A Southeast Asian team, prominent with Premier eSports events like League of Legends and VALORANT, has decided to step into Counter-Strike 2 after they started the recruitment process. Talon Esports has brought in Aaron “AZR” Ward to build a new roster and lead a new squad.
AZR is an Aussie Major semifinalist, and she has been made anchor for a team that will comprise players from Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Talon’s first CS2 team will comprise both youth and experience after August 2’s announcement, which will officially unveil the team that has been rumored since July.
The team will consist of AZR, Jared “HazR” O’Bree, Christian “ADDICT” Pendleton, Corey “nettik” Browne, and Miłosz “mhL” Knasiak. AZR’s last match on the server was for Sprout Project over a year ago. AZR comes in with a lot of experience, having served as the in-game leader for 100 Thieves.
The chief executive of Talon, Sean Zhang, said that there was a need to organise a quality team if Talon was to compete with the best in CS2.
“If we want to become the best, we need to train with the best. No doubt right now, EU CS2 is the best in the world; if we want our players to be at the same level, they need to feel the level of competition day in and day out,” Zhang said.
The team will be under the wider Asia region and has plans to compete in key qualifiers for events. Talon will have to set everything in place for November’s Shanghai Major while working out how to manoeuvre the Oceania space.
Their biggest competitors are The MongolZ who are regarded as the best team in the region. Others like FlyQuest, BNK, and SemperFi are new Australian-Latvian projects as they all jostling for the few slots available in Oceania.
