League Rundown - Episode 558: Assume the position!

[00:00:13] Speaker A: Gets a little too far here. He's gonna have to try and get himself out. Let me go. Tillery and the rest of the shots of fire. Zion is just killing the next Zion can eat it single handedly win the game by game by game by game by should be. [00:00:27] Speaker B: Oh my God. [00:00:28] Speaker C: Stupid. [00:00:29] Speaker A: Passes through and manages to the table with Messiah tanking it up. I do not believe he just believe. [00:00:42] Speaker B: I cannot understand this game. [00:00:46] Speaker A: Unicorns of love. It wasn't a mutant. They're Nexus. Hello and welcome to episode 558 of the League Rundown. This is your 2025 LEC spring split week four review and LTA split two week three review. That does not get easier any freaking week. It's a very long intro. This episode is lovingly entitled though. Assume the position. I am your host, Kangas and I'm joined by two esteemed co hosts tonight. Up first we have Mr. Mazelpl. [00:01:33] Speaker C: Hello. I'm just gonna say I didn't like the way that you emphasized the certain part of that word. I'm just gonna say it's fine. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to talk about league legend. It's gonna be great. [00:01:44] Speaker A: Was it the word assume or. [00:01:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The lead in. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Yeah, assume the position. I just had to do it twice for you there. We also have joining us back on the pod, hopefully for quite a while. Thank you for joining us yet again, Yanni. [00:02:01] Speaker B: Hell yeah. Just to let you know, I probably. Actually, I don't know if I'll be here next week or not. I'll let you know. [00:02:07] Speaker A: All right, well, maybe every other week we'll get Yanni. Jody does. But either way, happy to have you for this week. [00:02:13] Speaker B: Happy to be here. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Well, let's hop right into it everybody, because me and Mizelle, we got some Star wars plans later. So I'm gonna keep us on topic and on for this rundown. Any percent, any percent speed run. Exactly. So you know, we got to kick things off with the LPL update. Who better to let us know what's going on than Mr. Mzellpl himself? What are the cool narratives big storylines happening in the LPL right now? [00:02:38] Speaker C: Guys. LNG won a series. They won a series. [00:02:43] Speaker A: It's a miracle it happened. [00:02:46] Speaker C: It was a two zero. And now group nirvana gets wild, which is actually just absolutely hilarious because RNG of all teams is now at the O2 position with OMG. And if you don't know what that means, then the last two place teams in group Nirvana, which is the Second group in the LPL will be done for the rest of the year once they finish all their games, so don't want to be those bottom two. And the fact that RNG is down there feels really bad. There was also a bunch of drama that just released about them, but we're not going to talk about it. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Okay, good. Perfect. I had comments. [00:03:24] Speaker C: Yeah, no, there's a lot. There's a lot. Anyways, JDG seems like in an absolute downfall. So does blg. Somehow things are just not going good for those two teams. Anyone's legend. Top esports still look amazing. They're both sitting at 6 and 1. There's a lot of games left to go. We're still in week number four. We just kicked off week number four a couple days ago, and there are eight total weeks, so we're about halfway there for majority of our teams. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Okay, so what are the odds LNG makes it to msi? What would they have to do? Give me the narrative for LNG to. [00:03:58] Speaker B: Fricking. [00:03:58] Speaker C: 0%. [00:03:59] Speaker A: 0%. Okay. [00:04:00] Speaker B: I would put. I would put a negative percentage on it if I could. [00:04:03] Speaker A: Negative. [00:04:04] Speaker C: There's no. There is no fucking way. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Absolutely no fucking hope for these guys. [00:04:08] Speaker A: But, I mean, there is a path they could go, right? [00:04:12] Speaker B: Yes, there. There is. [00:04:13] Speaker C: Technically, yes. [00:04:14] Speaker A: They're just not expected to do it. [00:04:16] Speaker B: They are so far off the path that they are not even in the same stratosphere, dude. [00:04:22] Speaker A: Okay, well, this is like. [00:04:24] Speaker C: This is like the level of group nirvana has been some of the league of legends of all time that I've ever seen. [00:04:33] Speaker A: Okay. [00:04:34] Speaker C: And I boil it back. [00:04:36] Speaker A: Legends. Like, what would it be? Would it be like, if Immortals and Disguised and Dig. [00:04:41] Speaker B: This would be like. This would be like, if AMI won, like, an LCS split. [00:04:48] Speaker C: I think you would get good games between Disguise, Dignitas and Shopify versus lgd. You know, lgd. The, like, omg. [00:05:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:00] Speaker C: Ultra Prime. Like, I think it would be, like, good games. Like, there'd be good games. [00:05:05] Speaker B: Really? [00:05:05] Speaker C: Because they. