CIS roster shuffle means changes for Gamibt, Team Spirit and Espada

Photo courtesy of vk.com via cybersport.ru 

In an end of the 2018 calendar year shuffle, three CIS teams have moved around rosters, the most surprising among them for Gambit. 

In successive tweets, Gambit and Team Spirit announced changes in their roster heading into the new 2019 year. 

Team Spirit's announcement focused much on wishing the Belarusian captain of the last two years, Artsiom "fng" Barshack, luck in his next adventures. According to the information provided, despite a strong bond and positive interactions within the team, it was a lack of success that drove fng to head to greener pastures after two years of playing under the dragon's banner. 

First of all, I want to thank Team Spirit for their contribution to me and to the past compositions in which I played. Nothing but warm memories associated with the work of the organization and all the people involved in it, I have left.

I do not like reshuffles as such, so this decision was not easy for me. I really liked to play in this team, because there were a lot of positive moments and only one negative - the lack of results. I felt that this situation reminds me too much of what happened to me in previous roasters. Therefore, I decided that it was worth changing the situation and starting a movement.

I do not know what lies ahead of me, but I decided to choose this path. ”

Team Spirit has struggled during the new 2018-2019 season to find substantial results. So far they have not yet been able to qualify for any of the DPC or major LANs although they were able to secure three titles for smaller online events. 

As of this time, it is unclear who the replacement will be for the lineup or if there will be any further changes. 

The bigger surprise for CIS fans would be that Gambit made a shift of two players, dropping Rinat "KingR" Abdullin and Ivan "VANSKOR" Skorokhod to the inactive status.

The team recently secured their second DPC event of the new season, securing a place at the Bucharest Minor after already participating in the Kuala Lumpur Major and just punched their ticket to ESL One Katowice 2019 - only days apart from each other just earlier this month. 

The cost to Gambit will be a 20% reduction in their points earned so far as well as a penalty for earned points at Bucharest Minor since they qualified with two different players. 

The last piece of the puzzle is Alexander "Immersion" Hmelevskoy coming in from Espada, a team that has not had much success at all this season. 

Gambit Roster:

Nikita "Daxak" Kuzmin
Andrey "Afoninje" Afonin
Vasily "AfterLife" Shishkin
Alexander "Immersion" Hmelevskoy
Artsiom "fng" Barshack