The LCS Offseason Roster Shuffle – Who goes where?

A few weeks since the League of Legends Free Agency period kicked off, things are starting to settle down in the North American LCS scene. With some confidence and speculation, we can list most of the line-ups kicking off things in 2020.

Before we get going, keep in mind that all rosters are not final until confirmed by the League. Furthermore, errors might occur since we can only confirm players which have been publicly confirmed by their organization or the league. For the rest we have to take the info with a grain of salt.

With all that said. Let’s kick off the 2020 Spring Split roster breakdown.

Team Liquid

Impact, Broxah, Jensen, Doublelift, CoreJJ

The 2019 LCS champions had a quick off-season compared to the rest of the LCS. They replaced Xmithie with Broxah in the jungle and called it quits. All of the other lanes will remain the same in Spring, as Team Liquid remain confident they have the winning formula for the LCS.

On the Academy front, the team added Shern “Shernfire” Cherng Tai on the 25th of November. The rest of the Academy roster is not yet confirmed.

Team SoloMid

BrokenBlade, Dardoch, Bjergsen, Kobbe, Biofrost

Team SoloMid had an interesting offseason from the get-go. It was clear Zven and Smoothie don’t work well for TSM in the bot lane and the team decided to replace both. Biofrost and Smoothie take each other’s places as both teams decide it’s wise to trade supports. Zven on the other hand was traded off to Cloud9 to replace cosplay god(ess) Sneaky.

Last week we mentioned Kobbe’s departure from Splyce as the team faced restructuring ahead of their rebranding. He will be joining Biofrost to from the old-new TSM Support/ADC botlane.

TSM Academy will feature Dhokla, Spica, Evolved, Lost and Treatz. Akaadian and Grig*(IMT) are still with TSM and part of the extended Academy Roster.

Cloud 9 and Evil Geniuses

Cloud9: Licorice, Blabber, Nisqy, Zven, Vulcan

EG: Kumo, Svenskeren, Jiizuke, Bang, Zeyzal

We will talk about C9 and EG in a package deal since the off-season interlinked the two teams heavily. EG started the Free Agency period with no players on their roster and a clean slate to start building the ultimate Evil Geniuses 2020 Roster. In their first big trade of the offseason, they agreed to transfer 3 out of the 5 C9 members from the 2019 roster. Svenskeren, Kumo and Zeyzal moved to EG and opened up the spots for Zven and Vulcan (as previously mentioned) to make their way to the C9 roster. Cloud9 already had Blabber on contract for the Jungle role and with Svenskeren departing he will be the starting player for C9 in 2020.

Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi is still contracted by Cloud9 in the ADC role but will not play on the main roster. He has also stated on stream that he would not be actively fighting for his spot on the main roster.

It is rumored that EG found their midlaner with the Italian Stallion Jiizuke coming over from LEC’s Vitality.

Dignitas

Huni, Grig, Froggen, Johnsun, Aphromoo

Dignitas had a whole roster to build as well coming into this years Free Agency. The team bid their time and waited with their final decision longer then any other squad in the league. They did renegotiate an extension to Huni‘s contract, who they inherited from Cluth Gaming. With four open spots on the roster the team found an ADC from TSM Academy in Johnson “Johnsun” Nguyen and is rumored to have found a deal with Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black for the support role. They will also buy out the contracts from Henrik “Froggen” Hansen and Jonathan “Grig” Armao from their current teams.

The last three additions to the roster are yet to be confirmed by the organization or League officials

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100 Thieves

Ssumday, Meteos, Ry0ma, Cody Sun, Stunt

100T did not have an easy offseason to begin with, but built a hell of a roster in the end. The team traded out Bang to EG and ended up releasing Aphromoo, Amazing and Ryu. Amazing has since announced he would be going to back to the LEC for an undisclosed non-player role. Aphromoo is apparently going to Dignitas and Ryu is still a Free Agent. With only Ssumday to start with the team picked up a player from all four corners of the globe to form their 2020 roster. Meteos was signed first coming from the Immortals to create the Jungle style layout. Oceanic Midlaner Ry0ma came over from the Bombers for the 2nd big OCE to West trade of this year. The first came in the LEC with Destiny being signed by Origen. 100T rounded out their roster with Cody Sun coming over from the defunct Clutch and former Academy ADC William “Stunt” Chen.

FlyQuest and Counter Logic Gaming

FlyQuest: V1per, Santorin, PowerOfEvil, WildTurtle, IgNar

CLG: Ruin, Wiggily, Crown, Stixxay, Smoothie

This two squads came into the offseason with minimal plans of changing up their rosters. We already mentioned CLG and TSM traded supports and the only thing remaining for CLG was to find a decent replacement for PowerOfEvil who moved over to FlyQuest. They found it in Lee “Crown” Min-ho. FlyQuest on the other hand extended the contracts of Viper, Santorin and WildTurtle and was only looking for a fresh support to add to the lineup. The reinforcements came from the LEC in the form of Lee “IgNar” Dong-geun who ended up departing Schalke 04.

Golden Guardians

Hauntzer, Closer, GoldenGlue, FBI, Keith

The Golden State Warriors esport squadron announced the 2020 lineup quickly after Free Agency started. The TCL MVP Closer was signed as the new Jungler with Contractz departing to the 100T Academy, in the mid lane GoldenGlue would replace Froggen to form the final GGS roster for 2020. The roster moves were criticized by many as GGS let go of two very strong players for an “unknown Turkish jungler and a washed up midlaner in return“. But we guess the Golden Guardians folks know better then petty Reddit experts.

Immortals

SoaZ, Xmithie, Eika, Altec, Hakuho

Last but not least. Immortals are still slow to confirm their 2020 roster. It was rumored very early on that IMT would be signing Paul “soaz” Boyer in the toplane and Johnny “Altec” Ru & Nickolas “Hakuho” Surgent in the botlane, yet two weeks later the information on this trades is still scarce. However, IMT did confirm midlaner Jérémy “Eika” Valdenaire to their midlane as well as Xmithie from TL. There was apparently a huge bidding war for Liquid’s former Jungler, and it was team Immortals that came out on top of it.

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It remains to be seen what this off-season means for the LCS. Many legendary LCS players will end up not being signed and many others would be forced into retirement. For now we can hope every pro player finds a team to represent in the end.

What do you think about this years Free Agency? Drop a comment below!