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. [00:05:08] Speaker A: Whether we could win or not. You still think that there. There would be a competition going on? [00:05:12] Speaker C: I think it would be a competition. I would actually favor the NA teams. [00:05:15] Speaker B: But I think you're crazy. [00:05:18] Speaker A: Okay. All right. Well, either way, that's exciting to see. We'll keep our eyes peeled on which teams end their year early. Again, crazy format over in the lpl. We don't have an LCK update or an LTA south update for this week because we don't have a Bickle or rmc. Joining us. So it'll just be the LPL update for this time, but we also have one other bit of global news to cover, and that is surprisingly. This is an official statement from Mr. John Riot, signed and delivered to all inboxes for anybody with a Riot account that Europe hates alcoholics. It's confirmed by Mort Dog. I think it was Mort Dog. Oh, no, no, no. He's on tft. Who's the. Who's the league guy? The Gragas ability name fiasco The. The. The Drunken Rage Gate, as we're calling it on socials and in news outlets around the world. I'm not going to lie, I actually don't know much about this story. I'm just trying to build it up for the hype, do we? [00:06:17] Speaker B: This was. [00:06:17] Speaker A: This was. [00:06:18] Speaker B: This was a meddler, by the way. This was meddler, by the way. [00:06:22] Speaker A: Meddler. There we go. Metal. Yeah. Yeah. [00:06:24] Speaker B: So they were able to go lighter on the adjustments while still being compliant in the eu. They do need to update the ability description to remove drunkenly empowered and adjust guzzles down brew. They also need to tweak his client bio. However, Drunken Rage will be sticking around. [00:06:44] Speaker A: Hell yeah. As a play by playcaster, all three of us are actually playable play casters. I. I hate it when they change ability names, especially from iconic ones. And I'm like, no, now I have to learn something different. Like change how the brain. [00:06:57] Speaker B: I still don't know which one is. [00:06:58] Speaker C: Twitch's ultimate ability, though. I'm not gonna lie. [00:07:01] Speaker A: Hey, I love shouting it. I mean, I don't think I've ever shouted in my life, but I theoretically, theoretically love shouting ability. [00:07:08] Speaker C: But I get what you mean. I get what you mean. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It is one of the less impactful or at least like visually, right? It's. It's explosive cask, it's, you know, body slam, stuff like that. But Drunken Rage is still one of them and happy to have the name sticking around. It is funny though. The Europe has a lot of those rules and they're having to tweak some of the description. But you can always trust us to be your investigative journalist and keep our ears close to the story. That's it that we have for global news for right now though. If we missed anything, as always, let us know in the community. Discord, you can find a link in the description wherever you are listening along. And also speaking of the community, shout out to members of the community for fantasy. We have our updated standings after week three of lta and it is I, you Know, I. I did not think this was going to happen. This is my first time ever. I'm leading the pack, baby. Caster logic gaming in first place in the community. I have 311.79 points. But shout out to Pacific and Light team who are both right on my heels within like five point striking distance. So it's close at the top right now. But currently, hey, I'll take it. We'll see if I can maintain though because I am historically bad at drafting good fantasy teams. [00:08:21] Speaker B: You got this, bro. [00:08:23] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you. The all league leader across all of LTA is still the same person from last week. I don't know. I'm butchering this name every time. Panchinha, Liga Das lend us something like that with 900 or 395 points. 900 would be crazy. 395 points. So I'm like 84 off of that person. That gamer's crazy. But shout out to everybody who participates in fantasy as well as supports the podcast, whether through the Patreon or the shop. Links to those are also down in the description. But with that said, let's hop into the leagues of legends themselves. Kicking things off here in LTA North. Starting off with the super weak Mazel. How many days of games did we have? [00:09:08] Speaker C: I count three of them and one of them was a Monday for some reason. [00:09:13] Speaker A: That's super. The Monday decision. I actually have some insight into that. I don't think, like it really would be a problem for me sharing this. Basically it's double reason. Number one is that LEC is on Monday. So obviously we want to get the the raids from the LEC channel as well. So that's like the number one. Number two is it's way easier to advertise if we have a super week happening. It's easier to say on Saturday and Sunday, hey, stick around on Monday because we have games. Then if we're trying to say, hey, next week on Friday we have games. Like, it's just. It's way easier to tell people during that weekend that there's going to be games on Monday. So the scheduling wise, it just kind of made more sense, I guess. And from the analytics side, whether it's a Monday or Friday, games in past splits, it didn't affect viewership. It was basically the same just because it's a weekday. So. But it was a super week. We had the end of the positioning phase, hence the title of this week's episode. And we now have our teams in their best of one position order. Mazel Give us The rundown, first place through eighth place. What are things looking like? [00:10:21] Speaker C: All right, we got two setups here. It's going to be very close because it technically is Cloud 9 in first just because I think they had the tiebreaker. Second place is FlyQuest. Third place is 100 Thieves. Fourth place, of course is Team Liquid Classic because the horse, of course, lion is fifth. And we have Shopify Rebellion at six, Dignitas at seventh and Disguised at eighth. [00:10:50] Speaker A: And okay, you know, I'm gonna look down here. Look at. Let's look at my power end of stage. Oh, this is end of stage one predictions. Oh, we didn't really do stage two predictions, did we? In my head, this was close to my power rankings. I had 100 thieves in first. I was not correct about that. They did drop a couple of games. It's still five and two. Not too bad, all things considered. They're the only team to take a game off C9. But then Lion, I think, was the big storyline that stepped up. Weren't able to maintain that momentum against the top four teams. That was a big story we were keeping track of on the broadcast side was the line of top four versus bottom four. Only a single team managed to cross that line. Of the bottom four teams beating the top four team, let me tell you, it is not the one any of us expected it to be. Yanni, which team was actually able to take out a game off of one of the top four