League Rundown - Episode 516: Get ready to learn Portuguese, Buddy

[00:01:06] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to episode 516 of the League rundown. This week's episode is the LCS summer preview and Lec week one review, and it's lovingly entitled get ready to learn Portuguese, buddy. I am your host, Kangas, and I'm joined by four esteemed co host, the ever present Jack Zelman. [00:01:27] Speaker B: Twitch TV Jacksellman. [00:01:29] Speaker A: We have. I didn't think of a rhyme this time, so we're going to go back to Mister Pickle. Pickle, how's it going, Pickle? [00:01:37] Speaker C: Duffy's been gone for two weeks, and the whole riot ecosystem hits the fan. What the hell? [00:01:43] Speaker A: Wait a minute. You're right. He was the last string holding everything together. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Damn it, Duffy. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Happy birthday, by the way. Now we also have Mister Mazelle piel. [00:01:55] Speaker D: Hello. It's gonna be a fun episode. We get to cover a bunch of stuff. [00:01:59] Speaker A: Yep. And I think we have so much stuff that we might not have time to cover LPL, but I'll give you, like, 30 seconds to give a quick LPL show. [00:02:06] Speaker D: 32Nd speedrun. [00:02:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. A little speed run of everything happening at LPL this last week. And we have once again joining us, the newest member to the podcast, Hawk. How's it going, Hawk? [00:02:16] Speaker E: Doing all right. [00:02:16] Speaker A: Having. [00:02:16] Speaker E: Having a good one. [00:02:18] Speaker A: Having a good one. How's your pokemon grind, dude? [00:02:20] Speaker E: My pokemon grind? I'm gonna become the best there ever was. [00:02:24] Speaker A: Shout out to the patrons who will understand that reference. A lot of stuff happening today to talk about, guys, specifically happening today. Not only is it going to be the LCS preview and the LEC week one review and week two preview, but gigantic news dropped the morning that we are reporting this podcast episode. We'll get to that in a little bit. It has to do with the LCS merging with the LLA and CB Lowell. But first, a couple other smaller news articles that we want to cover. Shout outs to DGon for joining the LCK crew. That is now official. They'll be returning, I believe, tonight, right? LCK starts. [00:03:05] Speaker E: Well, he said he's going on on Wednesday, but I think it's Wednesday in Korea when it's Tuesday here, so I believe that is. Yeah, I think it's literally, like midnight tonight or whatever. [00:03:17] Speaker A: So if you are an LCK fan, congratulations. You got a great host joining the show there. Shout out to d gun. Lcs, of course, coming back this weekend. LPL updates let in 30 seconds. What you got for me? [00:03:31] Speaker D: All right, we got the undefeated anyone's legend in group D 30. They've almost guaranteed themselves a. Actually, yeah. I think one more win, they guarantee themselves into Group A of the next round. Top esports undefeated in group c 20. They just need one more win to guarantee themselves a placement in the next group. Then we also have two undefeateds in Group B, which means we have 20 two teams in that group. [00:03:58] Speaker A: Billy. Billy. [00:03:59] Speaker D: And team we at the tippy top. They will be fighting it out on Wednesday. I'll get to cast that one. That's gonna be a lot of fun. And then we got JDG, the only undefeated team in Group A. They are looking mighty dominant. Unfortunately, TT is zero two, and they have gone, like, zero one nine now this year. So not too great, but that's the run. [00:04:22] Speaker A: That's awful. [00:04:23] Speaker C: Pay no attention to the FPX drama behind the curtain. [00:04:27] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a whole can of worms. We don't. 30 seconds doesn't have enough time for that. [00:04:33] Speaker A: All right, maybe on an episode that we don't have as much news, we can dive into that one, especially if the record continues. Also, major changes to global esports that we'll cover kind of as a package with the LCS stuff because that was all announced at one time. But essentially the TLDR that we'll give right now is that there will be a third international event. We don't really know what it's going to look like, but Riot did tease that, so look forward to more international competitions. This seems like it's going to be the smallest of the three events. More like old school msis, which will be, I still think, cool. I mean, I'm. As long as rides got the budget for it and the teams can fly out and compete, I'm happy to see more international competitions. So I think that's all cool roster news. The only thing that really happened this week for LCS is Mithy at FlyQuest, I believe. Was he signed or is he out and reapered? I'm actually trying to sign. [00:05:29] Speaker C: He used to be cloud Nine's head coach. He joined there under nuke Duck as an assistant coach right there. [00:05:34] Speaker A: So he's transferring from cloud nine over to FlyQuest. But then we'll also cover the rest of the roster changes with the LCS breakdown. So now I tease it. I danced around it. Let's get right into it right now, because there's a big news article that dropped. And, Bickle, you have a detailed document that you wrote up. Everyone say thank you, Bickle in the discord, the community discord, because he put together this entire thing with all the news on it. So start walking us through. I might interrupt here and there to get people's opinions on certain topics as they come up, but walk us through what the giant changes to the lcs and LLA and CB low are going to look like. [00:06:12] Speaker C: Sure thing. So we'll start with something small that you already mentioned. We are getting a third international event. It will be the first international event of the year. It's just a six day thing. Single round robin into a four team bracket. There will be one team attending per region. Now we'll get into those regions pretty quickly and that does mean that the entire world now of the ecosystem is going into that three split season bracket. So split one goes into your new international event. Split two to MSI, split three to worlds. The bigger thing though are the region changes. We are dropping down to five international regions, LEC, LCK and LPL staying as is. They haven't been touched that we know of. There are rumors going around in regards to the LEC. We'll wait and see if anything pans out there. Minor thing. VC's is joining into the major conglomerate that is now the PCs, becoming the Asia Pacific region of AiPAC. That will become an 18 region consisting of Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Japan, Oceania and the rest of Southeast Asia. The playoffs for PCs and VC's will be determining those eight teams. But the big thing coming out of this with the lcs, as we mentioned, with CBolL and LLA, they will be combining into the Americas. There is no more individual regions between it. It is one big overarching region. It is going to be split into the North Conference and the south conference. The north containing six LCS teams, one LLA team and one guest team. The south six CB law one LlA and one guest as well. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Now, what is guest teams of course, being relegation spots. Basically we're going back to relegations, everybody. There will be a relegation spot open in both of the conferences. [00:08:00] Speaker C: Yep, they way they broke it down and said it will kind of be the winner of the tier two region in that area. So Nacl and LrN versus whoever they guest spot is. And because of that we are going to be saying goodbye to the LLA in its entirety, which is sad to see. And this does mean both CBL and LCs are going to be downsizing. Currently CBL is at ten teams. They're going down to six lcs currently at eight. They're dropping down to six as well. LLA currently sits at six teams. They're dropping down to two, split between the north and south. Now what does this mean for international events? Well, as we mentioned, one team per region is going to this first international event. Only one team out of the Americas is going to go. The winner of the north will play the winner of the south, and the winner of that will be going to the new international event, which we're just calling fearless draft right now because they mentioned they're going to be using fearless for whatever this new tournament is now for MSI. There will be two teams heading from the region, but it is guaranteed to be one spot for the north, one spot for the south, and come worlds. There will be three teams heading, but it is also guaranteed that will be one team from the north and one team from the south at least. So big changes coming in in regards to representation for the LCS and CBl in general. [00:09:21] Speaker B: So I wanted to touch on that at least one from the north and south briefly, because a lot of people have been like, how does that even work? What I assume will happen is that each region, north and south, will send two teams and the fourth place team will get knocked out, and then we'll send the remaining three to worlds in like a season finals qualifier, basically, yeah. [00:09:44] Speaker A: Or maybe it could be something like number one from each region auto qualifies, and then there's like a smaller, like gauntlet type thing with like the top two from the others or something like that. [00:09:54] Speaker B: It could be. The reason I think it's gonna be the way I described is because they mentioned wanting to do more, like how LeC does their three splits with a season tournament afterwards for worlds qualification. [00:10:07] Speaker A: Interesting. That would be kind of cool. [00:10:09] Speaker B: That's not confirmed. They haven't said specifically it will be that format, but I think they're envisioning something in that vein. [00:10:18] Speaker A: The big thing is that there's a lot of questions still. Like, they gave information, but it was not complete information. That satisfies all the questions that come up after. So if you're confused and you're like, what about this? What about that? Chances are that has not been clarified yet by riot Global or by lcs and their statements, they have not made, like a public video or anything. This was a article that was posted, funnily enough, you cannot find it if you just go to the whole esports website and try and find it. You have to click on a social link, I believe, to get there. Unless they were able to fix that. I know earlier in the day it wasn't working, but there's a couple things that I want to break down and get people's opinions on, so I'm just going to start kind of throwing stuff at folks and trying to get their opinions. Hawk, I want to get your opinion on the first one, which is fearless draft for the first international competition. Do you think this is a sign that globally, we are just going to go to fearless is the future of League of Legends? What are your thoughts on it being introduced to an international competition? [00:11:21] Speaker E: Yeah. So funnily enough, grapes and I actually had a conversation on salty run back with Zach Whoopley, who's, like, in charge of na tier two and everything. And I kind of was like, hey, so, like, you know, I gotta ask, with, you know, continuing to iterate on fearless and everything, like, is this just the future? And he gave us a very non answer, and this was about a week ago, so clearly now we figured out why a little bit. Yeah, I feel like this is Just AnothEr, like, way to, like, test the waters, if you will. As far as, you know, what fearless brings to the table. I feel like it very seems, seemingly, to me, very obviously, is the future, just because, you know, there's, like, I feel like fearless brings so much to the table and, you know, at some point, the game just gets big enough where it makes sense to limit the number of champions that can be played and continue to try to make it the best entertainment product possible. We were literally having this conversation. I'm like, what's the, you know, what line should you have between entertainment product and then competitive product? And I get that fearless draft. There's an argument to be made against it as a competitive product because it's, quote unquote, like, not a pure way to play the game. But I feel like ultimately, it does make the viewing experience much better, and especially when we're talking about international events that create their metas and everything, I think fearless will only continue to enhance that. So this feels to me like a way for them to be like, well, it's a brand new event. We didn't have it before. We're not changing worlds. We're not changing MSI, at least from the fearless perspective. Let's try it on the new one, and if it works, we continue to do it more. [00:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to real quick, because big, I know you want to hop on there, but you had mentioned something about it not being like a pure way to play. I think tech, from my perspective, bans would also be like a non pure way, but it feels like it's the way, because it has been the way. It's what we agreed from a game's play perspective. That's how ranked games work. That's how competitive games have always worked. The thing with Fearless is that there isn't really a ranked component to it. Like, you can't experience fearless in ranked matches as a solo queue player. You do experience the band system, so that's the only, like, non overlap there. But I think I have no issue with fearless as long as globally we decide that we're all doing it. I have issue with it if one region starts doing it and others don't follow suit, because then it is a big competitive integrity issue come international events. But I think it's cool. And as long as we just agree this is how the game is going to be played going forward, I think that's fine. I think it is kind of a. [00:13:56] Speaker D: Cool addition, which is what Riot has said, right? Like, the first thing in the article is that all major regions will have fearless. [00:14:04] Speaker B: And I'm just saying, when we got the current snake draft format, you couldn't play that as a regular person in any kind of queue. And then we got clash. Who says they don't bring fearless to clash in a year or two? [00:14:18] Speaker A: Ooh, best of series in class. That would be sick. Fearless draft in clash. I'm just now excited. All right, Bickel, you wanted to hop in earlier and I interrupted your finger raise. [00:14:31] Speaker C: You're good. And just one thing to note is they did put out this little gameplay, esports and arcane update for the dev update for league, and they did mention some that's not necessarily