Following Shopify Rebellion’s successful competitive debut in the North America Dota Pro Circuit (NA DPC) 2023, team captain Tal "Fly" Aizik discussed with the panel about his former organization, Evil Geniuses’ (EG) departure from the region amongst other things in the winner’s post-match interview.

During the off-season, the former EG roster were left teamless after the organization decided to relocate and invest in a new team in South America (SA). However, the team was signed at the last minute by Canadian-based organization Shopify Rebellion.

Fly stated there were no hard feelings in regards to EG’s departure from NA

During the winner’s post match interview, Shopify Rebellion’s Fly started off by talking about the departure of his former organization, Evil Geniuses from the region. However, he also noted that there were no hard feelings and that he is excited to play against his former team should the opportunity arise.

“We’ve had a long history with EG, and it’s been different people taking over EG so we had different relationships [with management] and COVID affected us as well. Coming into Shopify, we have this sort of this new journey and there has been a lot of excitement in regards to the new team. I don’t think there’s any hard feelings, I respect the players on that team a lot. I think they’re amazing and their run at TI11 was insane so I would be excited to play against them.”

Fly then went to answer Clinton "Fear" Loomis’s question regarding the roster’s questionable offlaner choices as the roster is known for grabbing carry players to play in the offlane.

“That’s a great question because once it was pretty clear that Nightfall was going to play at BetBoom Team, I previously said [in my podcast] that I wanted a natural offlaner. It’s not because you can’t take a carry player and transition him into an offlaner, that’s not the case at all because we were successful in certain periods with these players.”

He also noted that the acquisition of former TSM offlaner Jonáš "SabeRLight-" Volek has helped the team a lot as a natural offlaner allows them to explore new strategies.

“But I think it’s easier for the whole team [to recruit a natural offlaner] so we don’t need to have that learning process for the new player who’s transitioning from carry to offlane. So by having SabeRLight- we suddenly have all of these doors opening for us, he’s able to play these weird offlane heroes, like Enigma and Dark Seer. So like whatever we want to draft for the offlane, he already knows how to play these heroes so it's amazing to have a natural offlaner in SabeRLight-.

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Shopify Rebellion will face Wildcard Gaming as its next opponents in the NA DPC on 14th January. However, many are expecting Shopify Rebellion to dominate the region as they previously did with EG.