Update (17 March 2021):
After having terminated the contract of Kim "Demic" Daeyeong and having played the first three play days of the Korean Open Spring 2021 with Junyoung "Revi" Shin as a stand-in, T1 has formally signed the latter as a player-coach.
While confirmed to have been part of the T1 roster from the start, Revi had not yet been officially signed to the organisation and had initially been a 'non-official' coach.
Update (12 March 2021):
In a sudden and unexpected move, T1 has terminated the contract of Kim "Demic" Daeyeong, just one day after signing the OhHamMa roster.
As such, T1 now only has four players ahead of the APAC North season curtain-raiser on the 19th of March, just one week away.
What's more, the change means that only Cha "iLeven" Wonil on the playing roster had played in or qualified to the top-flight in the 2020 season, a situation which T1 will need to rectify with its fifth player to comply with Ubisoft rules.
Furthermore, with the roster lock now in effect, T1 is technically barred from making any incoming roster changes by the letter of the rulebook:
Any period outside of these transfer windows is considered a period of roster lock with no addition to a Team’s roster of Players (main or substitute) permitted.
As such, the only viable option for T1 seems to be to have current 'non-official coach' Junyoung "Revi" Shin switch to a playing role, like he had to in Stage 1 of the 2020 season for SCARZ. Revi, while not officially contracted to T1, was submitted as part of the official roster and should thus be eligible.
Original Article:
An earlier version of the article had stated that Revi and VBM had both been officially contracted to T1. This is not the case and has been corrected.
Two weeks ahead of the start of the 2021 APAC North Division, South Korean esports giant T1 has expanded into competitive Rainbow Six with the OhHamMa roster (formerly SCARZ).
Joining as "non-official coaches" alongside the OhHamMa roster are former SCARZ coach and substitute Junyoung "Revi" Shin and former Union Gaming coach Varun "VBM" Bir Mohindra. The latter had joined Nora-Rengo prior to the Japanese organisation's signing of the OhHamMa roster breaking down, but had then left Nora-Rengo unannounced and joined OhHamMa.
The two are not officially contracted to the T1 organisation, however.
The T1 expansion comes in the wake of the entrance of League of Legends (LoL) World Championship-winning rival organisation DWG KIA (Damwon Gaming), which had signed the GC Busan Spear roster. It also marks the fourth massive organisation in APAC, after Fnatic, Cloud9, and DWG KIA.
The organisation was founded in 2003 with a StarCraft roster and has gone on to become one of the global esports giants. Most notably, it is the most successful LoL World Championship organisation, having won three titles in 2013, 2015, and 2016, to DWG KIA's sole win in 2020.
The signing of OhHamMa in Rainbow Six is the latest in a long list of other T1 rosters in titles such as Dota 2, Valorant, Hearthstone, and more.
The signing means that the former SCARZ duo of Cha "iLeven" Wonil and Kim "Demic" Daeyeong, relegated in part by the GC Busan Spear roster that later signed with DWG KIA, will see a return to the APAC North Division for 2021.
After relegation, the SCARZ players of iLeven, Demic, and Jun "Nosferatu" Heejae (who would later retire after the Korean Open 2020 Winter) had been joined by SCARZ Korean Open Summer 2020 stand-in Kang "Vamos" Sang-eun to form the 'org-less' OhHamMa roster.
There, they had been joined by Kim "r3plicA" Jeong-woo and Lim "Yeti" Hun-sung to form the playing roster for OhHamMa, while Hyunwoo "Howard" Jeong had joined the roster as a manager and coach. Revi, for his part, had never officially left SCARZ and had not been part of the OhHamMa setup.
Of the two, r3plicA had been most-recently active in the Summer and Autumn iterations of the Korean Open 2020 on Faust, while Yeti had played for a smattering of domestic teams through 2018 and 2019, with the most notable of those being New Life and Ageless Blue.
The OhHamMa roster first participated in APAC Six Invitational 2021 open qualifier, where it was eliminated in the Round-of-32. Moving onto the Korean Open Winter 2020, it finished the regular season in third place behind DWG KIA and Cloud9, while finishing joint-third at the Finals after a semi-final loss to DWG KIA (then GC Busan Spear).
The officially signed T1 players and staff. From left: Demic, iLeven, Vamos, Yeti, r3plicA, Howard.
T1's entry with this roster comes with Ubisoft awarding it the license revoked from controversy-mired organisation Nora-Rengo, which had nearly signed OhHamMa last month instead.
The transfer saga had eventually ended behind-the-scenes after Ubisoft had revoked the organisation's league license (revealed officially yesterday) following kizoku resuming management duties in violation of an agreement with Ubisoft, leading to the OhHamMa acquisition coming to an abrupt halt.
With T1 then interested, Ubisoft had transferred the Nora-Rengo league license to the Korean organisation.
It is also likely that T1 is inducted into the R6 Share programme, just as TrainHard Esport in Europe is in talks with Ubisoft, with the R6 Share slots of both SCARZ and Nora-Rengo available for Ubisoft to allocate to T1.
Catch this T1 roster in action on the 13th of March in the Korean Open Spring 2021 tournament, and then on the 19th of March in APAC North:
Cha "iLeven" Wonil Kim "Demic" Daeyeong Kang "Vamos" Sang-eun Kim "r3plicA" Jeong-woo Lim "Yeti" Hun-sung Hyunwoo "Howard" Jeong (Head Coach and Manager) Junyoung "Revi" Shin (Non-Official 'Coach') Varun "VBM" Bir Mohindra (Non-Official 'Coach')