stated in the article. They're looking at Fearless A to test this out in this international portion, but they also mentioned they're testing it out in the regional portion in the lead up to this tier one, this first international event. So I'm wondering if, like, they're going to be testing out fearless in general across the first split. [00:14:58] Speaker A: Yes. [00:14:59] Speaker D: Yeah, that's what they said in the article, right? Like at the. [00:15:03] Speaker A: They were. [00:15:06] Speaker D: Fearless. [00:15:07] Speaker A: They didn't explain how, like, to what scope we were going to see it, but my interpretation was what Lenin saying. We're like, yeah, I think first split is just going to be fearless. And Lennon, I want to get your thoughts on that. I don't know why, I just went to first name Mazelle. I want to get your thoughts on that. Fearless for the first split, but also as an Na fan, we've seen this in EU, the three split shift, as opposed to two splits. What are your thoughts on that coming to Na and also potentially just being the thing that all regions do? Are you a fan of that? What concerns might you have? [00:15:39] Speaker D: I think the three splits is interesting. Part of me likes it, part of me doesn't like it. The thing part of me that doesn't like it is like hearing some of the players and stuff say that the schedule is just weird for them from a competitive standpoint. Like, the breaks are awkward or the time crunches are weird. I think from a talent perspective, I kind of like it because it resets storylines and gives you more to talk about and things like that to build towards. [00:16:03] Speaker A: You don't have to talk about the bad teams first. [00:16:07] Speaker D: But I think I still hold the same standpoint as I did at the beginning when LPL introduced fearless. This split was just like, it's interesting. I just, I fear for when you hear a lot of the LPL players behind the scenes not liking it, but then outwardly having to like it, it just rubs me the wrong way. And I think we've seen some players really like it. Like Kanavi and like, junglers specifically have had a way better time with fearless because you're not literally just playing Xin Zhao every single game. You're not playing Sejuani every single game. You're actually able to play like, aggressive, skill, expressive champions, which I think is cool. But when you look at what it does to other positions and stuff like that, I think it's really interesting that. So I like it from an entertainment value. I worry about the competitive nature of it. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah, makes sense. [00:17:01] Speaker E: I wonder. Oh, I'm sorry. I was gonna say, you know, looking at the three split thing and everything, I feel like. And also fearless, like, both of these, I wonder, like, what scope of fearless they're going to do right. As far as, like, is it going to be the quote unquote true fearless or is it going to be something completely different or is it going to be what we saw in NACL last split? You know, who knows? [00:17:20] Speaker D: In the article, they say it's the, like, the fearless we have. [00:17:23] Speaker E: Oh, did they? [00:17:23] Speaker D: Okay, true fearless. [00:17:24] Speaker E: Okay, cool. [00:17:25] Speaker D: So it'd be just the, like, what, what LPL is rocking right now, pretty much. [00:17:30] Speaker E: Okay. And then the other thing about the three split format, I've actually like, other than the fact it's like, oh, you don't have to watch the bad teams for as long XD I thought that three split format in the LEC has really, for me, made me not care very much about, like, the domestic league nearly as much. But I feel like now that the schedule is actually built for it, it should be way better. [00:17:54] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:17:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Having an international tournament after winter split makes winter split matter. Before, it did not feel like winter split really mattered that much. [00:18:04] Speaker D: And everybody will be on the same one. Right. So, like, I think that's the biggest thing. I don't want to have to, as a non, like, pure Lec fan, I don't want to have to learn how to watch three different, like, three different splits. That's completely different when, like, I'm normal to. But if every region is like that, then I think it's a lot easier to digest. [00:18:21] Speaker C: And something I'm wondering about with this transition to the three split, obviously, with the fact that Americas and Lec, well, Americas are heading down to a much smaller league. How is a league like the LPL with 17 teams going to do three splits? [00:18:39] Speaker A: That's crazy. [00:18:41] Speaker B: Games every day. [00:18:42] Speaker D: I would guess it's going to go back to, like, what the original group format was because, like, right now, so it's just going to be an extended format of, like, what we have now. Right. This. This split is literally just a tester because the thing is, it's been like, I'm. I'm gonna guess. And the way that the messaging from the article says is, like, LPL has been doing their own thing for a long time and they're, like, they're in communication with Riot. But I think Riot is, like, also trying to get in line with LPL and LPL is doing a little bit of the same. So I think this format that we're seeing, this split is just kind of like a tester bed of, like, the continuation of a three split format. Because if we spent a lot of time with this as casters, like, looking at what this kind of split setup means, and if you look at the, like, statistics and, like, the way that games play out and timing of everything and the lack of games, it's. It's literally perfect for a three split setup if they were to break it into multiple parts. So I think it's just been a. [00:19:44] Speaker A: Long parts to this system. [00:19:46] Speaker D: Exactly, exactly. So they're gonna line up. They're, like, lining it up for a long time. [00:19:52] Speaker E: And I know there's been a certain amount of desire, like, amongst the community to also return to some sort of, like, tournament based format as well. Right. And I feel like, you know, with the three split system, it's definitely moving more in that direction again. [00:20:09] Speaker D: Yeah. And that's what kind of LPL is rocking now. Right. Like, we have, like, three mini tournaments before playoffs, which I think gives you some cool narratives and stuff to build off of, but, yeah, the thing I think in all this is change is very difficult, and esports does not like change. [00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, this is a big change. I mean, we've talked mostly about the global change that's affecting everybody, but let's bring it back to the big change. It will affect LCS fans and also Loa, CB low fans. Is the two conferences making up the Americas now being one region. Jax, I want to get your thoughts on this one, and everyone can chime in because I'm sure we all have opinions on this. We're losing more LCS teams. CB lows losing a significant amount of their teams. LLA teams are going to both. We don't even know what that means because LLA doesn't even exist anymore after this merger. So, like, what are the LLA teams? Is still a question. I hear that they're gonna address that on the dive, specifically when they record that, and that should be out sometime this week. So if that answer is already out there by the time you hear this, congratulations, you're ahead on the news. But as of right now, we don't know. So, Jax, what are your thoughts on the merger overall? Are you excited about it? You worried about it? What do you think? [00:21:23] Speaker B: I'm hoping this means that we'll get a proper english broadcast on official riot channels for the brazilian games so that. [00:21:35] Speaker A: If they're going to make it official. [00:21:38] Speaker E: It was official for ace flips, right? [00:21:41] Speaker B: That's what I mean. Like, I want an official english broadcast for CB LoL, so I can enjoy it. And while we're at it, have an official portuguese broadcast for the LCS so the Brazilians can enjoy it. [00:21:52] Speaker E: Would be pretty sweet. [00:21:53] Speaker B: If you're gonna make it two conferences of the same league, make sure that both regions can enjoy both broadcasts. There should also, by the way, be spanish language versions of both. [00:22:02] Speaker A: I was gonna say. And a Spanish broadcast for both. [00:22:04] Speaker D: Yes, that brings the question, is there gonna be an english broadcast for both? That's the whole conversation. [00:22:11] Speaker A: It would be awesome if Riot had infinite budget for all of that. I doubt it. I think what they're going to do is go to co streamers. If there's spanish streamers that want to watch one or the other, they can co stream the games. And that's the direction riot's going to go with that. That's what I'm predicting. [00:22:26] Speaker D: You think it'll just be the LCS crew covering both north and south? [00:22:31] Speaker A: No, I think it'll be LCS crew covering the north, the brazilian crew covering the south. [00:22:36] Speaker D: So you don't think there'll be an english language? [00:22:38] Speaker A: Yeah, if any english streamers want to coast the south and brazilian streamers and spanish streamers want to co stream either one. I'm sure that riot will have that conversation if you have a big enough stream, but I doubt that there's going to be, like all these multiple tiered broadcasts for it all. [00:22:51] Speaker B: They should just hire you to do the CB low English broadcast. [00:22:55] Speaker A: Me? Oh, I don't know anything about it. [00:23:01] Speaker E: I would love to do a sea if there's a CB low English. Again, I would really appreciate that if. [00:23:08] Speaker C: That is the way they had with just keeping it. LCS crew covers the north, Cibilol crew covers the south. It just feels like a letdown because it's supposed to be this big regional thing coming together and then you just completely segmented again. [00:23:22] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:23:23] Speaker D: Sounds like riot. [00:23:24] Speaker A: It would be incredible. Hear me? I think best case scenario, especially for all of us NACL casters that are hopeful to get jobs, you know, at a higher level, is that. But they would cover both regions. And now instead of an eight team system, we have a 16 team system because there's gonna be eight teams and then we're eight teams in the south. That would be really cool. But I don't think that riot is incentivized to do that. I know it would make sense if they're trying to unify the Americas, but since there are two different conferences and there are clear cultural and language differences, like, it's a six CB low six, like, brazilian teams, and then an LLA team again, whatever that's gonna mean. I mean, who knows what that means? And then one of their guest teams, I don't think it's like one of their guest spots could be an LCs team or anything. They might pick up na players. Cause they have that option. Now, all the teams with that import rule, which we, we touched on but haven't, like, really broken down, the cBDol teams can now have two cBDOl players, one na player, and then two imports. And for Na, we can have two na players, one CB lol player and two imports. So there's a chance we have some more overlap, but I don't think there's gonna be enough of that for riot to say, yes, let's give all these jobs and all the. All these extra. [00:24:38] Speaker E: But they really should, though. They just like, it would be really gangster if they did. You know what I mean? Like, really cool. [00:24:45] Speaker A: But they're gonna play at the same time. I almost promise you competitions are gonna be on the same days, and there's, we're gonna be cannibalizing our own audience then if that happens. [00:24:56] Speaker E: How dare you have logic here? [00:24:57] Speaker D: We're coping legends. [00:25:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I wish it were not the case, but I imagine that's gonna be. [00:25:04] Speaker D: Yeah, you're probably rosy glasses on for a little bit longer. Like, come on. [00:25:09] Speaker E: Look, guys, guys, if I'm like, I need this, let's just copart her, okay? [00:25:17] Speaker A: It would be a lot more jobs for the folks that are running the broadcasts, less jobs still for the players, which is always a bummer because the reality of the situation is Na players are losing five starting spots. We expect the guest spot in Na to be an NACL team that promotes up. I don't know. Again, I'm waiting for the episode because. [00:25:37] Speaker E: I'm just curious, one of the lcs orgs, like, around for an extra split or something if they wanted to. [00:25:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know what happens the first time or if it's, like, the winner of NACL this summer or moist. [00:25:47] Speaker D: Moist esports baby, specifically. It is not that. [00:25:51] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll wait for more information there. I'm wondering if LLA teams will have an opportunity to play in the NACL, and maybe we could end up with two LLA teams up there. Who knows what that would look like going forward? [00:26:04] Speaker D: That would be cool. [00:26:05] Speaker A: That would be pretty cool, I think. But, like, overall, there's going to be an LLA team, and expectation is that there's five less starting spots for NA players, or at least five less potential starting spots. Obviously, imports will usually take up one or two of those, but, yeah, it still feels like it's a downsize for us, even though technically we're gonna have the same number of teams. So heart still goes out to players and staff that are gonna be walking away from their jobs at the end of this year when the big change will start to happen. I hope that whatever teams leave, six partnered LCS teams are staying. That's confirmed. I pray this is my challenge to you. Any LCS teams that know you are leaving, tell your goddamn employees now, or at least, like, halfway through some, do not blindside them with this. Have a plan for this is how long we're going to continue operating for. This is when everybody's going to be off of payroll. Plan accordingly. You will lose people immediately. It is the right thing to do because you're not screwing everybody over and. [00:27:11] Speaker B: They need to know. I would say the criteria is at least a week before free agency opens up. They, I would say more than that preferably. But like, yeah, they need. They need to know as soon as possible. But like, teams are already making deals on day one of free agency. You don't want to make people scramble at the last