OG Esports have revamped their squad just as the Valorant competitive scene heads into Stage 3 of the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT).
OG Valorant goes into a rebuild
Primarily known for their achievements in the world of Dota 2, OG turned into a powerhouse of esports and gaming in more recent years. The inaugural Valve Major winners, and the only team in Dota 2’s history to record back-to-back wins at the game’s biggest competitive event, The International. Riding their success, they took things a step further and ventured into CS:GO, and now, they’ve sunk their teeth into Riot’s Valorant as well, signing the former Monkey Business squad on February 15, 2021.
After dropping three members of their Valorant roster a few weeks earlier, OG announced their entire revamped squad on June 16th. The Red Bull-backed team held on to Benjamin “uNKOE” Chevasson and Kevin “TviQ” Lindström. Joining the two original roster members are three young upstarts: former HONK members Tomas “Destrian” Linikas and Nikita “trexx” Cherednichenko have officially joined the OG roster alongside Harry “DPS” MacGill, who previously played as a stand-in for the side. DPS, though better known for his controller agents, is expected to fill in the Sova role.
Destrian, on the other hand, drew a lot of attention while with HONK. The youngster’s impressive command of agents like Astra and Viper will see him fill out the primary controller role for the new OG. Trexx has an impressive 0.9 kills per round and a KDA of 1.4 according to thespike.gg, so we can expect OG to put Trexx in a duelist/anchor role.
OG Valorant’s past blunders
OG have not made a dent in the VCT so far: after winning VCT Stage 1: Challengers 1 and securing a place in Stage 1: Challengers 2, they lost their play-in match against Team Heretics. Similarly, they were eliminated from Stage 1: Challengers 3 by the in-form Raise Your Edge at the same stage of the competition.
The already highly criticized team failed to impress in Stage 2 as well, dropping out of the round of 64 in both Challengers 1 and Challengers 2. The new squad will get its time under the sun when Stage 3 rolls around.
The new OG roster is as follows:
Benjamin “uNKOE” Chevasson
Kevin “TviQ” Lindström
Harry “DPS” MacGill
Nikita “trexx” Cherednichenko
Tomas “Destrian” Linikas
Julien “daemoN” Ducros (coach/manager)
Tanishq “Tanizhq” Sabharwal (coach/manager)