teams? [00:11:42] Speaker B: Dude, it was absolutely ridiculous to say that the boys over at Disguised, Scarlet Gerald got the job done and took it. Team Liquid, my favorite team. Embarrassing. [00:12:02] Speaker A: A little embarrassing. That was cinema. To end the split, the literally nothing on the line, the both of these teams were locked into their groups no matter what happened here. And of course, that's the one that Disguised is able to win. Crazy. We'll talk about a lot of that as we get into it. But to update everybody, we are now moving on to the group stage. So the LTA north and south is the same format for both sides of the conference. It was three weeks of single round robin, best of one, and then we position the teams and then seed into two different groups. So the groups are. [00:12:36] Speaker C: Assume the position. [00:12:37] Speaker A: Assume the position. In group A, it is Cloud 9, Team Liquid lion and Disguised who made things very interesting. This would have been probably a pretty dud group. Like, oh, you just assume that we already know who's making it out and Disguised is not. But they just beat tl, so who knows what could happen in that group. Now that one I think Has a lot of variants. And then group B has Fly Quest, Hundred Thieves, Shopify Rebellion and Dignitas. This one. I also think there's three teams I think could easily be the one there. Maybe not easily, but three teams in the conversation that could get knocked out here. Because a reminder, the top three from each group will go into playoffs and the bottom team will have their season end after these next four weeks here. So that's gonna be next week's conversation or at least the end of this as we get into predictions. But let's talk about what happened at the end of the positioning phase here. Yanni, kick us off. Start off with Cloud9 in first place. How did their weekend look? [00:13:40] Speaker B: You know what? Cloud9 had the best weekend out of any team. Cloud9 went 30 this weekend with wins over Team Liquid, a win over lion, and a win over Fly Quest. That was on Sunday. So going 3 0, supercharging yourself into 6 1, getting that first place spot, beating three quality teams. I'm willing to call Lion a quality team because they had a really solid game against Team Liquid when they played like they are the bar. So it's like, okay, you know, they're fine. You can, you can count them as a fine team. So these are three very quality wins. [00:14:14] Speaker A: And it was the, I would argue the hardest strength of schedule remaining out. Probably lion themselves because lion had to play C9 and then fly quest. And why did I have 100 Thieves? 100 Thieves. There we go. Okay. For some reason I just reading their schedule wrong, but that's a tough schedule for lion as well. But it was basically those two that had the hardest ones. C9 passed with flying colors and are on a six game win streak. They lost 100 Thieves and they have not lost a game since. That is of course best of one. So now when we transition to best of threes, we'll see if that changes. But it was a hell of a weekend, man. I think like, I think Blabber won player of the week on C9, but Vulcan had maybe the best performance I've seen out of him since the EG days. Like Mizell, I don't know if you have like strong thoughts on C9, but I really do think that they are definitively the best team that we have in na. Right. [00:15:10] Speaker C: I think they're looking pretty good. I think Sven and Vulcan had a really, really good weekend. And I think that's going to make that feel a lot better for sure. Because I think that's one of the question marks on the team Is like how good can they be in the 2v2? But I think their 2v2 looked really good this weekend. I still would put them in like a contentious top two, but I definitely think they're one of the better performing teams right now. [00:15:34] Speaker A: I think that they are showing us that they are adaptable in game. The question is going to be how adaptable are they in draft? Because out of the top teams, I think I. I don't know exactly what the numbers are, but we were looking at it on the broadcast side. We'll dive more into it next weekend on broadcast. But like just number of champs played, number of different compositions. C9 out of the top teams has played one of the smaller champion pools. Overall, we'll see if that's a weakness going into best ofs with fearless drafting because that's. That's the big thing with fearless drafter, right? Like the larger your champ pool, the more styles of compositions you can play, the better you're gonna look and the better your success will be. But if C9 can do that, then they're looking solid. The other team nipping at their heels, tied with them in game score, but they just lost to them this past weekend is FlyQuest. Now. FlyQuest was very bold. I don't know if anybody caught this narrative, but Masu actually early on in the split said on Busio's life, we're going undefeated. And I guess they had to kill Bucio because on stage on. On Monday they had somebody named Tucio taking his seat. He looks very similar. He plays similar as well. I think they're lucky in that regard. But it's going to be tough without their original support. [00:16:50] Speaker C: Guys. Rip King. [00:16:51] Speaker B: I don't. I don't think they needed to kill busio. I think Cloud9 did enough of the killing of Busio that game. [00:16:56] Speaker A: Oh, okay. That. That's the big marquee matchup that we can talk about, right? Out of all of the games in LTA either last weekend or even, let's be honest, all freaking split, C9 versus fly quest was incredible. Very entertaining game. And Busio did kind of feel like one of the weak links for FlyQuest overall. Like flag Quest didn't have a lot of kills throughout, but they were at least competitive. But then Busio going for a ambitious engage onto Sven, who's on Ezreal. Boosie was on the Nautilus. That was kind of what sealed the deal in the mid lane, if you remember. Like he goes for the hooks. Ven's able to buffer it, then boost Was in a rough spot. Yes. They trade onto Thanatos who plays it kind of silly, but then like Loki and Vulcan are