second. [00:27:33] Speaker D: Yeah, I also would like to just take a second to pour one out for LCS. We've lost three teams over the course of six months, or we're going, I guess over eight months we're going to lose three teams total, which in the grand scheme of thing is like, I don't know. Would you like, look back three years ago, just say all three lcs teams are going to be gone, but I guess you could say the same thing about the Americas, but so a little bad to think back and see that we've lost so many teams in such. [00:28:02] Speaker A: Short little time and also pouring out for the lcs, which literally might not exist. We're going to be called the Americas. I don't know if the Northern Conference is still going to be called the LCs conference and the south would be called CB Lowell conference. [00:28:15] Speaker D: Yeah, they haven't decided yet. [00:28:18] Speaker C: If that's what they end up doing, then it's basically just a six region world, like with one or two interactions, promotional games between the LCs and the CB law to decide worlds or international seatings, and it's entirely separate. Like, at that point just admit that it's a 16, a six region system, not five. [00:28:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So it feels like we're going to a rebrand, which means that there's a very large chance lcs, which has existed since 20, 1311 years of history will be just that. It will be history and we will enter a new era. This is a new era. This is. We now have the pre franchised era, post franchise era, and now the post or the post LCs era, I guess, is. [00:29:06] Speaker D: I like the Americas era. [00:29:09] Speaker A: The America. Yeah. [00:29:11] Speaker C: We don't have to na men anymore. We can just amen. [00:29:15] Speaker D: Amen. [00:29:16] Speaker A: I have seen that. Or going around. That's great. [00:29:19] Speaker C: And just in regards to the teams that may or may not be leaving Flyquest and Shopify Rebellion have both had somebody large in their organization come out and state their intention is to continue with the Americas or whatever it is going to be next year. [00:29:35] Speaker B: I have a question for you guys. Of the remaining teams, do you think there is any likelihood that one of them tries to pull a TSM and try to sell their spot in NA and buy a spot in a different league? [00:29:48] Speaker A: What if they sell their spot in NA and then go down to Brazil? [00:29:54] Speaker E: That seems unlikely. [00:29:57] Speaker A: I think that if at this point, I don't know how much they'd be able to sell it for. I think we have six orgs that will be happy to stay. I think we have that many. I would be surprised if we lose more than one to selling. I would even be surprised if one sold. But like, two are going to be gone. I think that they will be happy to bow out. The question I would then have after everyone kind of gives their thoughts on Jax question is, who do we think are the ones that are leaving at that point? But I'll let everyone else kind of address Jax's question. Do we think anybody tries to sell their spot? [00:30:28] Speaker C: I don't think we're going to see anything like that, but I think if I had to bet, my guess would be liquid tries to get into the LEC. [00:30:37] Speaker B: That was why I was bringing it up. [00:30:40] Speaker C: I could see a world where liquid tries to buy rogue spot because, dear God, rogue shouldn't exist anymore. We'll talk about them later. [00:30:49] Speaker A: Wow. And that is a hot taste. [00:30:52] Speaker B: And to be clear, I'm assuming that the teams that leave will be getting some sort of like, cash out from riot for leaving the league. So I'm presuming, like, not necessarily selling their LCS spikes. Riot whatever. [00:31:07] Speaker D: Riot stay. Paying people to leave them. [00:31:09] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:31:10] Speaker A: Okay, so I had that thought too, of like, it's a franchise league, you kind of have to pay them to leave. Right? But from my understanding, not a single LCS team has paid their franchise fees in full. So they all still owe riot money. Technically, I don't even know how it. [00:31:28] Speaker D: Works, but I just keep hearing that riot has to pay people to leave them. I'm like, okay, cool. I don't, I don't know where this why, but sure. [00:31:37] Speaker A: How much money does riot need to pay immortals to get out? Okay, now, now I am curious. What teams do we all predict leave? I want. I want to get everyone's opinions, Hawk. I want to get yours first. If you had to predict two of the teams that are going to be gone next year, who are they? [00:31:55] Speaker E: Oh, I mean, surely immortals is cooked, right? And I mean, okay, honestly, I feel like it's just immortals. And dig, I really do. Either that or like, I could maybe see hundred thieves getting out, but 100 thieves has a big enough brand where I don't, like, I feel like being in the lcs for them is valuable as a brand, but I don't know, like, Shopify has said they're staying. Cloud nine. I think I said they're staying. I think team liquid. I think flyquest. So, like, yeah, it really only leaves those. Those few teams. I feel like immortals is definitely one of them. [00:32:28] Speaker A: I'm. I think those are the safe ones. [00:32:29] Speaker E: Yeah. I'm so baffled that they even came back into the lcs in the first place. [00:32:34] Speaker D: Jax, I got it spicy. [00:32:36] Speaker B: So I think immortals tries to stay. I think it's dig and NRG. [00:32:44] Speaker D: My take. [00:32:46] Speaker A: Oh, the same. Okay, go ahead. All right, let's all thoughts on it. [00:32:51] Speaker D: No, no, no. That's you. You king. Go, king. [00:32:54] Speaker B: All right, so dig. I think just in general, it's digging. There's not really anything to say. But energy, I think, has largely failed to cultivate an american fan base in the way that hundred thieves did. [00:33:13] Speaker D: And. [00:33:14] Speaker B: Is just gonna cut their losses. That's really my read on that, is they feel like the. That has done the least, like, brand building in the last year. Of the ones that don't completely suck. Their brand is. We took. We knocked g two out of worlds last year. We're former CLG. [00:33:36] Speaker A: Pretty goddamn good brand right there. [00:33:38] Speaker B: Right. But that's not what you build. Marketing yourself a brand on, like, FlyQuest has their whole environmental initiatives. Hunter thieves has the way they've marketed themselves with their social media stuff. Team liquid is team liquid. Cloud nine is cloud nine. What's energy you got going for them? [00:34:00] Speaker A: Give me energy. It's a great chance. [00:34:03] Speaker D: Good job. [00:34:06] Speaker B: I also could see energy c nine or team liquid being the ones that say, okay, cash me out and I'm gonna go buy a spot in EU off of rogue or some shit. [00:34:17] Speaker D: Cash me outside. How about that? [00:34:18] Speaker A: You think top ones, those are all spicy. Mizelle, I wanna get your thoughts on why you agree. Energy dignitas. [00:34:23] Speaker D: So I actually had a little bit of a different. I think the energy one was the one I was following up on because I thought nobody had been talking about energy, maybe just, like, coming in and going out immediately. But I think energy is one of them. Just because it. I don't know. The feeling I get from the. Is, like, pseudo commitment. It feels like they're still on the edge and, like, from rumors of, like, roster stuff and, like. Like, the way they're managing stuff, I'm just. I'd be. I wouldn't put it past them and just be like, all right, we're done. Like, let's go ahead and back away. But I think IMT is the other one. I think they've tried the, like, great Lakes initiative and things like that. But I think fan sentiment, first of all, is bad when you go as like a social media manager or whatever, you go on social media and every single thing you see about your from like people in the scene is just like how shit you are and how awful you've done for the past eight years of your fucking organization. And like, like the stuff with the players, the lack of coaching, like all that kind of stuff, I think, I think I would just be done if I was hard to rebuild a relationship like that. And especially with like you could say like, oh, it's the new americas. We could do it. But I don't know. Those are my two feelings. [00:35:38] Speaker A: So funny how long they've been like that. Bickel, though. I want to get your thoughts and then I'll give mine. [00:35:43] Speaker C: It feels like you do have three options. I can understand the energy point, but I think they're still too new to having bought a team into it that they're not going to give up just yet. I think it comes down to 100 thieves, immortals and dignitas. And I just don't think Dignitas has been invested enough recently. They're going hard this year with a hard this time with the decent roster. That's almost all expires at the end of this year. I think this is there. We're going to give some veterans one last hurrah and then jump out of here. And I think Immortals has just been too bad for too long that they're out. I think 100 thieves connection to riot in general, they have a very strong connection in the valorant scene. I could see that being a reason they try and stick around a bit more as well in regards to leagues. So I'm just going to go dig in immortals, even though it's the boring answer. [00:36:42] Speaker A: Yeah, again, I think that's a safe answer. I got a spicy one, though and I'll give mine because you made a statement there. Bickle energy is not going to leave after they bought a spot. What if I told you they did not buy a spot? It was just given to them. There was no financial exchange for energy taken. CLG spot Madison Square Garden just said, we don't want this anymore. Who can take it from us? And energy, we're like, well, we have operations. And CLG was like, sweet. You get the building, you get the roster, you get the staff if you want them. Thanks for taking that off of our hands. We already got our tax write off, which is the $13 billion Vegas sphere. So energy, I think is 100% out because they got it for free and now they get to get paid to leave. Hell yeah. They'll take that cash out any day of the week. So I think energy is out of here and I think it's 100 thieves. From everything I've been seeing, from other folks I've been hearing conversations about, they're happy with their Valorant team and they want to limit the titles that they are focused on. They already started last year. I want to say they dropped like Call of Duty and like Apex. I don't remember exactly what they were, but they had other esport teams. So sorry if you're a hundred thieves like super fan and I miss quoting, I just know that they had other rosters they already limited going into this year. I see this as them further consolidating into just like one focus, which is going to be valorant. So I think they say the right ecosystem by thinking Hunter Thieves is out of. [00:38:08] Speaker C: I think they only have three teams right now. I think they have a league team, a Valorant team. I think they still have a CoD team. I think that's it, though. [00:38:17] Speaker A: They might still have CoD. That's probably just cause Nadeshot loves Cod and really wants that to work. But yeah, that's. That's mine and that's probably the spiciest. Just because it's two teams that are like arguably good and have fan bases. Even if energy hasn't really grown super much, they still have a lot of nA players that bring a lot of fans a lot of chance. They won a championship, which Dignitas can't say they won. Immortals can't say they've won a championship. That would be kind of crazy if that did happen, but I expect that to happen. So there we go. Yeah, I guess ending on a positive note for this segment because we do still have lcs preview to cover and LEC week one review. Don't want to have a two hour long episode to kind of put the bow on this and end on a positive note. I am hopeful that this is a positive change and I see a lot of good here. It's easy to get focused on the negative, but I do see the potential for a lot of positive here. And if we get America's competitions, I think those are going to be some of the most exciting matches for me as a fan. Not world's matches, but the northern versus southern conference to determine who gets to go to international events and stuff. MSI is going to be kind of boring because we both just get to send one team. But like the first international tournament and then worlds, I think those are going to be really fun moments as a fan and it'll still feel like lcs and, yeah, hopefully the NA fans stick around and stick with this change because I feel like every change we drop, I remember franchising. We actually had less viewers that summer split than we had the previous summer split. Pre franchising. It was like an initial bump because people were interested in like, oh, what's this change? But then we continually dropped. Hopefully we don't have something like that again with a massive overhaul of the entire ecosystem. So that's my final thoughts. Does anybody else want to put a separate bow on it, or are we good to move on to? [00:40:11] Speaker D: I'm excited. [00:40:12] Speaker A: Rest of the split, I think there's. [00:40:14] Speaker D: Some negatives, but I think, like, like Hawkeye kind of put it neatly earlier. I think there's some really, really good things. There's some not so great things, but change is gonna be there all with. [00:40:24] Speaker E: It'S ultimately, it seems like what's necessary for the space. You know, it's like we all, we all knew this was coming. Like, it's not a surprise to me, anyone. So I don't think we should pretend, you know, that it is. [00:40:35] Speaker A: Since you said that, actually, real quick, I'm actually surprised we still keep six teams, really, with the merger, that we still have that many. Cause I could have seen a world where we had less, but Bickle, you wanted to get some in, I was gonna say. [00:40:48] Speaker C: I think the verbiage for me is cautiously optimistic. Like you said, changes needed to happen. I'm pleasantly surprised they didn't go full in. We're entirely merging the LCS, CB, Law and LLA into one big region of like eight or ten teams. But it's all coming together where you just jam everything together. The fact that it's still, conference wise, you're keeping six teams. I think there can be good that comes out of it. I'm just interested to see what they do with it. [00:41:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And hopefully this levels up the Southern Conference because CB Lowell has struggled at international competition. But if they have the ability to have two CBO players with