The team that placed second in the last split of the European Challenger Series and played Gambit Gaming for a spot in the LCS has finally completed their roster for the upcoming split. Germany-based mousesports will retain 3 players from last split’s roster: The German AD-Carry Tarik "Sedrion" Holz, the British jungler Daniel "Dan" Hockley and the highly touted Toplaner Mauno "beansu" Talli from Estonia. In addition to retaining what most consider their 3 best players, mousesports will be adding new blood to the roster.

Joining as starting support is Ruben "Rhuckz" Barbosa who formerly played for  K1ck Black, a team which many saw as a favorite for making EUCS this split themselves before they ultimately failed against Millennium in the Semi-Finals of the recent EUCS Open Qualifier. It will be interesting to see how he performs with a different AD-Carry, since he has played exclusively with Pedro "Kepe" Ferreira for the last year.

The former Midlaner of teams like Pulse Esports, Caseking Gaming and most recently Inspire Esports, Sebastian "Sebekx" Smejkal, will be starting in the Midlane for the team. The Polish player has been in high challenger for a long time and has recently gotten some praise, he is expected to develop into a solid Midlaner.

One of the more unexpected moves is the addition of a 6th player to the roster, as the team will be using Benjamin “Zhergoth” Sanchez as an active substitute. This is the first major team the Dutch Toplaner has joined in his career. He has been in the high Master/Challenger tier for a long time and played for a rather unsuccessful LowLandLions lineup before joining Mousesports.

Mousesports jungler Dan shared his thoughts about the new additions to the roster with Esportsheaven:

I am really excited about how the offseason went for us, we got the early addition of Sebekx which was a major improvement compared to our roster last season. However, obtaining a new support was not that easy, we tested multiple options while we waited for players in the qualifier to become available and once we finally had the opportunity to try Rhuckz out we could tell immediately he was what we needed to fill the gap in the team for the coming split. He is offering a much different style of play compared to the other supports we tested since he roams far more, this allows us to do more on the map early on in the game and thus close the game out faster as well.

Based off of scrim results I think we stand a very strong chance of making it to the LCS promotion tournament once again and hopefully this time we will succeed!

The addition of Zhergoth looks to be the first time an EUCS team is starting the split with an actively involved substitute on the roster, with the player also set to assist the team in practice as an additional analyst and player. If Mousesports finds success with the system it would lead to many copying it and might change the European Challenger Scene in the long run.

Upon being contacted mousesports coach Nick “Inero” Smith explained Zhergoths role in greater detail:

I think we are all pretty confident going into this split. We had a rough time building the roster in the offseason after multiple instances of losing players last minute, but it hasn't damaged us too badly, and we're happy with this group. We decided to introduce an active sub to use as both a player and to fill the role of an "analyst" for the role he's in. Zhergoth will have a much more indepth understanding of the game than most amateur analysts, and having him as a sub will give him experience that will either be utilized by mouz or another team in the future.

With the strong core from last split complemented by the new players Mousesports is expected to be a strong bet, but their success will depend on how well the new additions perform. Neither Rhuckz, Sebekx or Zhergoth have ever played in the Challenger Series before, but if they can perform well at that level than Mousesports looks like a strong contender for the title.