able to turn it back around and kind of pop off. So yeah, I, I, I think the flag was are still looking like a top competitor. One of the teams that can challenge C9 for sure. But that game in particular, we saw potentially some of the weaknesses where when Bwipo is facing a top laner that he cannot just body with a counter pick. FlyQuest do not have the same type of fire that they did against everybody else. I legitimately think that's like their best move is red side counterpick for Bwipo. Thanatos is just better. He's just like, I think the best top laner in the league right now. And it's really hard to put this guy behind. [00:18:29] Speaker C: I'll just say he also has a really great personality. [00:18:32] Speaker A: Thanatos. [00:18:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, it's really funny. [00:18:37] Speaker A: Feel so bad that it was I believe actually I think. Okay. And now I'm about to misquote. I don't remember if it was Thanatos or if it was Loki. I think it was Loki that tweeted out that we had like a stat thing for him on broadcast that showed photos of Thanatos on it. It was like, oh no. So that's something that we're gonna have to clean up on broadcast when we're building our assets, because that's not good. But bless Thanatos for still being a fun personality. Regardless. Next up, hundred thieves sitting five and two. Mazel. Are they frauds? [00:19:21] Speaker C: Well, at least they get a little bit of momentum taking out the weaker teams going into into the next stage. You know that that's always good. I mean, they went 30 this weekend. It was against Dig lion, which is a little bit better. And, and then in the end it was Shopify Rebellion. I still think this team has a lot of growing to do, but I'm glad we got these, this kind of version of them to finish out the the placements because I think they will be a better team in best of. [00:19:52] Speaker A: I actually have a lot of faith for them there too. I'm happy you agree with that because a lot of people I'm hearing are like, once we get to best of threes, they're gonna look worse. That's the exact same thing that we've said about dodger thieves for like a year now. I actually think they have been leveling up their champool quite a lot. The concern was how behind they were against Dignitas. That's what a lot of people are pointing to of FBI. Ayla got kind of bodied. [00:20:17] Speaker C: Dub, baby. [00:20:18] Speaker A: Yeah, Dubs a dub. But FBI and Ayla did get bodied by Tomo Isles in the laning phase. Quid had a really rough laning phase and then insane comeback in the mid game. Like literally game saving fights back to back. But the fact that it had to be comeback wins in those team fights when they were down like a couple thousand gold meant that there's more questions around 100 Thieves and how their early game goes. But it seems like the reverse curse. Around the 20 minute mark, whenever they're ahead, they throw. But now they were behind at 20 minutes, so they got digged to throw. Either way, 20 minutes is a very fun time when you're watching. It's a blast. Up in fourth place, Yanni, we got Team Liquid. What are your thoughts on how their weekend went? [00:21:04] Speaker B: Bro, this team frustrates me to no end, man. Yeah, I can't stand it. They just. I don't even care about the disguise loss. Right? Like, I really don't because. [00:21:14] Speaker A: You don't? [00:21:14] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. You know, they weren't really playing for anything in that. In that one, sure. But it's. This is no longer a top team and it's. It's really tough to come to grips with that. And, you know, it's like, I don't know. I. I don't know what needs to change. I think. [00:21:35] Speaker A: I know. [00:21:36] Speaker B: I think it just needs to be Umpty. All right. I mean, I feel bad to say it. [00:21:41] Speaker A: I. I legitimately think Umpty has stepped up more this split. He's still not playing clean. He's still making a lot of mistakes. But I think the eyes are now more on Impact. Dude, like, Impact play has been rough to watch. Impact. What are you doing? Impact. What are you doing? Walking into a brush with a control ward in it. [00:22:05] Speaker B: I don't understand. [00:22:07] Speaker A: When your team is not ready to approach the Baron and you're just getting picked off and like, what are you doing losing that hard in lane to freaking Castle. Team Liquid were like slower on the rotations than disguised, which is just not what we expected. This is the team that we think of as like, oh, they play the map. Even if they're not able to teamfight better than other teams, they play the map better than other teams. That was not the case this weekend. Shot Fire Rebellion's the only win they got and they were kind of rattled by some. Rattled by disguised. Yeah. So I think Impact really Needs to clean up his play because he had been the for them in the lane swap meta. They have not figured out how they want to play in this post Lane swap meta. They're still trying to get just Thunder Talk. They're. I don't know what Thunder talk does. Is it similar? [00:22:58] Speaker B: Mozzelle knows. They're just under talk gaming, aren't they? Miselle. [00:23:02] Speaker A: Okay, this is my description of tl. Tell me if that's the same as Thunder talk. Their mid laner is. Has a slow early game so then gets bored and just perma pushes side lanes and then gets caught three times every sing game. Does that happen? [00:23:18] Speaker C: Sounds about right. [00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Okay. Because that's unfortunate what Apa is doing right now. And I gotta say I. I feel his frustration because he's like the only one at like an even gold state going into the mid game and then he's like trying to play greedy to get more advantage for himself and then he gets punished for it. So then he looks bad. But the rest of the team's already falling apart at that point. So yeah, Team Liquid, they'll have to clean things up as they're getting into that group stage because again, with Cloud 9 a lion in disguise. They just lost disguised. Lion's been nipping on the heels of the top four