Over the past several days, the recent AsiaFortress transfer window has led to a massive roster shuffle for Rhodes Island, and the fall of Clown9.

Despite coming off of an impressive second place finish in PURE League Season 3 Premier, Rhodes Island had a bit of a struggle at the beginning of this season against Ithaca, losing both maps to the Koreans which resulted in some internal conflict within the team. However, they are looking to make a comeback with its new roster additions, picking up star players ruee and space from the remnants of the late Clown9.

The pickups resulted in a roster restructure, with Rhodes Island opting to bench their former Scout Manceloot to accommodate ruee on the flank Scout role. space on the other hand, will be replacing their former Demoman Ghosty™ who departed from the team in the first week of the season due to personality and playstyle clashes.

Rhodes Island’s team leader n4ver reached out to us to shed some light on these events:

Ever Since The Vietnamese Demoman Ghosty Has Left The Team, We Were In A Pretty Tough Spot. We Played Our Week 1 Match Against The Korean Team, And Ghosty Had Some Personality Clashes With Our Ex-Flank Scout, Manceloot. This Resulted In His Signature Phrase "Here's The Problem Here", And He Quit The Comms Before The Match Even Ended.

After GhostyTM Left, We Kinda Scrambled To Find A Replacement For Our Star Demoman. And We Gambled On A Relatively Unproven Player Named Alpy. Needless To Say, Replacing Your Demoman Mid-Season Is A Terrible Idea, And We Weren't Finding Much Success In Scrims. Then God Came Down With A Package, Called "Clown9 Disbanding Lol", And We Managed To Pick Up Space To Replace Ghosty And Ruee To Replace Our Previous Flank Scout Manceloot From The Remnants Of Their Team.

Unfortunately for Clown9, the team was already on a steady decline even before the first transfer window of the season was announced. Several players began having real life commitments as the season began, and the team couldn’t find the time to scrim or play matches with a full roster, which eventually resulted in their demise.

Former Clown9 team leader ruee spoke to us on the events that led to the team’s downfall:

During the pre-season, my team was still fairly active when it came to scrims and we had really good results, even contesting xiao a fair bit and were able to 5-0 Rhodes and Anuj consistently. Although once the season began, most of my players got really busy and we couldn’t even find time to scrim with our full roster, let alone have any matches. Eventually, the other teams started to catch up, we couldn’t maintain our pre-season results and started losing most games. Also in the few scrims that we managed to schedule, we always had to use a minimum of two mercs. Me and space got fed up with the team ‘cause we both still want to play the game, although it wasn’t really their fault that they could no longer commit due to irl issues. So I decided to pull the plug on the team, and thankfully Rhodes had two empty slots for me and space to join.

After a trainwreck of a situation the team had to go through, Rhodes Island will be playing out the rest of AsiaFortress Cup 17 with the following roster:

• Scout: ruee
• Scout: cezyse
• Roamer: altaria
• Pocket: n4ver
• Demoman: space
• Medic: Suwawa