M80 and GamerLegion make the first big signings of roster season

Rostermania has officially begun, and while there's been a handful of important benchings (NIP benching ewjerkz, paiN benching dgt and davideuS), we'd rather cover those properly once their replacements are signed. Similarly, there's some big rumours going around, but until either we hear something ourselves that nobody else has, or they're confirmed, we're not bothered.

However, two teams have confirmed some new signings, and so here we are.

A massive roster move in North America was confirmed today, with M80 signing JBa from Wildcard. This was a huge move for a couple of reasons; not least because the benching of HexT felt like it came out of nowhere. He was performing to a much higher level than we were used to, and M80 were doing pretty well, relatively.

It seemed like there must have have been some other, perhaps out-of-server reason for the benching - but once it came out that they were targeting JBa it made a lot more sense. Outside of the obvious top tier NA players, JBa is as hot a prospect as it gets in the region. He's a large part of the reason Wildcard have been able to be competitive for this length of time, and is still learning and growing. This is a small step-up in theory, but the move of adding JBa does put M80 far ahead of Wildcard afterwards.

This is, on paper, a massive upgrade, and we expect M80 to be a sneaky contender for top 15 this season. They might genuinely be better than Liquid, at least until after their inevitable changes.

GamerLegion have started their roster season by bringing back Snax, which seems somewhat reasonable if a little uninspired.

GL had been looking to break into the top 10 consistently at the start of the season after a good period, but issues surrounding finding an AWPer capable of competing at the level required slowed their progress hard, and clearly the org feel that the issue might not be that every AWPer they sign is bad, but instead a misusing of them by the IGL, and so ztr was benched.

ash, the coach, also benched himself, leaving a brand new coach-IGL combo for the next season, with both being Polish. If hypex is ever going to be good enough, the hope is that these two will get the best out of him.

We're skeptical, but GL have surprised us many times before. There was talk about their core going to 100 Thieves, however this seems to have gone cold, and maybe they're going to hold on to most of them - but GamerLegion are always likely to sell star players when they're on top.