teams all split. There's a legitimate concern that if Team Liquid cannot turn things around, they might not make playoffs. I know that's a low chance. It's a low chance they should make playoffs, but there is a world, There is a world where they don't. That would be crazy. The defending champions, by the way. But that brings us to Lion. Oh my God, man, I wanted to believe so much. I said, I just said they've been nipping at the heels. Unfortunately, they have not landed any bites. They only beat the three teams below them in the standings. They had a couple of arguably competitive games against the top four teams, some that weren't as competitive. And as a team, it really does feel like they're still trying to figure out what compositions work for them. And I think that they are one of the teams that I'm actually most concerned for going into the best of three Fearless, because Saint and Henna are their best two players, but they've mostly been playing things like Varus and Rise and then sometimes Azir. But I'm not convinced by Satan's Azir. If Hannah's not on Varus, the team seems like the team does not, you know, function nearly as well when he's not able to like, find these random alts in the middle of a team fight onto the carry, and then just blow people up to, like, set up the team because Lion's the support while he has good engages. Target selection in team fight engages can sometimes be not, like, optimized, so I don't know how much damage they can do there. They're in that group of team liquid and disguised, so hopefully they're able to make it out. I feel like that one is kind of a shakeup, but everyone's gonna get throttled by C9 in that group. I don't think anyone's taking games off of them. [00:25:26] Speaker C: I know maybe this is not the time to talk about this, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Cool. I don't know, man. I just find it interesting that so many of the team's narratives are based off import now. And I feel like we just came off of a season and a year where, like, yes, there were some important narratives, which was really cool, but we had a lot of homegrown narratives and stuff like that in lta, and I feel like the primary carries for, like, all the major teams are majorly imports. And I find it really interesting we've gone back to that setup as na. [00:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, think about it. We had, what, four new Korean challenger mids. [00:26:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Mm. [00:26:09] Speaker A: Well, I guess Kaney doesn't have his. [00:26:10] Speaker C: Challenger, and that's half the league. [00:26:12] Speaker A: That's half the league was imported Korean mids plus players. Well, I guess, like, lion as a team is a little different because, like, Audi and Lions are not North American players. But still, they're loa. [00:26:22] Speaker B: All imports. How dare they. [00:26:24] Speaker A: Right. And then, like, even SEOs, too, like, Brazilian player, so, like, doesn't really take up the same import slot, but still technically not like an NA player. [00:26:34] Speaker C: There's interesting. [00:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah. For eight teams remaining, there was a lot of imports coming in this split, and it. It does add a challenge to, like, building the narratives around the teams. But again, I mean, we. We're. We can tell the stories at least are the. The players that are. Are doing well as imports because players like Saints and Hannah are popping off. I even think Kaney's, like, doing pretty well over at Dignitas in some of his games, so. [00:27:01] Speaker C: Hell yeah. [00:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Also, it's great when players like Saint actually have really good English, so we've been able to interview him a couple times and get to know him more, which is really cool. So, yeah, that's. That's Lion. We've talked about some of the other teams, but let's briefly cover them here. Yanni, give me the Shopify Rebellion quick spark notes of how the weekend look and what expectations going into the group stage. [00:27:26] Speaker B: Yeah, the Shopify Rebellion week not so hot. Admittedly losing to 100 Thieves, losing to TL got the dub over Disguised expectations are. Because Disguised is not in their group. You know there, there's. The only potential close game is going to be against Dignitas. I do not think Shopify Rebellion could take a game off 100 Thieves or Fly Quest or a match for that matter. And expectations for stop by Rebellion. You better hope that Fudge, Contracts, Palafox all start playing at their absolute peak levels. But unfortunately that was a long, long time ago. [00:28:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that Contracts is the one that's really shining so far. Contracts and SEOs have been like pretty much of the same brain this split. They go for the same plays, they try and make action happen. The weakness of Shopify Rebellion is that they will make bad plays happen. They will way over engage and like dive between turrets and like go for these super aggressive engages onto like Alistairs that are warding up in the river before Dragons. It's like well the whole team's behind him and you just use all your engage on the supports like now you're just gonna lose the fight stuff like that. [00:28:44] Speaker B: Everybody fight. [00:28:45] Speaker A: They didn't like they literally. Yeah, they. They didn't hear no bell. All right. They keep going and they have also it's. It's a funny stat here. So lion is in fifth place. They've only beaten the three teams below them. Shopify were in sixth place. They only beat the two teams below them. Guess what? Dignitas is in seventh place. Only beat the one team below them. [00:29:08] Speaker C: Nice. [00:29:09] Speaker A: Very interesting how that works out here. And then Disguise, they had a surprise random upset versus Team Liquid. So like that one's kind of crazy, but holding the head to head. So technically holding the league up. [00:29:20] Speaker B: This league actually runs through disguised. [00:29:23] Speaker A: It actually does, yeah. Yeah, look at that. I