North American Halo team Renegades has made two changes in its lineup. Captain Tyler "Spartan" Ganza and fellow player Braedon "StelluR" Boettcher will be replaced by former Evil Geniuses player Hamza "Commonly" Abbaali and Team eLevate player Zane "Penguin" Hearon this week.
"I'm extremely happy about the two newest additions to our Halo team," Renegades General Manager Rob "Leonyx" Lee told ESPN. "We didn't want to just build a great team, we wanted to build a legacy."
Commonly was recently released from Evil Geniuses making him a open free agent. Penguin also parted ways with eLevate this week due to no longer wanting to compete with the squad.
The news comes after Renegades was reverse-swept by now-disbanded Team Allegiance at the World Championship, losing the final three games of the quarterfinal series after going up 2-0 early. Spartan and StelluR, who have arguably struggled in the four-man lineup, then expressed interest to leave Renegades.
Penguin was a part of the eLevate squad that took third-fourth at the event. That team went undefeated in its group and then dominated Epsilon before also losing to Allegiance in the semifinals. Penguin had the highest Kill-Death (KD) ratio of any player to compete at the Halo World Championship.
Commonly, however, is a familiar face to the Renegades players. Prior to being signed by the Renegades organization, Commonly was a part of the team, which was known as Leftovers at the time. He left the squad five days before it joined Renegades due to an offer from Evil Geniuses to compete at XGames Aspen on January 30.
The remaining two players of the original Renegades World Championship lineup are Cameron "Victory X" Thorlakson and Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. Victory X is the most prolific and arguably the best player on the team. Ninja is also a star performer, but is best known for being one of the most popular Halo streamers on Twitch.