an NA player and two imports, who knows? Maybe they start to compete a little bit better not to, you know, shit on the brazilian player base or the pros that they have. But just the. The record is not great for CB low at international. And if we are going to send them as one of the Americas representative, you know, hopefully we're able to level each other up along the process because we've also been struggling a lot. [00:41:58] Speaker E: Actually, a lot of talented players. The problem is, like, the way that. [00:42:02] Speaker A: They play the game. [00:42:03] Speaker E: So I am. I'm also, like, optimistic that this can actually be really good for. For the region and, like, help. Help them level up. As you say, Steve. [00:42:11] Speaker C: Yeah, the thing, I don't know if we actually touched on, that's just a brief thing. This change actually adds a semi import slot for LCs and CBL teams. They're still allowed to have their two international import slots, but now they have a third slot they can pull from the other conference. So an N A team can import a brazilian player. A brazilian team can import an N A player and not have that against their import slots. So we may see some cross regional transfers coming in to improve those teams. [00:42:39] Speaker A: Which will definitely make. If teams utilize that, will make it feel more like we're one region. I think that'll help separate it from like, oh, it's still a six region league. It's like, if teams actually are utilizing that, hopefully that makes it feel more like, yeah, we're. We're all one in the same, so cool, cool change there. I don't have an issue with that one at all. But let us know your thoughts, everybody in the discord, because that'll rather up news. That was probably the longest news section we've ever had, but hopefully we're able to cover everything. If there's anything that you still want us to cover, we can always cover it in the discord. Make sure in there and join it because you can find the link in the description below. Yeah, Jack, I think the last time. [00:43:18] Speaker B: We had a new segment this long was when franchising came to the LCS. [00:43:22] Speaker A: Probably. Probably. Or maybe when. Actually, no. When did EU lCs change its name? That was. [00:43:32] Speaker B: That was a year later. That was when they franchised. [00:43:35] Speaker C: Yeah. 2019. [00:43:35] Speaker A: Maybe. Maybe. It could have been around then, although that was less to talk about. That was just a name change. So, you know, not as much like structural stuff, but yeah, but yeah. Shout outs to everybody in the community. Discord, if you didn't know we have one now, you do. Make sure to check it out. Let us know if there's anything else you want our opinions on or let us know your opinion on all the changes. A lot of folks have already been very active in there while the news was dropping. Also, special shout outs to the patrons that support us over on Patreon. You get some extra little content here and there on the website, and also you help support our editor who makes sure that our audio sounds good. So shout out to that trombone guy and all the tromboners out there. With that said, that wraps up a whole lot of news. Which means that now we get to speed through the LCS preview and the LEC week one review. Again, my goal is to keep our episodes as close to an hour as possible. So I'm going to be quite stringent on time and making sure that we are keeping to it, everybody. So we're going to go through real quick the rosters and just cover the teams that have roster swaps. I'm just going to go in order of what is on the dock. Hawk, you got team liquid. Any changes? [00:44:42] Speaker E: No. [00:44:44] Speaker A: Yay. And that's over at bickle. Bickle, any changes? [00:44:49] Speaker C: Yes. So changes? [00:44:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:57] Speaker C: Let's keep it for flyquest. Coming in same top jungle bot support wipo. First team all pro. Inspired. Second team all pro. Masu 13. All pro. Spousio. First team all pro. New ducks still coach. We already talked about the fact that they have Mithy joining in as an assistant coach. Only changes. Jensen's gone. They upped quad out of their academy squad. Sorry. Their NACL squad. So new mid laner quad. [00:45:20] Speaker A: Awesome. Also. [00:45:21] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:45:22] Speaker A: Notable team liquid won the split. I didn't even realize you only have one player represented in all pro in impact who is second. That's wild. That's like energy win right there. Getting snubbed in all categories, but maybe not as impressive. All right, cool. Yeah. Flyquest quad in Mizzell. Real quick thoughts on quads in season. The league that we both cover. Do you think he's gonna be an improvement? What should people expect from Quad going into summer? Sweet. I'll cover it instead. I think quad is absolutely LCS level. He was muted. Okay. He's back. [00:45:56] Speaker D: He's back. No, I think. I think Quad provides a lot of control mage gameplay for mid. I think we'll look at mechanics in laning phase specifically. I think he dominated a lot of the one v one s and that helped play around jungle and things like that. The strategies that FlyQuest challengers were representing. So I'm really excited to see how much more active he is than Jensen was. I think that's going to help inspired a lot. [00:46:19] Speaker B: I'm just excited to see Quad versus quidd. [00:46:23] Speaker A: Quid. [00:46:23] Speaker D: Quad quid. [00:46:25] Speaker A: Quad, please. [00:46:26] Speaker D: Pro quad. Oh my God. If that's not a segment on LCS, I'm gonna be so, so pissed. [00:46:31] Speaker A: We both know, man. He's a producer. That's gonna be exciting. [00:46:33] Speaker D: It's gonna be. Sorry. [00:46:35] Speaker A: Pick. What were you hopping in with? [00:46:36] Speaker C: I was gonna say eight, please. Give me his Casio PI. He's an amazing Casio. He's been one of the best in Korea there was. And for anybody wondering, formerly won by Sulka, used to play for DRX and nonction Red Force in the LCK before coming over to Flyquest challengers and is. [00:46:51] Speaker A: One of those players that came into challengers and pretty quickly proved like, yeah, this player does not deserve to be. [00:46:58] Speaker D: All the players really wanted to face him, if that gives you any big. [00:47:02] Speaker C: Part of the reason for a lot. [00:47:03] Speaker E: Of the players in tier three. A lot of the players in tier three wanted to promote into the NACL so they could play quadruple. [00:47:10] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. Yeah. We had players in the NACL that were mid laners. Be like, it's just not fair that we have to play against this guy, dude. And I'm like, no, it's a lesson, you know, you got to learn from it, man. See a quads. Exciting. We're hopeful for him. C nine is up next. Jax, what are the c nine changes? [00:47:30] Speaker B: So they have, as mentioned, Mithy is out. They've got Reaper in his head. Coach again. And fudge is out. Replaced by thanatos. [00:47:39] Speaker A: Mm hmm. Yeah. And the crowd goes wild. This is gonna fix c nine. [00:47:44] Speaker B: This is. This is the most hyped player coming in by far. [00:47:50] Speaker A: Yeah. As an individual player. Absolutely. I don't personally think it's gonna fix the team, but not to do on that too long. We've already talked about that in previous episodes. Also, shout out a couple awards. Blabber Vulcan. Third team, all pro. Jojo Berserker. Second team all Pro. Let's see if they can keep that moving. Momentum going despite them having a rough playoffs run. 100 thieves is up next. Talk to me about them. Hawk, what changes did 100 thieves get? [00:48:17] Speaker E: I think they're running back the same thing as well, so. [00:48:20] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. [00:48:21] Speaker E: We're hoping we have it. I have it easy this week. We're hoping that they do the same thing that they did last split. That's the main takeaway. [00:48:30] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Also, a couple awards that they were able to win a couple. First team, all pro. Second team, 13. Sniper getting third team, all pro. The rookie, do we think he's going to do it again? Is the rookie going to show up two splits in a row? [00:48:40] Speaker E: Honestly, I don't know. I I'm not really sure what to expect from sniper, this split, to be completely honest, because I think he had a good rookie split, but, you know, like, sophomore seasons can always be tough, and I do think it feels like the overall level of play should be higher. And, you know, we saw some of the struggles in the playoffs. So I think it's actually going to be really interesting to see how sniper does and I'm hoping he does well because, you know, I like him. He's a good player. [00:49:04] Speaker A: I am hopeful as well. All right, up next, we have NRG jacks, any energy changes? [00:49:11] Speaker B: Nope. Literally non sweet. [00:49:14] Speaker A: Perfect. [00:49:14] Speaker D: A lot of run. [00:49:15] Speaker A: Dokla, still big. [00:49:17] Speaker B: Of course. [00:49:18] Speaker A: Big dokes, baby. All right, dignitas, up next, the team that everybody thinks is leaving the league. Bickle, what do you think about them? What changes the. [00:49:28] Speaker C: They kind of changed a lot. [00:49:31] Speaker A: You know, I hear there are a few. [00:49:32] Speaker C: Yeah, just, just a few things. So, so everybody remembers their original team. Almost everybody's gone. The only person remaining is aisles. This is the first time in a. [00:49:43] Speaker A: While we've had. [00:49:46] Speaker D: This first time in. [00:49:47] Speaker A: A while we've had like this big of a roster change. Right. Like I can't really remember summer in recent memory that's done this many changes. [00:49:55] Speaker C: Not that comes to mind unless a team is like completely boomed each other. They're having been this big of changes. But yeah, I'lls the only person remaining in terms of coaching. Strath Meg Marie is still there in his assistant coach, but everything else has changed. Anatron, head coach. Out. Rich top. Out. Ex you jungle out. Dove jungle out. Tall mode ad carry out. They have been replaced. Treats now comes in as the new head coach. This is his first head coaching experience that I know of. Skeptical in terms of that, but in terms of their roster, their lineup is a lot of names everybody's kind of heard before. A lot of experienced veterans. They bring in licorice speaker Jensen and Zven returning to the ad carry position. [00:50:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Immediate thought. This is a Zven coached team. Treats I think is going to be there mostly as a figurehead and probably help out with draft and analysis. When I see this roster, I know Zven and treats have worked together in the past. I've actually interacted with both of them together at the same events before and they get along greatly. It seems like they have a similar mind for the game, but I definitely think that this is going to be a zven dominated team. He's returning to the ad carry position. He swapped to support due to berserker coming to cloud nine. That was the reason for him to leave that role to begin with and now he's going to be competing against and that's kind of, I think the biggest news with a lot of big news. I mean, like, Lycoris speaking, coming back as huge Jensen changing teams and going back to Dignitas is kind of cool, too. But Zven's coming back to his original role. So I want to start by talking about that, and then we can talk about the other ones. Mizell, I want to get to your thoughts. Zven ad carry. First off, were you impressed with his support play? Do you think he should have stayed, or are you more excited to see him back in Ad carry? [00:51:48] Speaker D: I'm more excited to see him back at Ad carry. I think he's always played with confidence. I think that's always so bitten him in the butt before. I think that drive episode he had two years ago now, three years ago, I don't remember. It feels like forever ago. [00:52:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:02] Speaker D: Was really eye opening and kind of like his approach to the game and his mindset. And I really, really like his competitive mindset and the way that he, he, like, tries to approach teammates and things like that. And I always was a pretty big fan of him as ADC just because I felt his instincts were always really good. So I'm very excited for that cloud nine matchup. [00:52:24] Speaker A: It's good be, it's gonna be such. [00:52:26] Speaker D: A banger, not only because it's gonna be really competitive, but they're gonna have fun with it, right? [00:52:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Jensen and licorice, technically x cloud nine. [00:52:34] Speaker C: Players as well, so I know dignitas flyquest matchup. [00:52:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to, like, looking through here. I don't know if, like, speak and Spyro have a ton of history with each other, but, like, like, Jensen versus his replacement, Zven versus the rookie ad carry Masu that everyone's hyping up. Like, that's going to be pretty cool. So a couple of cool matchups there. But Hawk, it sounds like you wanted to hop in. [00:53:05] Speaker E: Oh, no, I actually did not think it was. Yeah, yeah. [00:53:08] Speaker A: But. Oh, my bad. [00:53:10] Speaker E: I think it'll be fun. I mean, yeah. Despite, despite all the situations surrounding this roster, like, with the offseason, everything, I think it'll be a, like a team that people will be excited about. [00:53:20] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [00:53:22] Speaker C: Little history speak was actually replaced by inspired technically, because speak was last jungler for Flyquest. [00:53:30] Speaker A: Oh, you're right. That's kind of wild to think about. Yeah, I forgot about that history. Okay. Yeah, no, that will definitely be. Wow. That was the most obvious history that I could have possibly imagined, but I missed that. So thank you for that context there. [00:53:46] Speaker D: On top of all that, it's best of three. So not only will we get to see Sven versus berserker one time, but we get to see it potentially three times and with, like, different drafts and stuff. And so I'm very, very, very interested. [00:54:00] Speaker A: I think Dignitas is the big wild card now in summer split. Will the pieces fit? Will everything work? Because if this team works, if it clicks, we know that all these players are capable of insane performances. Isles is the least proven, but I still think he's an LCS caliber support. So as long as everybody else is carrying their weight, this team has the potential to