Following a disappointing Six Invitational 2020 and a middle-of-the-road Pro League campaign for Season 11 so far, Team Reciprocity has benched Zachary "Nyx" Thomas and followed it up with by benching Alexander "Retro" Lloyd as well.
After an impressive underaged career in leagues such as Season 2 of CCS, where he finished second behind the soon to be SK Gaming roster, Nyx then joined that very team for the beginning of Season 8 to play alongside his cousin of Matthew "Hotancold" Stevens in the Pro League.
Since then, the roster now known as DarkZero Esports started climbing the leaderboards in North America (NA), finishing third in Season 8 in NA, joint-fifth at the Season 9 Finals, and second to Natus Vincere at the Season 10 Finals. Despite this result, the team then decided to make two major changes which included trading Nyx with Team Reciprocity for Alexander "Skys" Magor.
DarkZero at the Season 10 Pro League Finals. Nyx can be seen second from the right.
Since joining Team Reciprocity, Nyx quickly secured a very impressive second-place finish at the US Nationals 2019 Finals behind the soon-to-be World Champions, Spacestation Gaming. However, Reciprocity then was the worst performing North American team at the 2020 Six Invitational, falling to G2 Esports and BDS Esport as it failed to advance out of the group stages. Across these games, Nyx was the second-worst player on the team, having a 0.92 rating and a negative kill-death split despite primarily playing the frag-focused operator of Ash. Similarly, in the Pro League, he is also only the fourth-best player on his team with a 0.95 rating on the operators of Ash and Kaid.
Retro, meanwhile, began his career back in Season 3 where he won the Pro League title on his first attempt alongside Canadian and the current core of Evil Geniuses before being dropped ahead of the Six Invitational that year. A year later he made it back to the big leagues alongside FoxA and LaXInG on beastcoast, later known as Cloud9 and now Team Reciprocity.
This team beat Counter Logic Gaming to qualify for Pro League Season 8 and, after disappointing performances at DreamHacks Austin and Valencia, won North America's first title in 19 months at DreamHack Montreal 2018. Following this up they then finished in the top four at both the 2018 US Nationals and 2019 Six Invitational before, most recently, once again finishing in the semis at the Season 10 Pro League Finals.
Following those Finals those chose to make two changes, replacing MarkTheShark and Skys with Nyx and VertcL and now, after a runners-up finish at the 2019 US Nationals and a group stage exit at the 2019 Six Invitational, they have opted to make two more with Retro and Nyx being benched on the team. With this, the core roster that won DreamHack Montreal is now broken with just FoxA and LaXInG left on the lineup.
Currently, Team Reciprocity sits in fourth place in Season 11 of the Pro League, with three wins, one draw and three defeats. If the team hopes to qualify for the Pro League Finals once again, it will need to improve quickly, as the league leaders of TSM and DZ have both created a large gap between themselves and Reciprocity.
The current standings for North America's Pro League
Team Reciprocity now has until its next game, on the 23rd of March against the undefeated league leaders of Team SoloMid in the Pro League, to find Nyx's replacement to add to the following lineup:
Davide “FoxA” Bucci
Alexander “Retro” Lloyd
Gabriel “LaXInG” Mirelez
Franklyn “VertcL” Cordero
Anthony "HOP3Z" Lee (coach)
Taylor "Redeemer" Mayeur (coach)