North American esports organization Evil Geniuses’ coach, Kanishka ‘BuLba’ Sosale gave EG fans a quick update on the team’s Dota 2 roster during an hour-long interview on the Position Six Podcast.

Looking back, BuLba explained how the initial roster came together, following EG’s TI9 run. “After we had just lost to Liquid, that morning everyone was sad and we had to look at other options,” he recounted, “So, I spoke to Roman “Ramzes” Kushnarev, and Tal “Fly” Aizik spoke to him as well. We told him we wanted him to try out for the team and that we wanted him to think about playing offlane. He immediately jumped in, he was extremely excited. He had been playing with the same kind of roster for two to three years before that. And I spoke to him about the role and what I wanted from him in general.”

BuLba also mentioned that EG had already put together impressive results at the start of the 2019-2020 DPC season. “Yeah, we went to the MDL Chengdu Major, to the Top 4, I believe. Then we had the ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Singapore Invitational, where we got Top 2 vs VG. And then we had the last, the Germany Major one, where we hit the top 2 with Secret. It was definitely a fun roster.”

BuLba continued, “It was [a new] role for Ramzes, but I think he adjusted pretty well at the start. I think there was a lot of promise and potential, you know, considering how DreamLeague Season 13: Leipzig Major went as well as the ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Singapore Invitational. I think we were learning and getting there better, so it was really sad especially for me.”

Unfortunately for Evil Geniuses, the DPC season was halted due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the team members having to remain in their respective regions. “The old roster with Ramzes, basically we had someone in every part of the world. So [Andreas “Cr1t-” Nielsen was in Europe, Ramzes was in Russia,] and then Abed “Abed” Yusop over in Southeast Asia. Then Artour “Arteezy” Babaev, me, and Fly in America. It was pretty hard to play. In general, it’s been hard to bring Abed over,” explained BuLba.

When asked about how the team decided on having Daryl “iceiceice” Koh join the roster, BuLba replied: “Fly and I talked about it. We had a few names written down. We were definitely looking for someone experienced. We were looking for someone to play the role. And Daryl was definitely at the top of our list. So it wasn’t necessarily because he was a big name or anything. It was more related to the fact that he was experienced. Honestly, for the role, there aren’t many players out there. He was our best fit. And then it took a while for him to decide. But he eventually agreed, and that was it.”

Moving forward with Evil Geniuses’ completed Dota 2 roster, BuLba hopes to get the team together whenever possible and have them play together to find out how the team dynamic will form. By doing so, he’d like to build up some team chemistry before the start of the DPC season early next year. BuLba is optimistic about EG’s future with the addition of iceiceice: “It’s going to be a new adventure entirely. The role can definitely be made into what you are — with offlane especially, as there’s a lot of freedom in the role.”

Evil Geniuses coach BuLba: ‘iceiceice was at the top of our list’