The team will likely rebuild from scratch for the next DPC season
Long before the Dota 2 post-TI roster shuffle season starts, Nigma Galaxy SEA have published a Tweet saying it has decided to let go of its full Dota 2 roster. This sudden change has effectively made the four remaining members of the team free agents. The players that were released are midlaner Vincent “AlaCrity” Hiew Teck Yoong, offlaner Hiew Teck Yoong, Galvin “mizu” Kang, and support players Anurat “Boombui” Praianun and Tri “Jhocam” Kuncoro.
The organization took the decision after their Dota 2 SEA team failed to qualify for The International 11 following some disappointing results earlier. Following Its decision, Nigma Galaxy posted on their Twitter saying, “Today we say farewell to our #NGXdota SEA roster.” About the released players it said, “We’d like to thank Boobui,
@AlaCrity97, @Meracleeeeee and @jhocamtri for their work and wish them the best in the future💙💜.”
Today we say farewell to our #NGXdota SEA roster.
We’d like to thank Boobui, @AlaCrity97, @Meracleeeeee and @jhocamtri for their work and wish them the best in the future💙💜#StarsAlign pic.twitter.com/9WxQxyZrav
— Nigma Galaxy (@NigmaGalaxy) October 5, 2022
As South East Asia grows more competitive, Nigma Galaxy SEA has failed to remain competitive with the other teams from the region, with things appearing to get worse over time.
NGX.SEA Timeline
During the initial phase of the Dota Professional Circuit (DPC) 2021-22 season, the Nigma Galaxy SEA team played quite competitively and seemed to have good prospects. They overpowered Fnatic to win the Tier 2 tournament BTS Professional Collection S7: SEA. Following this, they came second for the DPC SEA 2021/2022 Tour 1: Division 2 and qualified for Division 1.
It was expected that the team would win more matches in the SEA region from that point on, but they finished 5th and 7th in Division 1 of DPC SEA 2021/2022 Tours 2 and 3. It was the beginning of a disastrous end for the team.
After finishing 7th in the upper division of DPC Tour 3, they were demoted to the lower division. Even though some of the matches were pretty close, the results were unsatisfactory for team management. This string of mediocre results cause Muhammad “inYourdreaM” Rizky to be released on 26th July.
Although Nigma replaced inYourdreaM with Wilson “poloson” Koh, they made a massive mistake in the process of player registration of the TI11 SEA qualifier. They submitted the change to the site seven hours after the deadline for transferring players. This hiccup means the team had to play with inYourdreaM instead of Poloson in the TI11 qualifiers.
This move didn’t sit well with the team and created an uncomfortable environment. In the Upper Bracket of the TI11 qualifiers, the team lost 2-0 to eventual lower bracket finalists Polaris Esports. Both of the matches took less than 40 minutes, and NGX.SEA were thoroughly unimpressive.
The team also lost their very first LB match to XERXIA 1-2, which effectively eliminated their hopes of getting to TI. Losing the slot at TI11 along with some shambolic performances are likely the reason for the entire roster’s release.
While inYourdreaM has already found a new home in Army Geniuses, the fate of the rest of the players remains uncertain as they turn into free agents. They might have to wait for a while to get selected for new teams as TI11 will be starting shortly, and roster shuffles won’t begin before November.
The Nigma Galaxy SEA will keep an eye out for SEA players’ performances in TI11 to decide which players it can acquire should it choose to have a roster for DPC 2022/23. This time, they’ll have to be more careful with their player selection as all eyes in the region are on the organization after the sudden release of its entire team.