do some crazy things. But it's completely untested. It's four new players joining a team, and Jensen and Licorice have played together. I don't know. Had. Was, were Jensen and Zven on cloud nine at the same time? I don't think they were. I want to say Jensen was already over at TL at that time. [00:54:46] Speaker C: He was there when Zven was playing support, but never ad carry. [00:54:52] Speaker A: Okay, there we go. My brain's all getting jumbled up over the last, you know, decade of League of Legends professional. [00:54:59] Speaker C: Something minor, though, actually played together before. [00:55:02] Speaker A: For. [00:55:04] Speaker C: There was that brief period locking where Sven was with aisles. [00:55:10] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:55:11] Speaker C: Because imports weren't there yet also. [00:55:16] Speaker D: Yeah, he played with Isles in academy. [00:55:17] Speaker A: Too, when king got a couple of stage games. [00:55:20] Speaker D: Yep. [00:55:22] Speaker A: That was a funny week in a cat. [00:55:23] Speaker D: That was very funny. And we were just sitting there like chicken. [00:55:28] Speaker E: Was this. [00:55:29] Speaker A: This is 2022, I believe. Oh, wow. [00:55:31] Speaker E: Wait, I don't remember that at all. [00:55:32] Speaker A: Then. [00:55:32] Speaker E: What the heck? [00:55:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that was. That was a funny time, but, yeah. So, dignitas, obviously a lot to talk about. That's the reason why we break down a little bit more, give them some more time. But continuing on throughout the rest of the rosters, we have Shopify rebellion as the second to last team. Azelle, this is one of your teams. So talk to me about the changes that Shopify have this offseason, my boy. [00:55:54] Speaker D: But tomio. [00:55:59] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:56:00] Speaker D: Oh, he's still go. [00:56:01] Speaker A: He. He left his mind. [00:56:03] Speaker E: Good one. [00:56:03] Speaker D: No, incredible. I'm very, very excited to get a chance to watch Tomio finally get his shot that he's deserved for a long time. Spent all of last split as sub for Shopify. Also, I think the last time we saw Tomio, one of the most dominant junglers we've ever seen in our league, in an ACL and academy as a whole, was when he was literally put on a leash and guided by Zazel as a. As a literal sword. And they're back at it again. So I'm very curious to see how this duo works out and I expect them to have a lot of synergy together, but besides that, it's all the same. We've got fake God in the top side, Tomio in the jungle, insanity in mid lane, b v in bot side with Zaze. So it's your homegrown DSG roster. Pretty much. From Nacl. [00:56:59] Speaker A: Plus b boy. [00:57:00] Speaker D: Plus b boy sanity. First team all pro from NACL. [00:57:06] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:57:08] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a lot of reason to be excited about this team as well, especially if you are a fan of teams that utilize Na players. Finally. Oh, what was up? [00:57:18] Speaker D: One of my favorites going in the summer. Summer. [00:57:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. Finally we have IMT, which I would cover, but mazelle, you traded for IMT, so that is your team to cover. So talking, they have one small one. [00:57:35] Speaker D: I think it's just that am narrow is now the coach. Yep. He will be coming in. Instead of being like the GM coach slash manager slash whatever he was for DSG, he'll be coming in now to find some strength for IMT somewhere. I don't know where he's gonna find him. He's gonna find it somewhere. It's gonna be the same roster, though. We have castle, our mayo mask tactical olay. Not super high expectations for this roster. Maybe the vibes get them somewhere good, but yeah. [00:58:05] Speaker A: Yeah, we have them 10th across the board for our prediction or. Sorry, 8th across the board, I imagine 10th if we had the teams, except for Bickle, who has them 7th, and shopify rebellion in 8th. I wasn't going to really cover our end of split predictions, but you got to talk about that. [00:58:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I actually have them 6th, not seven. [00:58:26] Speaker A: Oh, my God, you do? [00:58:28] Speaker B: What are you thinking? [00:58:30] Speaker C: I think they're better than they looked last split. They had a lot of moments where they had games one, and then just, just didn't. And I think a narrow can be a big part of helping them close things out. I don't. I'm not that confident in shopify rebellion. I still have them really low. I think 100 thieves are best of one merchants. I think best of three is going to hurt them a lot. [00:58:55] Speaker A: Ooh, that's a good point. I hadn't really thought about how the best of three change would affect Kang. [00:59:03] Speaker C: If you want to call me out for immortals at six, how about you, cloud nine? Seven. [00:59:07] Speaker E: That's honestly, like an insanely basic. [00:59:11] Speaker A: I decided to go real spicy with it. I was like, I could have vanilla toast or I could fucking burn that shit all the way to the crisp. So we decided to cook here. Cloud nine and 7th. I think that Thanatos is not going to be the fix. And more importantly, I think reapered is actively going to hurt this team. That's my biggest hot take is from information about. I don't want to, like, you know, just despoil anybody's reputations, but I just don't have a lot of faith in Reaper's ability to coach the modern league of Legends teams. Especially with a team with this many egos, this many language barriers. I think that C nine is going to boom in summer, similar to FlyQuest last year. I think we're going to have a very similar trajectory. [00:59:58] Speaker D: I got a counterpoint. [00:59:59] Speaker A: Okay, let's hear the counterpart point. [01:00:02] Speaker D: I was actually sitting in Kelsey stream last night and she had a really long conversation about Reaper. And I actually agree with her. And I think us, from an outside perspective, I think you're. You have a good concept, like if from the information that you get. But I think Kelsey revealed a lot of really interesting information about Reaper and the fact that he's very good at this very start because he comes in, he sets a system, he forces you to be a part of that system. He is really hardcore on timings, like, making sure you're communicating, like, things like that outside of the game itself. And he's all about structure, right. He's all about concepts. And I think for a cloud nine roster that definitely seemed more player managed than anything last split and over the last little bit, I think that's going to help a lot. Just making everybody be responsible for themselves and being kind of, like, more of a mini employee style, which it can also hurt. Right? Like, I think vibes are super important, but I think with the chaos we saw on that roster and kind of like, everybody's thinking a different way. Everybody wants a different decision. Like, you hear in their interviews, that's a big conversation that kept coming up. I think reapered can fix that, at least for, like, it's like a flex seal, right? Like, you just slap it on there for a little bit and it works and then probably like, four months later it comes off. But sure. [01:01:25] Speaker C: Question for you, Kangas, if you think they're going to do this bad, do we see any mid season roster changes because they technically still have fudge under contract? Do they do a Hail Mary swap or are they just going to run it with the same squad the entire time? [01:01:40] Speaker A: I think they would just run it with the same squad because I think Thanatos is going to look good in lane. I think that Jojo and Blabber will continue to just have completely different reads of what they want to do in the game. And I think the Vulcan will continue to lose Lane for Berserker and the times that he doesn't Berserker will still lose Lane for himself, which is what we saw in spring. I was not impressed with their performance enough from everyone's individual standpoint, even though some of them were able to occasionally get leads. I think that there wasn't enough working on this team that I think the swaps that they've made fix it and I am hopeful that this is wrong. I want cloud nine to be good. They're one of the best teams on paper that we could send to an international tournament. So this isn't like a me bashing. Like, haha, this is just me. I want to say it's a bit of a meme to say they miss playoffs, but it's also more honest than not to say that I think that they did not fix their problems and they're going to struggle. [01:02:37] Speaker C: So if the Jojo plus blabber synergy continues to be that non existent and is honestly anti synergy and they just don't work together, who leaves cloud nine after this year? [01:02:47] Speaker B: Year, yes. [01:02:50] Speaker A: I think they dropped blabber. That's. [01:02:53] Speaker E: I mean, I think if blabber leaves cloud nine is because Blabber wants to leave cloud nine because he wants something else, not because cloud nine ever gets rid of him. I think he's by far their best player. [01:03:04] Speaker A: I think cloud nine would commit to Jojo over Blabber for the simple fact that Jojo is younger. I think, Jack, they're, they're both great, but Jojo's the newer player. He's younger. His hands are going to last longer. So I'm going to invest in him. [01:03:22] Speaker E: I I feel like cloud nine is so stupid if they get rid of blabber. Like, the thing is, I wouldn't even put it past them. But I mean, blabber is in the conversation for greatest Na player of all time. Like, he's not, he's not one of them yet, but he's in the conversation. [01:03:37] Speaker A: He's next. [01:03:38] Speaker E: It would be like, it would be like the biggest out with the old, in with the new blunder, maybe in roster GM history. I feel like if you get rid. [01:03:45] Speaker A: Of blabber, Jojo also has not maintained his momentum from like the, oh, is he going to also be this next generation that will join that conversation? Is he the Kobe after Michael Jordan retires kind of thing. You know, I'm bad at sports references, but I think that one made sense. [01:04:05] Speaker E: Okay, we got there in the end. [01:04:07] Speaker A: We got there in the end. With that said, that's some of our hot takes. We're not going to go through all of our end of split predictions. If you're curious, I can post them in the discord. But let's get into the thing that everyone actually does care more about our weekly predictions because we have a big format change. We just talked about what's happening next year with the change. We also had a massive format change this summer, which apparently is just going to be a one and done thing depending on what they do next year. But we have best of threes, which means way fewer matchups each week. In the LCS we have two full days of games, but we only have four matches to witness. All teams will be presented, though represented because of course only eight teams in the league. But on Saturday, kicking it off, team liquid versus flyquest, kind of a banger. We usually start off with the finals from the previous season as the opener for the LCS and we are continuing that trend, which means because it's best of or, sorry, single round robin best of threes. This is the only time they'll play each other in summer. Unless they match up in playoffs, which is really funny to think about going. [01:05:23] Speaker C: Even if they match up in playoffs, it will be a minimum of two months until we see them play against each other. [01:05:31] Speaker A: That's wild, but that's just the nature of the beast with single round rod robin, that is. It's funny to think about conceptually for how long the summer season is. That's just how the cookie crumbles. Lot of team liquid faith on the cast. Myself, Jax, Bickle and hawk habit. Mazelle, you got flyquest. I'm curious. I don't think Flyquest is like a bad pick here, but I'm curious if Mazelle will be able to give us any more context into that. But before I'll give my team liquid defense, I think that team Liquid is, I mean, first off, reigning champions, but second of all, I just think they'll have more momentum coming in just because they didn't make any changes. Typically with changes week one, it'll be a little more struggle bus for the teams to get everything on the same page. Bickle, I see your face freaking out. I'll explain to everybody on the audio medium. I accidentally made a new column on the spreadsheet. Bickle freaked out and then I controlled Z. And then he looked more confused because I assume he was trying to fix it in that moment. That's what happened there, Bickle. And now everybody listening to Sam trying. [01:06:34] Speaker C: To add a column for their own. I'm like, okay, I didn't expect them to be here, but sure. [01:06:41] Speaker A: All right, Mazelle, are you able to defend your point? Perfect. He did message earlier. He was taking a little bathroom break. So I'm happy that I can now out him in front of everybody on the podcast. [01:06:54] Speaker E: Imagine having to pee. Like, for real. That's crazy. [01:06:56] Speaker A: I know, right? Which, by the way, happens quite often on the show. Everybody, if you ever are wondering why somebody hasn't been talking for a while, good chance we're in here for a while. All right, next up. So I remember that's best of threes. So we actually didn't put all. I just realized we didn't put the series game worse. I think it's gonna be two one. So if everyone wants to throw that in, if they feel like doing it, I have confidence to one. I think that fly quests are good for at least one game now this spicy one, because up next is c nine, dignitas. And let me tell you, we're all unified here, right? C nine. C nine for Jax Bickle. C nine for bazelle. C nine for all. Oh, wait a minute. That's right. I decided to be based this summer split and I think Dignitas is going to take this two. Oh, somebody asked me to defend myself. [01:07:52] Speaker D: That's a hell of a tape. That is. [01:07:53] Speaker E: That is. That is a very bold take. But, like, again, I don't know, like it's kind of a base bold take, though. [01:07:59] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. [01:08:00] Speaker B: To me. To me, this is like predicting that team heretics is going to two. O g two. You're just taking old cloud nine against current cloud nine. [01:08:12] Speaker A: It kind of is. But I lit. I really do have that little faith in this cloud nine roster that I just got to be consistent if I'm going to put them in predictions, not making it out of playoffs and I'm going to put dignitas, which I don't think