Having just arrived home after a rather disastrous performance at Nanyang Season 2, Team Empire make the first change to their relatively new roster by releasing Roman 'Scandal' Sadotenkov.
Only four months ago Team Empire rebuilt their Dota 2 team from scratch and proudly announced the return of their long time mid player Roman 'Scandal' Sadotenkov. Scandal was part of the first ever roster of Empire, back in 2012, and left the organization a year later due to some alleged communication problems with the managerial staff. After three years in which he played for numerous CIS squads, Scandal was brought back at Team Empire, just before the Manila Major. The reinvented roster had a marvelous start, placing fourth at their first LAN event together, ESL One Manila, after a surprising victory over Team Secret that eliminated Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov’s team from the tournament.
Going to WePlay Dota2 League Season 3, Empire impressed once more by eliminating their CIS rivals, Na’Vi and grabbing yet another fourth place after losing in the lower bracket to Evil Geniuses in a quite disputed series that ended with a 2-1 final score. Right after that, Empire won the Manila Major European qualifiers and once more they were the ones to knock one of the main favorites out of the competition , which happened to be Team Secret. However, their ascension was interrupted by LGD Gaming in the next series of the lower bracket and Empire finished on the 9-12th position.
Since then, the CIS squad struggled to find success and seemed to slip into something of a slump. They failed to qualify for the Summit 5 and the biggest blow came with The International 6 qualifiers where they finished among the bottom three teams in their group. Nevertheless, they grabbed a qualifying spot at the second season of Nanyang Championships, but the Chinese experience left a bitter taste as the team finished in the last place, outside of the prize pool standings.
Last night Team Empire announced the release of Roman 'Scandal' Sadotenkov from the roster stating that no replacement has been found yet.
Team Empire current roster from position 1 to 5:
Roman 'RAMZES666' Kushnarev
empty
Vasily 'Afterlife' Shishkin
Yaroslav 'Miposhka' Naidenov
Rinat 'KingR' Abdullin
With only Natus Vincere going to TI6 from the CIS region it is expected to witness some strong shuffles in the upcoming month, most of the teams just waiting now the post TI player swaps madness.
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