North America’s hometown heroes, TSM, have signed former Cloud9 and Echo Fox support Andy “Smoothie” Ta, the organization announced earlier today.
“I’m so appreciative of everyone who’s helped me during my time at Echo Fox,” Smoothie said in TSM’s announcement post. “With Rick Fox taking a larger role in the company moving forward, I believe the vision that Rick has for Echo Fox is one that will reach a lot of success in the future. Thank you to all the players who I had the pleasure of playing with and staff especially Rick and Khalid who helped facilitate the move to TSM.”
Considered one of the best supports in North America, Smoothie was abruptly benched from Cloud9 at the start of the 2018 NA LCS Summer Split. After playing only two on-stage games for Cloud9 this summer, Smoothie was traded midway through the split to Echo Fox.
Following Smoothie’s addition, Echo Fox ended the Summer Split’s regular season in fourth, later getting knocked out of both playoffs and the World Championship Regional Gauntlet by TSM.
With Smoothie’s departure, Echo Fox has reportedly signed Clutch Gaming support Nickolas “Hakuho” Surgent, in addition to top laner Colin “Solo” Earnest and AD carry Apollo Price.
TSM has yet to announce if it will be keeping or letting go of its current support, Alfonso “Mithy” Aguirre RodrĆguez. According to ESPN, “TSM are currently evaluating transfer options for across North America and Europe.” With Smoothie as the starting support, TSM now has an extra import slot freed up.
TSM experienced its worst performing year in 2018. TSM failed to make a single domestic final, and didn’t qualify for this year’s World Championship, a first for the organization since its inception.