I actually said this, but I have dignitas power range ranked as fourth out of eight teams. I got to give it to them. I think the dignitas, I'm just kind of betting, really, who knows? If the team doesn't click, it's going to look awful. Maybe clean air c nine does click. It's just going to come down to which team has more gas at the gate. So. Yeah, don't follow me on this prediction, folks. Cloud nine is definitely the safe pick. I'm just hoping for a miracle here. All right, that's, that's day one. Well, look at that. Two, two matches. Lcs is going to be very fast for predictions. This split hundred thieves energy kick off day two on Sunday. Got more split cast here. Energy for Jax, energy for Bickle, 100 thieves for myself, Mazzella and Hawk. Jax, why do you think energy takes it to one? I don't know. [01:09:16] Speaker B: I just, they're both running it back. I think it's a close one. I think this is, is, this is easily the closest match of the week. [01:09:25] Speaker A: I'm happy I asked you because if I asked Bickle, he had 100 thieves not even making it out, he probably would had a much more aggressive take here. Actually, Bickel, now that I say that, why do you think it goes back. [01:09:36] Speaker C: To me thinking that Hunter thieves strength is really in the best of one creativity? I think they come out strong for game number one and NRG, with a strong staff, has a chance to adjust. With a lot of known veteran presence, they can adapt to whatever's being thrown their way. I think they can bounce back in a three game series. I think hundred thieves are just going to have a hard time with the best of threes. [01:09:59] Speaker A: Fair enough. And that, that is also a good point that you bring up. Energy has notoriously been scary in best of series, mostly best of fives when it comes to LCS playoffs of the past. But yeah, that is, I think, a pretty fair point. Okay, cool. Next up, we, we haven't defended 100 thieves. Hawk, why do you think 100 thieves is going to take it to one? [01:10:22] Speaker E: I think that hundred thieves can replicate some of the success that they had last split. I do think they actually have really good players. I still think river is like one of the best players in the LCS. And honestly, I am wondering if NRG's trip to world's quarterfinals was a bit of a Cinderella story at this point. A bit of a flash in the pan, if you will. [01:10:46] Speaker A: I have faith in a couple of the energy players to keep their careers going forward. I think some of them might be looking at the retirement conversation going into next year, depending on how this summer goes. But it's always up to the players and kind of what their drive is at this point. But I think that hundred thieves is hungrier for, for it and we'll want it more. All right, finally, to round out the weekend, we have the battle of the titans. Immortals versus Shopify rebellion, baby. Mazelle, give me your shopify prediction here. Because most of us have Shopify, Bickle will have to defend immortals, but you have Shopify two one. They're your boys. I'll let you talk about them. [01:11:32] Speaker D: Yeah, I think IMT they literally beat cloud nine twice, last split off of different picks and things like that. And I think in a best of three environment, you can get that a little bit more, even though people typically say like, oh, best of ones, you could throw out that one thing or whatever. But I. I believe in this IMT roster to be able to take games off of anybody, just the way that they did against cloud nine. Last split twice in a row. Looking at different picks like the bards and things like that. But I still think Shopify Rebellion will have a really good time with the meta that we're seeing. Seeing, especially if we're looking at continuation of what we're seeing in LeclPL. I think this team is going to have a lot of fun with the versatility of picks and the cooking that can happen. Zazel and, and Mister and Sandy are going to have their chef hats on. It's going to be a lot of fun. [01:12:21] Speaker A: So I was going to say both these teams had some of the more unique drafts from spring split. So, beckle, you're defending immortals here to one. Why do you think? [01:12:30] Speaker C: In all honesty, I don't think think either of these teams really have anything all that impressive. But I think Castle could be a really strong point coming out for immortals, especially if we see some of those carry style top laners like the Camille, be a bit more prevalent. He had some good moments, especially on carries last time, and I don't think fate, God is necessarily the strongest opponent, so I could see capitalization there. [01:12:55] Speaker A: Okay. [01:12:56] Speaker C: But in all honesty, I can see this going either way, especially when Shopify rebellion pulls out something crazy mid lane for insanity like they always do. [01:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I imagine insanity and best of threes will at least get one wacky pick. What was Castle had one, like, insane game in spring, right where he just popped off was it might have been chase. I just remember there was one game that was like, holy crap, this guy's fed. And they were able to win that one, too. So, yeah, he has shown the ability to have these big carry games, and you are right. I think the fake gods, he's got to argue that he's not the worst top laner in the league. [01:13:38] Speaker C: It was cloud nine. [01:13:40] Speaker A: Jace versus cloud nine. There we go. Because I'm a big fake out fan. I really do want to see him succeed, especially players promoting from the NACL. But NACL is a very different playground than lcs in terms of the competition you're against. You're suddenly now playing against against Wipo and Impact. And I think fate God has shown that he can be the weak link in the team. So I'm hoping for an improvement in fate God, even if you're still playing weak side, top lane, at least, you know, show up in other. [01:14:10] Speaker E: I feel like fate God is going to have the added pressure as well that probably everyone is going to compare him to Serti. [01:14:16] Speaker A: That's a really good point. Who, by the way, hit 100% win rate on a ranked account count getting to grandmasters. That's right. He went from level zero or level one to grandmasters. 100% win rate. Anybody know that? [01:14:31] Speaker D: Dude, I'm just saying, all the top laners are sweating this split. Yeah, he's like, all right, which one of us is 30 going to take? [01:14:41] Speaker A: Pretty much. [01:14:42] Speaker C: If he doesn't have a job in the lcs by either end of this split or start of next split, it's a crime. [01:14:49] Speaker D: I it's already a crime. [01:14:52] Speaker A: I promise I would put money on this. If he does not get signed to an LCS team into the news format, he will be signed by a CB Lowell team. [01:15:00] Speaker C: Oh, 100%. [01:15:01] Speaker A: He will be playing in Brazil for the tier one system and might be on the team that makes it to worlds at that point. Or I guess MSI or worlds, whichever one comes first. [01:15:10] Speaker C: So where would you guys rank, sir? T. If he came and right. How many current top laners would you take Serti over? [01:15:17] Speaker A: I have him over fake eyed castle immediately. I have. [01:15:20] Speaker D: I would have him over. [01:15:22] Speaker A: I have over. [01:15:23] Speaker C: Sniper like Russia. [01:15:27] Speaker A: The tough ones are the wippo, the impact, and who am I missing? There's one other thanatos. [01:15:34] Speaker D: Thanatos. [01:15:35] Speaker A: Thanatos. I think I have him over. Dokla. I don't know much about thanatos. I think you'd be top have. [01:15:46] Speaker D: I think he'd be sitting at like five or four or five probably. [01:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's between him and Dokla in those spots. Yeah. Keep your eyes on 30, everybody. If you didn't know about him before, you do now. But there we go. Wow, that was, that was so fast, man. Lcs week one preview. There you have it. We covered the teams, the roster changes, and our predictions for week number one. Predictions are going to be very fun for this region going forward because of how few series we will have, but game wise we will have minimum, the same number as last split. Maximum two more per day so we could get back to the number of games we are playing. Even more than the number of games we were playing when we had ten teams in the league with best of ones. So could be pretty fun. Make sure to tune in on Saturday. I will be there. By this point, I haven't checked the front door to see if the packages have arrived. They're supposed to come. My pantheon cosplay materials should be arriving. So I'm going to try and build a little pantheon cosplay for day one. We'll see if it works. Who's got faith in me? Give me a, give me a number between one and five on your hands. We're not going to tell the audience, just the people. I can see on camera your confidence that I can pull off a pantheon cosplay with like four days of prep. That's a very high number, Jack. [01:16:59] Speaker C: Most. [01:17:01] Speaker A: One being the least confident, five being the most confident. If Jax did not understand that and needs to reverse it, I understand. Okay. All right. Thanks, team. You got my back. Everyone in the discord, of course, can let me know if they have faith in me as well. But that's it for LCS, which means we're going to hop over the pond to Berlin where Lec took place. And they already had their week one, so we have some games to cover. Now, there's a fun format that I introduced last split. We tried it out a few times and I had a lot of fun with it. We got some good feedback on it. So we're going to keep that going rather than if you've been a longtime listener, you know that we used to cover every single game and say something about every single game, sometimes more than one thing about every single game. This time around, we're going to keep things a little snappier. What we're going to do is go through the rankings. Each of us have a team that we were assigned to and we're going to cover the highlights of what happened, how their week went, maybe big moments, some fun moments, funny things that could have happened, maybe stand out players, whatever they want to talk about, but just the highlights. And then we're going to have our matches to watch at the end. These are the matches that we think you should check out. If you didn't have time to watch every LEC game, these are the ones that we are the most confident in saying, yep, this is the one that you should check out. We'll each bring, like, at least one. We'll probably get to, like, three or four total by the time we wrap that up conversation. So just in case the new format is jarring or you haven't caught any of those episodes where we tried it out instead, spring. That's how we're going to cover things here. So surprise, surprise. First place, missing one notable team. We'll get to them as we go through the list, but there are three teams tied for first in the LE, see, first up being fanatic FNC bickel. Talk to me about Fnatic's stellar first week. [01:18:51] Speaker C: All is normal in the world. When you look at what was expected, this is exactly how everybody thought it would end up. No real surprises. In all honesty, they had the only, what I would consider clean game of the entire weekend. Not for themselves, of the entire league. It was a rough weekend all around, but Fnatic actually had a really clean game against Vitality. They just curb stomped them, and that was about it. The other two games against K Corp and GX had some ups and downs, but smooth sailing for Fnatic, 30, is expected. Noah looks a lot better than he did at MSI. Props to him. Humanoids doing his regular season humanoid thing, but, yeah, fanatic. Smooth sailing. [01:19:39] Speaker A: Good time to be a fanatic fan. The stocks are up, and they also had the fastest average game time over the weekend. So I think that also reinforces, you know, they're. They're one of the cleaner looking teams in the LEC right now. So shout out to them. Next up, joining them in first place. Sk showed up, baby three and O hawk. This is a team that you drafted. When did you even draft them? Were they even high on your list? [01:20:09] Speaker E: No, I dropped on my LCS teams first. Yeah. So I kind of was just like, I don't know who I want to take from the Lac. I'll take these guys. [01:20:17] Speaker A: All right. Talking about the highlights of their weekend, how'd things look? [01:20:21] Speaker E: I mean, dude, they. They fucking killed it. [01:20:24] Speaker D: They. [01:20:24] Speaker E: They beat. They beat g two, which is like, you know, that's. That's pretty poggers for any team. Not. Not really. Any complaints there? [01:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:36] Speaker E: And then they, you know, they. So they beat. They beat g two. They beat everybody else. They. Their bot lane. That's the main thing. Their bot lane was really, really solid. I think no one really knew what to expect from this bot lane at all. But honestly, I think they were even better than people thought. There were a lot of memes about, like, oh, korean import bot lanes are just like the future, I guess. Also, I think that people forgot that irrelevant might be the best top laner in the league. Their, their wins were not necessarily clean, but they were very entertaining. [01:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I think the big thing is the bot lane you're talking about because we didn't really know if, like, Rahel and Luan would be a positive change for this team. We were like, yeah, we'll wait and see. They got to prove that they're worth the stuff, that they're worth the import spot. I gotta agree. I think. I think that they did in fact prove that, but it did take a little bit of time to close out these games. They weren't necessarily the clean bick. What did. What was your impression of SK? [01:21:37] Speaker C: I was just going to say we've talked about Fnatic and SK now the two teams with the korean support. Turns out korean supports really freaking good at Ronaldo. [01:21:47] Speaker A: It does like, it does. [01:21:49] Speaker C: Oh, boy. [01:21:50] Speaker A: Yeah. But like I had alluded to, SK have the longest average game time. Yes, it's three wins, but two of those games, I think. [01:21:58] Speaker E: I think the main takeaway is like, SK is not all of a sudden a top team, but they had a really good weekend, you know, and I think they're going to be more competitive than people at least first thought and they could be a top team. [01:22:09] Speaker A: Right. [01:22:09] Speaker E: But I don't think they are automatically a top team right now. Even though they're three and o