North American roster movement

As expected after the release of the VCT 2022 structure for the NA region, several teams have started the task of finalizing their roster. The following article will highlight announcements from Version1, FaZe Clan, NYFU, The Guard and T1.

Version1

Through a tweet, Version1 announced that they would be benching Chad "oderus" Miller. This news came as a surprise since it has been only a couple of months since the player was inducted into the roster. Oderus has played with notable teams in the scene before signing with Version1 including the likes of Dignitas, beastcoast, eUnited and Kansas City Pioneers, where he managed to even qualify for Challengers Closed Qualifiers of VCT Stage 3.

He was introduced to the roster to replace Anthony "vanity" Malaspina, who had left for Cloud9 Blue, for VCT 2021 - North America Last Chance Qualifier. Since Version1 failed to qualify for Champions during the regular season, they had to try to qualify through the LCQ. However, in their first match itself, Version1 were defeated by Cloud9, where Vanity ended up defeating his old team and despite getting a second chance in the lower brackets, they faced elimination at the hands of XSET.

Version1 has since competed in smaller tournaments with success finally coming their way such as the victory at NSG 2022 Winter Championship - Online Open 4. The squad, however, was knocked out of the Community Gaming VALORANT Elite Showdown - Main Event in the round of 32.

As a result of the change, the following will be Version1’s roster for the time being:

Faze

Zachary "ZachaREEE" Lombardo announced his move to step down from the active roster due to a “differing vision” from the team. ZachaREEE joined Valorant as a member of the original FaZe Clan lineup in July 2020 after a four-year stint in professional Overwatch. ZachaREEE became a key member of the team throughout the year helping the team win Stage 1 Challengers 3 and placing 2nd in Masters Stage 1. However, the team hasn’t had strong showings ever since the departure of Jimmy "Marved" Nguyen as they couldn’t make it past the first round in VCT 2021 - North America Last Chance Qualifier, both Upper and Lower brackets.

This change coupled with the recent departure of Hunter "BabyJ" Schline and Shane "Rawkus" Flaherty, it seems as if FaZe is looking for a complete roster revamp and rumours are said that babybay might be the only remaining player. Their current roster only consists of two players:

Andbox

After saying their goodbyes to Aleksandar "ALEKSANDAR" Hinojosa only a couple of weeks ago, they’ve decided to bench Adam "mada" Pampuch allowing him to trial with other teams for the VCT 2022 season. The announcement to become a F/A was made by mada himself through a tweet. Adam "mada" Pampuch was formally inducted into the roster on 15th April after being on trial for almost a month. Andbox also signed Mohammed "Harmful" Choudhary this month but terminated his contract after just a few days.

AndBox is enroute to developing a completely new roster as evidenced by these recent changes and the inclusion of former Envy player Anthony "mummAy" DiPaolo to the roster in November. A roster revamp isn’t surprising for AndBox given their struggles to find their form throughout the whole Valorous Champions Tour being unable to qualify for the Challengers, as TSM and Gen. G Esports drove them out. Andbox's bad luck continued after VCT, as they failed to qualify for NSG 2022 Winter Championship - Online Open 3 and finished 17th-32nd in Community Gaming VALORANT Elite Showdown - Main Event.

The Andbox roster after this change is as follows:

T1 and The Guard

The reason this change has been flagged under the subheading with two teams is that Ha "Sayaplayer" Jung-woo (formerly known as Spyder) has transferred out from T1 to The Guard. In their roster update earlier in the Summer, T1 had benched Sayaplayer due to an injury with Anthony "dawn" Hagopian being promoted from the T1 Academy’s roster. Being on the bench allowed Sayaplayer to trial with other teams, including The Guard. However, it wasn’t until today that The Guard has decided to officially sign Sayaplayer.

This is the second consecutive change announced by The Guard, with the first one being the introduction of Jonah "JonahP" Pulice to the roster. With JonahP announced yesterday who has played a lot of Jett with Immortals, we will definitely see some role changes for either JonahP or Sayaplayer.

The former Overwatch player joined T1 in October 2020 and competed for the team in several First Strike tournaments. However, due to several roster changes, the club was unable to achieve consistent success in 2021. Furthermore, Sam "DaZeD" Marine’s departure has resulted in T1 lacking an IGL, a problem solved by Joshua "steel" Nissan’s addition to the roster.

It is worth mentioning that the tweet stated that this change will be “the final piece of our puzzle”, which implies that The Guard’s roster for VCT 2022 has been finalized. The roster is as follows:

Since Sayaplayer was an inactive member in T1, their roster remains as: