Igo & Shogi Channel Team
This team won the league last year though entered the final with a lower pool score. In the draft period they saved their Captain and the Leagues start player Fujisawa Rina.
They then took a very interesting drafting approach in nabbing Xie Yimin who had been a Captain of Fukuoka last year (and had a bit of a mare of a tourney and was the only Captain to be let go..) Now Yimin was once the biggest name in Japanese female Go but has been slightly eclipsed recently. It can be expected that she may bear a slight grudge (or at least desire to prove her previous team 'wrong') so all her games against Fukuoka may be spicy.
The team obviously hopes that last year was an aberration and if it proves to be so then they will have two of the top female GO players in a single team.
The remaining two players are 3 Dan Moro Arisa and 1 Dan Takayama Nonoka - now Nonoka is a young upcoming player who was on the team last year but is in the 'reserve player' slot essentially so it may be that the team is relying on the Captain and Co-Captain (Rina and Yimin) to eke out those pool wins against the stronger opponents.
More than any other team this one is leaning heavily into 'star players' rather than ensuring more numbers or even (perhaps) toolkitting players so they can try and use players against perceived other players weaknesses (i.e if a player is known to dislike territorial play then having a play who excels at that might be an advantage should you be able to ensure that matchup. It is difficult to do as the other team would be trying to avoid that very matching for the same reasons.
When the player introductions are complete I will link them below for direct access
Captain Fujisawa Rina
Co-Captain Xie Yimin
Moro Arisa
Takayama Nonoka
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