and notable. [01:22:15] Speaker A: They were against rogue and giant x. [01:22:17] Speaker E: As their other team and MSI hangover, g two. So the worst team in the lac. [01:22:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:23] Speaker C: I mean, they have to be a top team. They went 30. It's not like they've ever gone 30 to start a split before and then fallen down terribly. [01:22:32] Speaker A: It's not like back in winter. Yeah, I'm so. I forgot that that happened. And yes, we definitely should expect an SK fall off at some point. Thank you for that reminder. Okay, SK joining Fnatic at 30, but there is a third team in the le. Talk to me about bds, who took down a vitality team. Ertix and G two. [01:23:01] Speaker D: Yeah, actually huge. I think ice had a really, really good weekend, especially in the g two matchup, which I will be covering a little bit later in my match to watch. I don't know if they did anything special, though. I will say I think it was a consistent performance from what we've kind of seen bds us play with. I think Ice had a lot more consistency this time around, which was really nice, but we were kind of getting like the Gragas is and things like that from, from, from Mister Adolph in the top lane which set up the team fights a lot and I think ISIS positioning was helped a lot by the spacing tools that BDS was grabbing in a lot of their drafts and I think that's a good ticket for them to go forward. So I think the biggest bright point was obviously them beating GTA in the way that it was. They almost lost that game. You were at their next. They had one nexus turret left but Adam got a really, really good cast that set up ice. And in general I think this team is a team to watch and to kind of keep eyes on. Unlike the top half of the league itself again. But we'll see if that consistency stays true because they definitely took advantage of their opponents being maybe not the most prepared. I mean their team heretics game was, was interestingly enough but I mean vitality didn't, didn't really stand a chance. [01:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, props to BDS for showing up. I'm happy that you bring up ice cuz also he was like the. Again, at least he didn't really do like a baby. They didn't really do like an All Pro in spring but they just picked like the top player from each team or, or top player to pick like a all team first All Pro I guess is how that would reward that ice got there. So props, ice still continue that momentum going forward. [01:24:49] Speaker D: Jinx is nutty. [01:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Very, very strong. Cool. So three teams tied at three and oh in the LEC. Which brings us to a team that sits alone in the standings. Two and one and what do you say? Mazelle. [01:25:07] Speaker D: Hello. [01:25:08] Speaker A: Viva la front though. KC baby. Two and one. They, they matched their wins for all of spring split in the first weekend, baby. They picked up two. They dropped one. Schedule was a loss against Fnatic, win against MDK and Rogue. And let me tell you, their loss was one that felt like they could have won and one of their wins was one that they definitely should have lost. But we'll take it either way. Two and one feels like an accurate record for them. Their debut match against fnatic here with Canna and closer and Vladi and Targumas. Big revamp for KC. We were talking about that with Dignitas and the LCs. This was the big revamped roster in the LEC and I would say in game one we definitely felt that Connor was able to get an early lead topside and felt like maybe the Jacks would start to be a big carry threat later in the game but things were falling apart a little bit bot side to kind of allow that top lane and then by the time team fights came around, Fnatic clearly showed that they were the better team fighting team and Connor definitely felt like he was off from what the rest of the team wanted to do. And I'm not going to lie, the rest of the weekend didn't really improve that too much. Still felt like this was a couple of pieces working well together but not all the pieces coming together at the same time. And we definitely saw that in game. Their third game against Rogue where they had to defend in their base for probably like five minutes of game time where rogue is just in their base and cannot close the game because upset just says, no, I refuse to lose. I got Jinx and I will carry. Um, but people just kept getting picked at random times and like out of position and that's what put them in that spot. So yes, they got that win, uh, through upset, having a really good performance. But I still am concerned for the cohesiveness of this team. They did not seem like they were playing the same league of legends. [01:27:09] Speaker B: Jenks, I was just going to say I don't know how much you really want to put on, uh, upset versus just how much their opponents just flubbed everything thing in their base. [01:27:21] Speaker A: Yes. That was also some of the worst base taking that rogue demonstrated. But I like to focus on positive jacks because what are we supposed to say about rogue also, Vlad, he had a Barrett steel which was a pretty. That was. That was a real game. That was the base defense. The other game, I'm just trying to. [01:27:41] Speaker B: If it was the jinx, it was the other game. [01:27:43] Speaker A: It was the MDK that had the base. I had those songs swapped. Yep. Baron Steel was the rogue one. That was also great. Who. [01:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah, still had a gold lead when they lost. [01:27:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That was for Scowie showing and we'll talk about Frescawi and MDK later as well because I got them too for Scowie had a couple of uh oh moments. Super and Merwin were trying their absolute hardest but yeah, they were just not able to actually close that one out. And Carmine core, that was the one that they definitely should have lost. And I mean, you could argue the rogue one two, they did have to Baron steal but they also, it was a much slower game, not very high action. And it felt like Casey, even though they did get the Baron steel for the most part were in that game with a pretty good scaling comp. So there we go kc two and one. They're alone in that position in the standings. Which brings us down to a big clump of teams that are one and two. First and foremost, you might have noticed, one notable EU team was left out. And there, of course, g two that lost two of their games in opening weekend. Jax is the MSI hangover reel. [01:28:55] Speaker B: I don't know that I want to attribute this to MSI hangover. This was g two being dumbasses. So, like, okay, they beat MDK. I'm not going to say anything more about that. They lost to Sk convincingly. Like, SK played really fucking well. But then they lost to bds off of just g two, choosing to do the dumbest shit I've ever fucking seen and just choosing to lose. I'm talking broken blade blowing everything to one v one labrave while bds took Baron. I'm talking split, pushing for a tier one outer turn turret while they lose two inhibitors. Just absolutely unparalleled. Bad play from g two going on with broken blade. [01:29:49] Speaker C: How about playing safe in the first couple minutes because they had lane swapped on, so he's playing cannon. [01:29:53] Speaker A: Oh, God. [01:29:54] Speaker C: Soaking up the xp. Great idea. Just play it safe. Decides to rush in with his e to get the rest of the minions. Gets doped because they're still there. Dies. Tps in instantly, dies again. [01:30:09] Speaker D: Yep, I saw. [01:30:11] Speaker A: Which is so funny compared to how good he looked in game one, their first game. He freaking smashed that shit. He was camille and single handedly one g two that game. And I was like, oh, boy, what the heck? What happened, bro? [01:30:25] Speaker D: Good. [01:30:25] Speaker A: He has a bad food that night. Like, what's going on? [01:30:28] Speaker E: I saw a Reddit comment that was like, man, g two needs to figure out how to win game games without caps or broken blade. One v nine ing and I was like, you know, they're kind of spitting. Like, that's kind of facts. [01:30:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. [01:30:39] Speaker C: They're not wrong. [01:30:42] Speaker A: So is, is this concerning? I mean, it's still g two, right? [01:30:47] Speaker B: That's the thing, is, like, it's g two. They'll probably just 30 this next week. [01:30:53] Speaker A: There's a good chance. There's a good chance we'll cover that when we get to predictions as well. But definitely was the thing that put a lot of rank benches in our predictions. [01:31:02] Speaker C: Something to. None of these games matter to g two. They're already locked into season finals because they've won both the past two splits. They could go one in eight, not make playoffs, and still be fine in the season finals. [01:31:15] Speaker A: Could you imagine? Although Romaine Bagheera, their general manager, also does share a lot of their scrim information online, something that, you know, some people have opinions that should not be doing, but he does like to be transparent about that. Their scrims weren't great going into this weekend either. They were losing the majority of their games, not by like an egregious amount. They had some positive days, but a couple days where they, I think there's a day they picked up one win and like five or six losses. Another day that they picked up zero wins. [01:31:44] Speaker C: 1564 24 42. They do not name the teams they scrim. They just give the results. [01:31:50] Speaker A: Oh, okay. So I guess they didn't have a win list day then. But, yeah, either way, g two are unfortunately in the clump of the one and two teams, so we'll keep our eyes on them to see if they can reverse that going forward. But also joining them, team heretics, the team with the coach that starting a family, longtime member of the podcast. Not a member of the podcast, but friend of the podcast and Peter Dunn. But Hawk, you're up to talk about team heretics. How'd their weekend look? [01:32:20] Speaker E: You know, Steve, wasn't a great weekend. I'm gonna keep it a buck with you guys. It wasn't terrible, but I feel like the saga of team heretics being extremely disappointing is continuing because, I mean, really, like their, their whole team doesn't feel like they are really playing on the individual level that they need to be. I like, I think flock, it has looked all right. I think Yonko said has looked all right. You know, they've had, they've had their moments, but I think, like, the rest of the team hasn't really had great individual performance. And then you also can, can look at, you know, just the fact that they feel like they don't know how they want to play League of Legends. And it's, it's just tough. We talked about how what, you know, whether or not Zwairy would be the answer. He had a good game in the first game against BDS. It was fine, but other than that, he's been all right. Team heretics just feels like they have not figured it out. And as we have seen, they seem to struggle to figure it out in time for when it really counts in the season. Their losses were pretty, pretty one sided as well. Like, they were quick. They lost it against team bds, 13 to 13 in kills, but in 28 minutes, like, if that shows anything. And that was ice kind of just being like super one v nine, but, yeah, like it was a weird. [01:33:50] Speaker A: And their only win was Gx, who is looking like one of the weakest teams in the region. [01:33:55] Speaker E: Yes, that is also true. [01:33:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So stocks for team heretics, unfortunately not looking like they are improving too much, but I'm still hopeful that this team can turn it around. I think that there's pieces in it that are exciting, but overall, maybe don't invest in them too soon. G two team aritex also joining the one two clump. Mazelle, you got rogue, who came in. Yeah. Lost a couple games, but did get one win. What did things look like? What impressed you about rogue? What are the highlights? [01:34:27] Speaker D: Yeah, I thought rogue was interesting. I still think that this team does not function super well together. I think Zoellis had an interesting weekend in its own right. I think all in all, their picks didn't necessarily do them service. It felt a little awkward in a lot of moments. But I think overall, their win, at least over vitality, shows that they aren't the bottom of the bear barrel of Lec because I think still in that one you could see that they were clearly a level above vitality in some moments. I think there were still some knockout, drag out fights there. But in general, I definitely want to see the continued focus towards Larson with a lot of the, like, picks and stuff and comp, but more question marks towards Finn and how he's going to kind of adapt to the meta itself. [01:35:19] Speaker A: Sure. Cool. We'll keep our eyes on them as well. And then rounding out the one and two clump, we have MDK. I'm sorry, everybody. I'll be honest, I did not come up with any acronyms for this week, so we're gonna have to wait for next week for those ones. But the good old mad lions, koi, they had a one and two weekend highlights. Merwin still on his range. Top lane. Bullshit. Or at least in the first game with the twisted fate, pulled out against g two. That's the one I alluded to earlier. That's the one win the g two picked up. And I think merwin was kind of the issue there. He did get kind of smashed. Eloia pulled out zyra jungle. That was cool. What do we think about zyra jungle? [01:36:01] Speaker B: Was that the game they won? [01:36:02] Speaker E: Didn't I say that someone was going to play it on the podcast last week? [01:36:05] Speaker C: I was about to say I need to give you credit because you called out. Well, you said that g two would lose because they played zyra jungle, but you were correct. There was a zyra jungle in a g two game. So bravo. [01:36:16] Speaker A: And for a minute in draft I thought camille was going to be supportive port before they locked taric so I was like, wait a minute, it's going to be a double right prediction kind of, but did not actually come to pass. So it feels rough to say that like one lane is what lost them the game, but it really did kind of feel like Merwin lost them this game. Once top lane fell apart, it never came back. Broken blade, hard carried and then their one win that MDK did pick pickup. I'm trying to remember here MDK against team heretics. This one was also the Merwin range with the varus pick this time around. So fun to see him kind of continuing that trajectory going forward. But mostly this was the super show. I think that Supa and Merwin for