On Wednesday X3O Gaming officially announced the addition of a new CS 1.6 squad to their organization. The news comes exactly one week after the previous team left for Gravitas Gaming.

The new squad is none other than Paragon of Virtue. POV gave a breakout performance at the events held at the e4all convention last month, placing 5-6th and third at Extreme Masters LA and the WCG US finals respectively. During their run at EM, they even knocked out former x3o squad.

Ryan "NineSpot" Bell, Jeff "hero" Mettetal and David "savi0r" Park all have experience playing under the x3o namesake, as they had been on the squad before Turmoil was picked up. X3O team manager, Nick Fitzsimmons compared the two squads.

"I think that they are similar and different in a couple of ways. While Gravitas has the experience of many years playing at the top competitive level and a consistancy in their lineup that is almost unheard of, I don't see their game or individual skill evolving much beyond where they are at now. As for X3O, while they are younger and have a newer lineup, I see the potential for them to grow into the strongest players in North America. They also posses the drive and passion for the game necessary to be world champions."

"I don't think its going to change things too much other then continue to push us in the right direction," Fitzsimmons continued. "Sponsors are looking for new fresh players that have several years ahead of them in the game. This new team will give us additional marketing leverage that will really help us build brands around our players."

In addition to joining the X3O organization, POV has made a change in their roster. The team has added Thomas "thoMz" Garcia, most recently of Mafia of Brothers. He is replacing Mike "mkpro" Rogers. According to team captain Andrew "dRew" Timmerman, "his attitude and playstyle didn't really mesh with what we were trying to accomplish."

With some experience playing with members of POV, Garcia is very excited for the future with his new team.

"It feels great joining x3o," said Garcia. "It's a lot different than playing with MoB, where we all relied on our aim to win our matches. MoB barely got any practice time in and no one really took CS seriously at all. We wanted to try and get things going but it never really happened. POV(x3o) came to me and asked if I was interested in playing and told me the details. Seeing how I've played with David and Jeff in the past, and I had fun even though things didn't work out due to leadership issues. So far things in POV are very very fun."

As far as the details of the sponsorship, x3o will be providing salary, travel, and LAN support to the new CS squad. With the lack of a salary for their last CS team being one of the key issues to them leaving, Fitzsimmons says it was a matter of timing. "We will be able to support salaried counter-strike players in 2009. It was a bit too long to wait for our previous roster."

POV team captain Andrew "dRew" Timmerman echoed Fitzsimmons' positive sentiment about the move.

"We feel really honored to be able to join an organization like X3O that has a proven track record of sending its team to both domestic and international events and we all have nothing but respect for everything Nick Fitz does for his teams. We're going to do everything in our power to represent X3O to our fullest potential by preparing as hard as possible for events and conducting ourselves at tournaments with professionalism and maturity."

Official x3o CS 1.6 lineup

Andrew "dRew" Timmerman
Jeff "hero" Mettetal
David "savi0r" Park
Ryan "NineSpot" Bell
Thomas "thoMz" Garcia