When the first Invite happenings of this season came to light, the season was made out to be one of the strongest in years, with froyotech losing two key players and multiple teams such as Ascent fielding full teams of big names in North America. Alas, as is the case with every season of Invite, it has seen its first major shuffle, with SVIFT NA dissolving and FROYO BLACK undergoing a massive overhaul. But few roster changes have been as intertwined and complicated as this one has.

The story begins in July of 2018: garbuglio and Bdonski are having a casual conversation over chat, when the topic of next season suddenly arises. Jokingly, garbuglio states that he had yomps playing with him next season and that Bdonski should make a team with them. Bdonski agreed to play with garbuglio on the condition that he actually got yomps to play.

garbuglio messaged yomps, expecting him to firmly decline, but was surprised to hear yomps actually agree to play next season. Within the next four hours, the full roster had been assembled, albeit with zilly on Medic.

After a short and dominant tenure with froyotech, yomps made the move to what would become FROYO BLACK (picture by Ness "uberchain" Delacroix and Jasmine "Jasbutts" Ho)

Following the end of Insomnia63 and nearing the end of the offseason, yomps gets contacted by shade, who wants to join the new roster. Passing the message to garbuglio, the two weighed their options, ultimately choosing to bring shade onto the roster and cutting zilly. According to garbuglio, the addition of shade proved to be detrimental, turning the roster from a friend team to a serious team, with the team now scrimming several times a week under shade.

Scrimming day in and day out, with subpar results in matches, garbuglio felt disgruntled as the team churned out disappointing results. In spite of that, he and the rest of the team continued playing well into Week 2 of the Season 29 Regular Season.

Fast forward to Sunday, September 30th. It seemed like any other day, with FROYO BLACK playing scrims, albeit without their Scout yomps, who was absent due to him being asleep at the time. They elected to ring highfive for the scrim, and shade thought nothing of yomps' nonattendance at the time.

The next day, FROYO BLACK planned to play more scrims, but cancelled their plans as yomps was once again absent. At this point, shade thought it was weird that one of his teammates was consistently not showing up to scrims.

garbuglio was soon forced to be the bearer of bad news, informing shade that yomps had told him that he wasn't interested in playing Team Fortress 2 anymore and that he wanted to catch up on his sleep.

After confirming that yomps was indeed quitting the game, shade discussed the available options for the team's newfound vacancy with the rest of FROYO BLACK. The team eventually created a list of available Scouts that they could add to round out their roster for the remainder of the season.

shade is no stranger to internal team drama (picture by Ness "uberchain" Delacroix and Jasmine "Jasbutts" Ho)

Still, even with replacements set out, the loss of yomps lingered within FROYO BLACK, with only shade unaffected by the player's departure. Nonetheless, everyone continued to show up to scrims and play matches until October 2nd, when shade received a Twitter message from garbuglio. After discussing the possibility of adding phlps as the team's second Scout, garbuglio told shade that he wasn't feeling motivated to continue playing. Demotivated by yomps' absence and feeling that the team wouldn't improve with any other scout, he told shade that he should look for another Soldier.

With another open slot on FROYO BLACK, shade went on the hunt for a Soldier, contacting multiple Soldier mains in search of one that could make FROYO BLACK whole again. Along with Bdonski and marmaloo, shade compiled a lot of every possible Soldier candidate for the team, which he discussed with his two other teammates.

But shade soon came to learn that he would need to search for yet another Scout. With the departure of garbuglio and yomps from the roster, corsa was the next of the roster to message shade with bad news, informing him of his desire to leave the roster.

shade returned to looking over possible roster combinations with his two remaining teammates, but was quickly interrupted once again by message from botmode, who was looking to have shade play for SVIFT NA following the departure of zilly.

Unbeknownst to shade, while FROYO BLACK was undergoing roster turbulence in the midseason, SVIFT NA was also having roster troubles of its own. According to an account from botmode in teamfortress.tv's Invite Happenings thread, zilly lost motivation to play, only playing Invite to get revenge on Bdonski. After getting revenge, and paired with his sleepiness in scrims and poor sleep schedule, zilly ultimately left SVIFT NA.

With zilly out of Invite, delpo swiftly fell out as well, having reportedly poor internet and only wanting to play Invite because of highfive and zilly. Hemorraging their Demoman and Medic, SVIFT NA were now left without two key players as the season was looking to move into Week 3.

After SVIFT NA shedded two players, botmode tried desperately to rebuild the roster for Week 3 (picture by Ness "uberchain" Delacroix and Jasmine "Jasbutts" Ho)

botmode attempted to rebuild SVIFT NA, messaging shade — as previously mentioned — and tried to encourage him to move over to his team along with Bdonski, as SVIFT NA were missing a Demoman and a Medic. shade responded to botmode's inquiry, asking if he would cut laz, to which botmode responded with a firm no, citing that slemnish wouldn't play without laz on the team. After two hours, botmode was forced to relinquish the SVIFT NA slot to the new team.

We reached out to botmode, who denied a request for a comment on the piece.

I have nothing positive to say about it and I'm not about to start drama.

In the end, with SVIFT NA missing two players and FROYO BLACK missing three, players from both teams came to the agreement of merging, with the new combined team — now under the former SVIFT NA ESEA slot — taking on the name FROYO BLACK, or as shade eloquently put it: FROYO BLACK 2.0: BLOYO 2.0

Rising from the ashes, FROYO BLACK's new roster is:

Scout : highfive

: Scout : slemnish

: Roamer : laz

: Pocket : marmaloo

: Demoman : Bdonski

: Medic: shade

With the FROYO BLACK roster now solidified and hopes high that the roster won't crumble by the end of the season, shade announced that the team intends to attend the Episode III LAN next year with their full roster.

And this is unfortunately where the story ends. With garbuglio now put in charge of the former FROYO BLACK slot, he intended to build a team under the moniker cafe black. Reportedly, most of the players that had quit FROYO BLACK and SVIFT NA previously wanted in on cafe black, with yomps, zilly, delpo, and garbuglio nearly forming a full team. However, unable to get six Invite players together, the team supposedly fell through and there is reportedly little chance a team will fill the spot this season.

"Our team was just one Invite Scout away from living," zilly told us. "Also, corsa is teamless. lol."