the most part are looking like positives on this team. I'm still a little worried about for Scowie. I don't think he had the best showing this weekend and there's struggle to close out a easy win against Carmine. Core is also very concerning. They did not need to spend that long in the opponent's base and just give them that many windows to come back. So I definitely think they need to fine tune some things going forward. But all things considered, I think this team should be two and one with what is arguably a close early game against g two before things kind of fell apart. [01:37:38] Speaker C: Anytime you throw a ten k golden lead, there's a big problem. [01:37:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that that was literally a ten k goldie that Casey came back from. So yeah, MDK, rough start, but I think that there's out of the teams that are one and two. I actually have some faith in their ability to get those leads early. Like they showed that they can play the first like 15 to 20 minutes pretty well. It's just their late game that needs to be fine tuned, which means that there's two teams at the bottom. Oh, and three gx bickle. Talk to me about him. [01:38:14] Speaker C: Do I have to? [01:38:16] Speaker A: Yep, that's what we do. [01:38:18] Speaker C: Well, if your gx, if your name is Jack east, you're pretty happy. She had a solid weekend. He looked like the only damn bright spot on this team. His varus mid was the only reason they lasted as long as they did against finale and almost had a chance until he randomly tp bot lane for some reason and the entire game was just over. But this team's ugly. Patrick has finally succumbed to staying on GX for so long. This team, just give it three weeks and they'll be gone. [01:38:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's it's looking like that. There's not a lot of signs of life. So we'll keep it brief there. [01:39:01] Speaker C: We still don't understand why the Antonio there. [01:39:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that was the big question is like, is this going to be a positive change? Did not really feel like a positive change. So we won't dwell on the negativity for too long. Let's bring our negativity somewhere else instead. Because there's one other team at zero three and oh boy, do I frickin love these guys. Let's go. Vitality. That's why I draft you. Every time is for moments like this where you just, you just show you can't do it. Three losses. Three losses in a row, man. Hella saying, what can you say, baby? What a player, what a play. This dude cannot end a game with less than six deaths. I promise you that. This entire summer split, that's going to be the thing going forward. That's really the takeaway is that this team is still pretty bloody. They still love the fight. They still love to make action happen. Link is for the most part felt like he was keeping up with a lot of the action that was going on outside of their rogue game. It didn't feel like Linkus was really shut out of any of them. But Hilly, man, we gotta have conversations about some of these engages. Cause there were moments specifically in the rogue game where it feels like vitality should have better options than they end out with. Yeah, it was, it was pretty tough. [01:40:28] Speaker C: If you stop watching these games at like 2025 minutes, then vitality looks great. They should be two in one, right? [01:40:36] Speaker A: Like how are they throwing leads? It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. They were 5000 gold up on vitality or, sorry, on BDS as vitality and against rogue, they got to like, no, it wasn't 5000. Like it was 5000. Like that. Oh, it was five. Okay. [01:40:53] Speaker C: So about the same 5000 gold lead 35 minutes into the game. [01:40:56] Speaker A: But I think you put it pretty succinctly. Pickle in general, Lec seemed a little sloppy. I think vitality kind of encapsulates that statement. They can play the game still, but they will also throw the game still. So. [01:41:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't think you're giving enough credit to how much of a cluster chaos festival. That game versus rogue was. [01:41:19] Speaker A: Hard to really even like track what's going on in the game. There was so much happening at all times. Shout out to Marcoun and Larson, though Larson somehow went deathless in that game somehow. [01:41:35] Speaker C: We're going to talk about games to watch. For me, that game is my game to watch. You get to see vitality steal a barrel with cars, mega inferno bomb, and then somehow go on to lose that game in approximately two minutes. [01:41:54] Speaker B: Yep. [01:41:56] Speaker A: It was beautiful, man. [01:41:58] Speaker C: It goes from oh, my God, they're throwing to oh, my God, they're gonna win to oh, my God, they're throwing to oh, my God, they're gonna win to oh, my God, they stole the baron. They're gonna win to oh, my God, they just lost the game in like five minutes. It's the best and worst thing ever. [01:42:13] Speaker A: Vitality always delivers an entertainment, man. What can we say? So there we go. That's Lec in a nutshell. You listed your match to watch right there. I'll give mine. Mine's actually KC versus I put rogue. But what I meant was MDK because that was the insane base defense where MDK just keeps throwing themselves at upset. It's like, it's like when you are playing like, fetch with a dog and, like, you throw it and then the dog brings it back and then you throw it, but you don't let go and they still run. Anyway, upset was just like, I'm gonna walk over here. And they're like, oh, you are? Oh, well, we're all gonna go over there. [01:42:48] Speaker E: Then. [01:42:48] Speaker A: He's like, no, I'm actually gonna stand and fountain. They're like, oh, okay. Well, I guess now we're no longer hitting the turrets anymore and our waves gone. And then you just killed us all and we got to run away a couple times in a row. So that was very funny to watch. At least that one just for anti entertainment value. And I think for what's got to be the record for the longest time spent in the enemy base without winning the game. There we go. Any other prospects? Jax, what do you think? What's your match to watch from the lec? [01:43:17] Speaker B: And we honestly split g two. Sk, it was, it was definitely messy, but it was messy of these two teams both playing well and sk just played better as opposed to g two's other loss. That was g two just fucking pants on head, stupid plays. [01:43:38] Speaker A: Fair enough. [01:43:38] Speaker D: See, but I'll give a contradictory because I think you should actually watch the g two bds game because, I mean, it's funny. Well, that I love the perspective of g two at all. We were so shit. But I think you also got to give praise to bds for this. Like, maybe they don't show up for the rest of the split, whatever. But, like, I think you're not giving a genuine idea of, like, bds actually played good that game for to some extent. Right. I think there were still a lot of messy parts, but I would say go watch the bds g two game because it was crazy. And there was. If you're a bds fan, you're gonna find a lot of good stuff. [01:44:17] Speaker A: Hell yeah. Defend your team, azelle. That's what we want to hear. Go check out BDS g two. Go check out g two. Sky rogue Vitality and Casey. MDK, which are matches to watch. Hawk, do you want to throw one in there? I guess we got everyone else. [01:44:30] Speaker E: Yeah. I mean, God, if you. If you hate yourself, just watch any of the games in which a team was up 10,000 gold and then lost the game of which there was like four of them this week. I think. I think some of them were listed in there. I don't even remember exactly what all the games were. [01:44:48] Speaker A: I got Casey. [01:44:49] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:44:50] Speaker A: So that, like, he's got to cover. Yeah. [01:44:52] Speaker E: It was. If you hate yourself, but, like. But also, like, want to be entertained. I know. [01:44:58] Speaker D: It is. [01:44:59] Speaker E: Like, it's so dumb, man. Like, I saw a tweet from veteran. I think it was yesterday or two days ago. I guess that was something to the effect of two teams in the LEC had ten k gold leads today. Both of them lost. [01:45:14] Speaker A: All right, so, yeah, that's you, baby. Speaking of, let's cover quickly our predictions and then close out of here for week two of the LEC. We only have two days to cover for matches, so we can get through these pretty quick. Lot of SK belief as they face off against BDs. Mazelle, you got BDS. Do you just want to say the thing? [01:45:33] Speaker D: Viva Lafron. [01:45:34] Speaker A: Perfect. Fnatic versus rogue for the second match. Fnatic across the board. A lot of faith in them. MDK versus vitality. Hawk, you actually have vitality. I don't have faith in vitality. I put MDK. Why do you think vitality. [01:45:47] Speaker E: They've all made you believe that they suck ass, so now it's time for them to beat MDK. [01:45:55] Speaker A: Hell, yeah. That's enough for me to change my prediction. [01:45:57] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [01:45:57] Speaker E: Let's go, Kangas. [01:45:59] Speaker A: I also just kind of, when I was throwing this in there, I wasn't really remember the fact that vitality should have won most of their games. [01:46:07] Speaker C: Now hear me out. Have you considered, though, that they might actually just suck? [01:46:12] Speaker A: No. [01:46:13] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:46:13] Speaker E: But MDK is not that. MDK is also not really that good. So, like, it's. [01:46:17] Speaker A: It's winnable Hill saying he's gonna die ten times. Honesty this time. It's gonna work. Next up, team Eritrex versus KC. I got KC because y'all doubted them last week and what did they do? They gave me two correct predictions when nobody else had them. Actually, maybe other people had them. I'm not gonna fact check that one, but I was the one that believed in them the most. So I'm gonna keep that energy going forward. [01:46:39] Speaker D: There you go. [01:46:39] Speaker A: There we go. G two versus g eight. G two. Taking that one across the board despite stern one and two. They. It's. It's gx and it's g two. Yeah, we don't have to talk about that. Vitality team heretics, we got for day two. By the way, this is now on Sunday. So day two of competition for week two. Vitality versus team heretics take to the rift and we have team heretics across the board. Guys, I can't. You know, am I really going to put vitality to. No. God, I can't. I. I have to. I have to do it. All right, I'll do vitality. Just so we don't. There's no way. Team heretics has five predictions to win. That just shouldn't happen and y'all are gonna look like fools. Fools. [01:47:20] Speaker D: I say g two versus rogue. [01:47:22] Speaker A: We got g two across the board. GX versus Mk. [01:47:24] Speaker C: Wait a second. [01:47:24] Speaker D: Hold on. [01:47:25] Speaker C: This against rogue, isn't it? [01:47:26] Speaker A: This is against. Oh, bickle with the base take g two. Always lose to rogue. [01:47:32] Speaker C: Always lose to rogue. G two. Can't get a clean 20 after the just beat GX. It's going to happen. [01:47:38] Speaker A: It's a good point. [01:47:39] Speaker D: It's going to happen. [01:47:40] Speaker A: In fact, they might go one and eight. I heard this split so. And still be just fine. MDK versus Gx. MDK across the board. SK versus fnatic. We have fanatic across the board despite the fact that SK went three and. Oh, does anybody want to give like devil's advocate for SK? It just. How could they win this? Jackson, I want to give your thoughts. How could SK possibly win this if they were to take the game against Fnatic? There we go. That's a good enough reason. [01:48:10] Speaker E: The actual answer is that Rahel and Luan are somehow better than Noah and June, which I don't think is the case. Yeah, it's not. [01:48:20] Speaker A: Not impossible, you know, exciting matchup regardless. Make sure to check that one. [01:48:25] Speaker B: I think it's the closest matchup of the label, but I still think fnatic's just better. [01:48:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I think topside could be close because irrelevance really good. [01:48:38] Speaker A: I love. [01:48:38] Speaker E: I think irrelevant is actually maybe better than Oscar. I think irrelevant is really quite good. Oscar is a bigger champion, though. [01:48:49] Speaker A: Well, we'll keep our eyes on that one for now. [01:48:51] Speaker C: I think SK needs humor to have some more regular season performances. [01:48:56] Speaker A: Oh, oh, well, we are in the regular season. True. Could happen. Final game of the weekend for LEc, BDS versus KC. And we have BDS across the board. I still believe in Kaiba core. My deck has no pathetic cards. I know that's a Yugi quote. Nobody at me. [01:49:17] Speaker C: Kaiba core really have K Corp going 20. [01:49:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to predict them to lose one. He's. [01:49:23] Speaker B: He's trying to make sure that he gets his eight game wins because he doesn't have any faith that immortals is. [01:49:28] Speaker C: Going to get any. [01:49:29] Speaker A: Dude, I really need it. I really need it. [01:49:32] Speaker C: That's fair. [01:49:34] Speaker A: And right now they're leading in terms of team of the teams that can qualify. Vitality. Got nothing for me, man. I need more KZ wins. That's it for Lec. [01:49:44] Speaker C: If you've heard me, one of your teams would go to one and the other one would go, oh, three. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me which ones. Be very surprised. [01:49:51] Speaker A: Then you'd be a little surprised. Exactly. That's it for Lec, though. Week one review and week two preview. Let us know if you agree, disagree with any of our takes in the discord. Thank you so much, everybody, for supporting the podcast as well. Over on Patreon, if you have the time and you have the ability and you have thumbs, even if you don't have thumbs, you can use your fingers as well. You can give us a review you and that would be preferably five stars if you agree with that statement. Or you can go for a big old thumbs up, whatever you can to help out get more eyes on the podcast. We're going to try and grow this thing and keep up the momentum going forward into a new format, globally into 2025. Thanks so much for my co host for coming on as well. Mazelle, Hawk, Jax and Bickle, you can find their socials as well, should be linked. And once again, thanks so much for tuning in, everybody. We love you and we will see you next time. [01:50:45] Speaker D: Bye bye bye. [01:50:47] Speaker C: Peace. [01:50:49] Speaker A: Oh, yes, daddy.