MVP Black parts ways with Lockdown, Recruits Oreoman
A huge surprise from Korea!
In a forum post at Korea's Inven Heroes community board, MVP Black's Coach Kim revealed roster changes to MVP Black and their sister team, MVP Sky. Lockdown will be parting ways with MVP Black, and Oreoman has been recruited to fill his spot. MVP Sky has been reborn after temporarily closing down in October. Former member of Team ASD, MonkeyDFish (MongD) will be joining MVP Sky to complete the roster.
Here is a translation of the original statement by Coach Kim:
Hello, this is Coach Kim from MVP Heroes Team
There are a couple of announcements I want to make about the roster changes to MVP Black and MVP Sky.
First with MVP Sky.
The original MVP Sky team was composed of Jungfeel, Gilduck, sol, Defy, and Hide.
I know there were many concerns about MVP Sky after the team went inactive due to Hide leaving the team, but we have been trying out several different players during that time.
After hearing about Team ASD disbanding recently, we talked with couple of their players and tried them out. MokeyDFish (MongD) ended up joining our team.
Thus, we rebuilt MVP Sky with the following roster: Jungfeel, Gilduck, sol, Defy, MongD.
Next is on MVP Black.
In short, Lockdown will be leaving the team, and Oreoman will be joining.
I know many of you will be shocked by the sudden news, so here are some details.
Hide and Lockdown are brothers.
When MVP's Heroes team was created, these two were actually the first players we recruited.
Therefore, these two were together in the original roster of MVP Black. But once we completed picking up a total of 10 players in the course of 3 months, these two were split to MVP Black and MVP Sky.
When I first chose the players one by one, I told them that once we get ten players, we will be going through roster changes. And that depending on how things go, players might constantly switch between MVP Black and MVP Sky.
But MVP Black ended up rising to success much more quickly than I originally anticipated, to the point where a roster change wasn't necessary.
Due to that, it became difficult for the two brothers to play together despite their wishes.
Hide expressed interested in leaving the team and starting fresh in a different team if he can't be with his brother, and I respected his decision and agreed on his departure regardless of the terms of the contract.
But Lockdown was struggling internally without his brother, and he chose to be with his brother over the success at MVP Black.
He told me that once WCA 2015 and HCOT S2 completes, he wanted to leave the team and be with his brother.
That is why he ended up leaving the team after HCOT S2.
With the sudden hole in our roster, the players and I exchanged various opinions about whom to choose as our new player. Oreoman was one of them, but we were quite hesitant due to his past problems.
We decided to first see him in person and judge, so we had a meeting with him. After talking with him, we learned that he was just a young player at the age of 19, and that he is deeply regretting his past actions. While he was part of a team, he was not able to learn under the supervision of a manager or a coach. I decided to recruit him once I saw that he can have a bright future if we take him in and have him learn in a good environment.
Thus, our new roster for MVP Black is: Sake, Merryday, KyoCha, Sign, Oreoman.
I am sure there are many people who are shocked, concerned, or supportive about this news. First, as a representative of MVP Heroes team, I would like to apologize. However, I think the best way for our team and myself to support the community is to work harder and show us improve.
We will make sure to do our best in both in and out of the game.
A bit shameless, but please cheer for us.
Thank you for reading this long text.
- MVP Heroes Team. Coach Kim Kwangbok
Lockdown has been the playmaker and cornerstone of MVP Black's success, with his strong Sonya and Thrall plays in Super League 2015 and HCOT S2. He started off as a bit of a "thrower" at first, often being the first one to die in MVP Black's early matches. However, he went through tremendous growth over the years to become one of the most consistent and powerful players of Korea. With Lockdown having such a pivotal role in MVP Black, it is a bit of a shock that he will be leaving MVP Black to be with his brother, Hide. Hide is also one of the most talented players in Korea, with Merryday crediting him as the original father of the Seven-Sided-Strike Kharazim that he popularized in Super League. Any team that comes out of these two brothers will be a team to look out for.
An even bigger shock is Lockdown's replacement, whom turned out to be none other than Oreoman. Despite being considered one of, if not the most talented player in Korea, Oreoman has been a center of quite a drama due to his past toxic behavior and involvement in a socially questionable community. He announced previously that his involvement in WCA 2015 with Team ASD will be the last of his Heroes career, but it seems like he didn't want to cut ties with the game just yet. He should have no trouble fitting into MVP Black's roster, and it is quite fortunate that we will get to see more of his plays.
Former member of Team ASD, MongkeyDFish (or MongD) also joins the MVP team as part of the sister team, MVP Sky. MongD has been one of the top ranged assassin players of Korea as part of Team Snake/ASD, and it is great to hear that he managed to find a home in time for upcoming Super League 2016 Season 1. While MVP Sky struggled to perform well in the previous Super League, they still have high potential to be a formidable threat in the upcoming tournament.
The new rosters of MVP:
MVP Black
- Sake (assassin, captain)
- Merryday (support)
- KyoCha (flex)
- Sign (warrior)
- Oreoman (flex)
MVP Sky
- Jungfeel
- Gilduck
- sol
- Defy
- MongD
With the online qualifiers of Super League 2016 Season 1 fast approaching and double the prize pool of previous tournament, things are shaking up big time in Korea. Roster changes have been constantly coming up since late December with each news making the upcoming tournament look more and more promising. It will be quite interesting to see how things turn out by the time the Top 8 are decided.