NYFU Signs New Valorant Roster
Published: Apr 22, 2022
NYFU has signed some pretty big names and rounded up their Valorant roster in preparation for Valorant Champions Tour Stage 2. YaBoiDre, ShoT_UP, neptune, and JSUNG joined the organisation and completed the four vacant spots left by the previous players that left. Oderus is still the team’s captain and the only remaining player from the original ANDBOX roster.
What Else Changed?
The reason you might not be familiar with this American esports organisation is twofold. First of all, this is the same ANDBOX team that rebranded to NYFU in March this year. And more importantly, the reason you haven’t really seen them recently is because they didn’t manage to qualify for the first North American VCT Challengers.
While still under the ANDBOX name, the former team attempted to climb the first open qualifier and failed miserably. They made it in the Top 16 list of teams, but then immediately lost 2 – 0 against NRG and then got eliminated by Bait Academy.
The second open qualifier was pretty much the same story – a quick 2 – 0 loss against Soniqs in the upper bracket, and yet another 2 – 1 loss against Bait Academy in the lower bracket.
At this point, NYFU probably realised that there’s something seriously off in their lineup, which is when they started making these significant changes, including rebranding to NYFU.
The Current Lineup
The first player of NYFU we’ll take a look at is Chad “Oderus” Miller. He’s the only remaining member of the former ANDBOX roster and is the team’s captain. He came from Version1 in early January and managed to keep his spot all this time.
Next we have Diondre “YaBoiDre” Bond, who came here from Evil Geniuses. YaBoiDre is famous for his Jett skills, but lately he’s been playing a lot of Chamber too. He’ll certainly be one of the big guns in this new NYFU roster.
Andrew “ShoT_UP” Orlowski is another key player in this new roster. He came from FaZe, but was previously a member of the old Immortals. He’s usually really comfortable playing Duelists such as Reyna and Raze, but lately he’s been playing a lot of Omen. In this case, it seems like he’ll mostly be on Omen duty in NYFU, given how this agent has been gaining popularity and pushing back into some of the more meta comps.
https://twitter.com/NYXL/status/1516824022226333697?cxt=HHwWgsCj-aza64wqAAAA
Jason “neptune” Tran moved here from Rise and his main pick in NYFU will definitely be Sova. Sova is such a key agent in any Valorant Champions Tour match as it brings a ton of utility with his ability kit. We might see neptune playing Breach from time to time, but the majority of situations will probably require a Sova on the team.
And last but not least, we have Jason “JSUNG” Sung. JSUNG came from Soniqs, the team that ended up beating ANDBOX in the second open qualifier. JSUNG likes to mess around with Yoru, but the more likely scenario is that he’ll be playing Skye or KAY/O to better support his team.
A Lot of Potential
While there’s certainly a lot of potential in this new NYFU roster, we still have to see just how well they’ll fare against some of the stronger names in North America. This roster is well-balanced and seems to have plenty of support and utility, but we’re not sure if they’ll also have enough firepower to go along with it.
This new team competed in the NSG: Summer Championship – Open 2 and Knights Gauntlet Circuit Monthly esports tournaments where they were probably just testing the new lineup. They didn’t do too well in either of the two tournaments, but again, they most likely weren’t here to win but rather to see what works and what doesn’t.
They still have some time to prepare for VCT Stage 2 so we’ll see what they’ll do then. They might just end up surprising us all.
