Qualifiers for the first Dota 2 tournament post-The International 2023 are now underway but Nigma Galaxy still doesn’t have a plan locked in for its 2024 roster, providing more questions than answers with the team’s most recent update.
The last time we saw Nigma, they had just bombed out of the Western European qualifiers for TI12 and finished in a tie for last at BetBoom Dacha after a disappointing season. Without Miracle-, who stepped away last December due to undisclosed health issues, Nigma was relegated to Dota obscurity with no DPC Major appearances or deep tournament runs.
Throughout the year, Nigma fielded various lineups built around its remaining core of MinD_ContRoL, GH, and captain KuRoKy. That saw a rotation of ATF, SumaiL, Yuma, and Mikey playing positions one and two for the team during the DPC season—though no lineup saw success in the stacked WEU region.
Now, heading into a 2024 season where Valve has ended the DPC, Nigma is in a prime position to use its seniority to claim spots at big events. However, the team has now confirmed it will not be finalizing its roster in time for the ESL One Kuala Lumpur qualifiers and is keeping plans vague for now.
In the first real update since Nigma brought in Yuma and Mikey, the organization said on Nov. 15 that it will not finalize its new lineup until at least mid-December. In the meantime, MinD_ContRoL attempted to qualify with a separate stack to compete, though his komanda X roster fell to Alliance in the match for third place.
The two biggest questions for Nigma revolve around the future of Miracle- and KuRoKy, though the team did not clarify its status at all. Instead, the social team posed the question of whether Miracle “was ever really gone” from the team and refused to comment at all on Kuro’s potential retirement—saying it is “above our paygrade.”
This most likely means both Miracle- and KuRoKy will return to the team for the 2024 season, but Nigma is not ready to share its full lineup just yet.
As for the rest of its roster, Nigma noted that Mikey and Yuma will appear more frequently on the team’s social media pages. No information on GH was shared at all, but if the rest of the core four is back, GH will likely return as well.
Additionally, this update confirmed that SumaiL’s contract did not revert to Nigma after his stint on loan with Team Aster, rather the former Evil Geniuses star just forgot to update his Twitter properly. The status for SumaiL is still up in the air, though a return to Nigma isn’t out of the question.
