With ESA Rewind II concluded, Se7en have arrived back safely in European territory to play out the rest of ETF2L Season 29. However, team leader kaidus has confirmed that while they are back on home soil, they will be saying farewell to their soldier players Drackk & kaptain, as well as their medic Raymon.
After their return from overseas, Se7en is subtracted by three. (picture by Ness "uberchain" Delacroix and Jasmine "Jasbutts" Ho)
In late 2016, the team—formerly under Crowns eSports Club and 1st Place winners of Insomnia58—established themselves as self-funded organization Se7en for the first ESA Rewind LAN in January 2017, with kaptain unable to attend in order to focus on his studies and AMS taking his place. With the help of community fundraising, the team would fly overseas to California, fighting to face North American team froyotech in the Grand Finals before falling to them and taking 2nd Place. In August 2017, with kaptain back on the roster, the team would take on Insomnia61 and win in the Grand Finals against international mix team SVIFT, taking 1st Place and defending their Crowns iSeries title under their name. In February 2018 for ESA Rewind II, Se7en would make it to the upper brackets before struggling due to a food poisoning incident, subbing in kaptain with Permzilla last minute to play in the semi-finals against Ascent. The North American team won, with Se7en ending with a 3rd Place finish.
With Copenhagen Games team Ascenchiladas confirming they would have players from Se7en and Season 28 runner-up team Ascent.EU, kaidus announced on his personal Twitch steam the departure of the three players, citing burnout from the game as well as kaptain’s university studies taking priority. To finish the season, players Thaigrr and adysky have been added to the roster to play out the rest of the season as scout and soldier respectively, while AMS shuffles from scout to pocket. Additionally, seeds is currently being trialed on medic.
kaidus provided teamfortress.tv some additional details about the mid-season restructure:
Drackk, kaptain and Raymon are going inactive. It's been a long road for us together; no matter what had happened at Rewind, it was going to be a break for them at the very least afterwards. Who knows what the future holds for those guys, it's TF2 so you never know who is going to pop back up the next time an interesting event rolls around. My focus now is purely on building for the future, it is very difficult to replace three players at this stage of the season - there is no time to try things out and see how it goes, so we are making the best of it and using the rest of the season for some experiments.
The lineup we are using at the moment featuring adysky, Thaigrr, and seeds shows a lot of promise and we will most likely see out the season with these lads, but there is very little time to get the team play that 7 has always been known for. After the season is over, we will re-evaluate and consider our options. Nonetheless, our mission will always be to win everything there is to win, and in time I think we will get back to a dominant position in Europe. For now, we don't rule anything out.
Looking to bring their numbers back up, Se7en's roster is now:
- Scout: Thaigrr
- Scout: Thalash
- Roamer: adysky
- Pocket: AMS
- Demoman: kaidus
- Medic: seeds (Trial)