something? I personally would love to see this group stick together into 2018. Even though they fell short at worlds, their synergy is one of the best in Vainglory. If they do go their separate ways, here is how it could play out.

Tribe has the two roster openings I mentioned earlier, so how can they fill it with the best players possible? They are in need of two laners going into 5v5. I think their best bet would be Oldskool and Gabevizzle. Gabe, like the best captain in the game Gabe? Yes, as we know Gabe is an extremely talented captain. But for those OG Vainglory fans, we know he can play other spots as well. He has done it all and done it successfully. While I love iLoveJoesph (LUL), I really think he should stay in the jungle. The match up between him and ttigers would be close and I think having any of these players on the bench would be a waste. Where does this leave iLoveJoesph? Well, I’m not sure but hopefully on a team with a lot of other great players because he is a top 3 jungler.

If I got to pick what ends up happening to the members of Cloud9, then they are sticking together that’s for sure! We could see the possibility of a new team just picking them up for the upcoming VPL. We saw Tribe get dumped by Immortals just to see them go on to win worlds. If history teaches us anything, it would be that whoever picks up Cloud9 would be the favorite for worlds. That would be hysterical having Cloud9 leave just to see the new team go on to dominate in 2018. This new org will not only pick up the three guys from C9, but will need a few more to fill the other spots. They could just keep the old super sub of R3cked and then add one more starter. There are plenty of strong players still out there like Status, Xenotek, maybe even MackDaddy if he is still around from Gankstars. Speaking of Gankstars, is one of the original grass root orgs even filling a Vainglory team for 2018!?

One thing that I do worry about heading into the Vainglory Premiere League is the level of competitive play. Towards the end of 2017 Autumn season during Vainglory8, we had about six teams that could all compete on a very close level. Cloud9, TSM, Tribe, Hammers, Nova, and Rogue all could beat each other throughout the weeks. Heading into the VPL, will we see the talent evenly spread across the teams? I am not sure what Hammers roster is going to look like at all. Could we see the fall of Hammers like we have seen similarly with Gankstars? Early on, Gankstars had a lot of strong players but seemed to struggle the last few splits. There is still a lot that needs to be announced for VPL. It looks like the first week of March will bring us some important news.

I will be back to talk about what really happens with the members from Cloud9. I am betting I could be far off, but who knows. The one thing that bugs me is that all the players know where other players are going to end up. They probably are just scheming with a bunch of announcement tweets in their drafts waiting to hit the send button. I enjoy the suspense!

Thanks again for reading! I think I should have one more Free Agent write up to round out this series! If you want more of these conversation, you can follow the Time For Rolling esports Podcast on soundcloud or even better subscribe to it on iTunes! Also, join in on the conversation on twitter!

-Endless