think Dignitas and Disguise very similar opinion on both of them. They are both scrappy teams that are cleaning up and I think improving very obviously over the split. Like both of these teams, their last games that they showed us, their last two games that they showed us, maybe these guys did kind of get destroyed by dig, but even digs Fly Quest. [00:29:49] Speaker B: Are you telling me they got digged down? [00:29:51] Speaker A: They got digged down but they're both their last games. You compare those to their first games of the split night and day. You know I actually do Think that they're showing distinct improvement in how they play the map. Both of them were chickens with their head cuts on it. Cut. Chickens with their heads cut off. There we go. That's the plural word I was looking for in the. The beginning of the split. And now at least you see intention in their map. Move, movement. Then it's just cleaning up, you know, not getting picked as much and executing in team fights. But at least in terms of playing the map, much, much better. So there we go. That's the opinions of the teams from last weekend's games. Games to watch for me, C9 versus fly. I know Fly. By the end of the game it feels pretty one sided. But throughout the game it was actually a pretty complex and intricate balance of like objective play and focus and like map setup and then, you know, handshakes for certain things. I actually thought just from like a macro standpoint, it was a very satisfying game to watch. And then by the end, C9 just kind of came online. It's kind of blitzed through a couple of fights and won the game. Do either of you have games to watch though? Favorite ones you expect or recommend? Everyone check out Dig Hunter. [00:31:03] Speaker C: Thieves. [00:31:04] Speaker A: Yeah, Banger again Hunter. These had to do a big comeback. Well, not like huge comeback, but it was a comeback. Right? Like Dig had them on the road. [00:31:15] Speaker B: If you want, you could put yourself through 30 minutes of disguised versus dignitas. [00:31:21] Speaker A: Why? No, I'm not, I'm not. No, I, I disagree. [00:31:26] Speaker B: That's why I said it. No, it was bad. Kind of. There was no kinda. [00:31:33] Speaker A: It was seen Disguise versus TL after just seen Disguise versus Dig. Because it's like this is not the same team that we just saw yesterday. But I guess technically it was when. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Playing with house money. [00:31:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And even like in. In day one when freaking Abadaga use like rise Ults, they win a fight, they pick like two people and then you just rise ults into the rumble. It's like, what are you doing? All right, anyway, yeah, Abadaga breaks my brain sometimes. All right, that's our games to watch. And you know what? We'll throw Disguise and TL on there just because it's funny to watch TL lose sometimes. [00:32:09] Speaker C: True. [00:32:10] Speaker A: But let's bring our attention to this coming a week. We got four series. That's right. No more best of ones. It is now best of threes in the LTA north. And we got Saturday and Sunday games kicking things off. The first series of the group stage for split two is FlyQuest versus Hundred Thieves. We're all in agreement? FlyQuest 2. 1. I think they should be favorites coming into this. Yes, they dropped their game to Cloud 9, but they made quick work of 100 Thieves earlier in the split. And while I do think that, you know, Quid and River have the ability to get the advantage of quad and Inspired at least one game, once things like Nafiri and Xin Zhao are off the table, I think Inspired's champool just gets so much wackier and river will have trouble keeping up, so. And it's a similar thing with Bwipo, right? Like Bwipo's champool is just so hard for somebody like Sniper to consistently beat for two games in a best of three series. That's why I have it. Next up we got Team Liquid versus Lion. And again, we're all in agreement. Two one for Team Liquid. Mizell, why do you have Team Liquid taking this one? [00:33:15] Speaker C: Bounce back, baby. This team. This team ain't going to stay down for long. [00:33:21] Speaker A: Yeah, as. As bad as they look sometimes they still have the fundamentals of a team that can beat lion, right? Like I. Lion didn't show me enough to like give them the win here. And again, I think that in best of threes they could struggle. So. But that Saturday, Sunday we have two more series kicking things off. I think Gay day one has two arguably close series. I do not think the same for day two. Yeah, we got C9 versus DSG and we all have C920. Is there much to talk about here? [00:33:55] Speaker B: I guess the only thing to talk about is Cloud nine is going to win both of these games before like 29 minutes. [00:34:03] Speaker A: Okay, you know what? I actually agree. I. I fully agree. I think that they smash average game time. [00:34:09] Speaker B: Well, like, actually, I think a better question will disguise force a game to go to 30 minutes. [00:34:15] Speaker A: I think they could do that. [00:34:18] Speaker B: It's progress then. Not bad. [00:34:19] Speaker A: Average game time will still be under 30. There we go. [00:34:22] Speaker B: Do you happen to have the average game time on you right now? [00:34:25] Speaker A: I do not know. [00:34:26] Speaker B: Dude, what the hell you. [00:34:28] Speaker A: I'm not Leo. Leo. The stats, guys. He wasn't. He was actually busy tonight. I did ask. [00:34:33] Speaker B: You're supposed to know every single thing about the LLCs or the LTA. I'm sorry. [00:34:37] Speaker A: Okay, first off, I do know everything about lcs, but we changed the name. So now I don't know. And we're not going to test that theory. Next up though, we have Shopify versus Dignitas. This one is a little more interesting. Myself and Mazel actually believe in the boys in yellow Dignitas 121 Yanni has Shopify Rebellion 21 Yanni, why do you think Shopify take it? [00:35:00] Speaker B: I think it's because you guys have too much opium because you guys have casted the NACL and you believe Sturdy and Shaden to be better than fudge. And contracts. [00:35:10] Speaker A: 30 has unfortunately been like the worst. [00:35:13] Speaker B: I have been very, very, very sad about that too. [00:35:19] Speaker A: Fudge has had a rough split too. Licorice sometimes has a rough split and despite all yeah, God damn. [00:35:26] Speaker B: And it's tough because like he's coming with all this fanfare and then it's like, yep, well you know, like Solo Q isn't competitive but he looked pretty good in competitive and not only that but like dude's like one of the nicest people I've ever met. Like he's just a really nice dude. So I, I really, really feel for him. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Yeah, he is I think champ pool wise he played Scion, I think that's a huge shift in what he wants to do. But he's playing more to the team and they did actually look pre good with that Scion pick. So maybe they'll, they'll try different things and look better in that regard. That's partly why I have them taking it because I actually think that improvement wise Shopify Rebellion look like they have basically stayed the same if not gotten a little worse throughout the split. Whereas Dignitas I think have been improving at a pretty steady rate. And the fact that Tomo Isles smashed the bot lane of FBI and Ayla makes me think that I, I actually see a world where SEOs because of how much he leaves bvoy alone in lane and just links up with contracts. That BV boy could actually be in some trouble here because Isles does not roam nearly as much and will dive turrets and just like kill you or at least set up Tomo to kill you. So I think that through the bot lane Dignitas can actually take it. There we go. That's our thoughts on LTA north, our predictions for next week as well as how we thought last week's games went. If you agree, if you disagree, disagree. If you have your own thoughts, throw them in the community Discord link in the description wherever you are listening. But for now it's time to hop across the pond. We had LEC games also happening this past weekend. Concurrently they got super weeks every week. So it's less exciting to say that there are Monday games but we now have only two series on Saturdays. So there we go. Actually less games to Cover making our jobs easier. Kicking things off on Saturday, we had Fnatic, Rogue and I don't know why I started off with that. We're not going to go through the whole schedule. We're going to start from the top of the standing and then work our way down Standings. Go. Casey in first still at 5 and 1 and Fnatic now in second place because G2 actually dropped a game, dropping a 3 and 1. Those are still the top three teams. Each of them only dropping a single game. And then there's a bit of a gap before you get to BDS team Heretics at three and three a piece. Movie star Koi SK Vitality, Rogue and Giant X. Yanni had KC's weekend look here as still technically the number one team in Europe. [00:37:56] Speaker B: Yeah, they, they did knock off Giant X, but the Giant X didn't make it easy on them. Right. I mean in the first game, Giant X had a really, really good start, but at 26 minutes Rough Dragon fight that did not go their way. Yoik went crazy in that fight. Staying alive in a 3v1 for enough time for the rest of the team to get there. And then again, like Giant X in Game 2 hung around a little bit. That took a bad fight at Oticon after they. After June got picked. And then it became a game of who could throw harder after that. And Carmine Core actually threw game two and I actually found themselves into game three. And then, you know, after Noah went ham in game two, Khalees just turned it on in game three and absolutely ran over Giant X. But Casey not looking infallible after that. [00:38:43] Speaker A: Series and the one that they lost, I mean that was like what, 9000 gold lead that they threw. [00:38:50] Speaker B: That would have been unthrowable bad. [00:38:52] Speaker A: Like hey, there's a very funny quote. We actually caught this me and the other lta casters because we watch Lec before like, like we'll do our morning meeting then we'll have like a basically hour break before our broadcast goes live. So we'll just like throw on Lec. And that game was on and I forget which caster it was, but Kalist when he does the play bot side where he solo Kaisa ults in onto the azir and then just gets giga out played, loses his ga and then dies immediately after baits his entire team into die as well. I for again don't remember the cast but they say, you know, sometimes as Kaisa you just end up in the middle of the enemy team. [00:39:31] Speaker B: Yep. [00:39:32] Speaker A: Contractually we cannot flame Kalist. Nobody can say what the was that Galiz? Instead you have to say sometimes you just end up. [00:39:39] Speaker B: I mean that's true. Mazel. I. I know that you. You've at least played some kind Isaac because you're an ad carry player. Yeah. [00:39:46] Speaker A: How often do you just end up in the middle of the enemy team? [00:39:48] Speaker C: Yeah, all the time. It happens all the time. [00:39:52] Speaker B: You know now, now if I do that I get flamed by my friends. [00:39:56] Speaker A: Yeah. But we can't flame Kalist because the entire nation of France will go to war against you. [00:40:01] Speaker B: This is true. [00:40:03] Speaker A: And I think that that's just not worth it. [00:40:05] Speaker B: We. [00:40:05] Speaker A: We need to keep global stability here. So you know, sometimes you just end. [00:40:10] Speaker B: Up the sake of global stability. Kaiser ended up in the middle of the team. [00:40:14] Speaker A: Exactly. But Casey still maintained their spot at the top. Regardless, their strength of schedules looking I think doable. They have Rogan vitality. Should be easy wins. They still have to face G2 though. That's going to be the big test for them which I think closes out the split with the road shows we're going to have by the way, road shows this coming weekend which I think is really cool. I forget which stadium we're going into. I'll look that up while we're talking about some of the other teams here real real quick. [00:40:40] Speaker B: Just a little point about Carmine core. They've dropped five individual games. They have a 69 nice percent win rate with when you go to individual games which is just above G2 after G2 lost this weekend. But 11 and 5 after going being 5 in one of those years. I mean they've dropped a game to Koi. Movie star Koi. They dropped obviously game to Fnatic. Nothing too to be ashamed about that. But then you drop one to team Heretics like I don't know, it's a little saucy. [00:41:18] Speaker A: It is looking a little rough for consistency. But the fact that they are still getting across the finish line very helpful for their standings because all they need to do is get, you know, top two finish to have a really good spot in going into playoffs. And I think again looking at the strength of schedule, even if they drop to G2 and lose that first seed, they're still in a pretty good spot. So unless there's an upset with Vitality or again, I think it was. Was it bds. Let me check again one more time. Rogue Rogan, Vitality, Leakpedia might be wrong. [00:41:51] Speaker B: I'm doing math here. They played six series and they've two zeroed three of them. Right. [00:42:00] Speaker A: I don't know offhand, I'm not quite remembering. I. I know that they have dropped. [00:42:04] Speaker B: Two of them and they've two one to the rest of them. Now if you two run. If you two one four series. Oh, wait, no, they lost it. They lost the game. I'm stupid. [00:42:14] Speaker A: Yeah, they lost the series so that. [00:42:16] Speaker B: They lost the series. They lost the series to Fanatic. I'm sorry. Don't ever have casters do math. [00:42:21] Speaker A: Like, especially play by plays. One cast, right? [00:42:24] Speaker B: Yes. [00:42:25] Speaker A: Azale, that guy's fast at it. [00:42:26] Speaker B: But dude, I'm like staring at Fnatic in Casey and I'm like, yeah, they dropped the game to Fnatic. I'm like, yeah, they dropped the second game to Fnatic too. [00:42:34] Speaker A: Well, let's talk about it then. How'd Fanatics Weekend look? Because that one's pretty quick. That one. That one was. [00:42:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:40] Speaker A: So give me the lowdown their. Their Swift 2. 0. [00:42:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So if I get some of game one, it's that it's really hard to win when the enemy team, Callista gets two kills, like within the first couple minutes. The good news is Rogue, like, you know, was not totally out by second grubs and then they lost the second grub fight and then they were totally out. [00:43:03] Speaker A: Yep. It was kind of bizarre. [00:43:07] Speaker B: It was. I haven't seen. I haven't really seen a match that was actually that bad in a long time. Like, that was like. Like really one sided. [00:43:17] Speaker C: Damn. [00:43:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Fnatic has done that though. I think weirdly enough, out of the teams in Europe, I feel that they have had the most consistent smashes. Oh, yes. The teams below them in the standings, maybe they're just the pub stompers. They're the. They're noob destroyers of the lec. [00:43:34] Speaker B: Yeah, they haven't really been tested. You know, they. They beat Gian X to be sk. Obviously. They beat Carmine Core. [00:43:41] Speaker A: Well, they lost. [00:43:42] Speaker B: So they lost sk. They lost. [00:43:43] Speaker A: Yeah. The SK was the weird one at the start of the split that was like, maybe that was an anomaly just because SK had that weird, like, spiritual power up they got from their roster switch, Ange. [00:43:55] Speaker B: Then they beat Vitality and then Rogue. So it's like they've played the four teams that are currently at the bottom of the standings and then the one team at the top of the standings. [00:44:03] Speaker A: I think Fnatic are looking like the real deal at this point. I still hear people saying they're frauds, but the fact that they are consistently beating the teams below them, that's what you need to do. And it does still feel like a top three team region right now. Fnatic could be that team that if G2 can take out KC and Fnatic keeps performing, those two will overtake KC and then Casey's in trouble. So Casey is kind of hoping that G2 or Fnatic drop games to other teams here to make sure that they can still get that, you know, top two spot going into playoffs. But yeah, we'll. We'll see what happens. Although I suppose the, the more important thing is that you avoid the fourth six or sorry, fifth, fifth, sixth seed. Because then you're in the. The lower bracket. But yeah, it'll be tough. Yeah, yeah, I guess second and third is basically the same overall. So now that I think about it, unless like BDS surges or something, then if you're not first seed, you're basically the same. But whatever. If you're not first, you're last poma in there. Well that brings us to G2, which. Oh my goodness, what the hell happened? G2. This was two winnable games that somehow turned into losses for him. I gotta say, I love Skuman's Dr. Mundo jungle. That was very fun to watch. Broken Blade on the Yasuo as well. Fun for like the first, you know, 10 minutes. And then after that, you know, the team fights got a little wonky. And then again like that second game too. I just, I. I hate to really point the finger, but everyone's doing their job except for specifically Labrov and occasionally Skewmon just has these intact games and when your support is going for like the insane engages that he's going for. Yeah, you're gonna get punished. And Nuke and Ice are absolutely carries that are good enough that they can, if you give them a lead, run away with games. So exactly what happened. Yeah, that, that's legitimately what happened. Caps got out mid lanes twice even though he was kind of able to bring it back in that second game and you know, do more damage on the way. And Hansama I think was trying his best in that game one, but you're playing Kaiser into Zig so like it's gonna be tough to pull anything off when you don't really have like a big setup. And Lebrov's just again inting his so. [00:46:24] Speaker B: And their macro too, their macro too was not great. They had that really weird split call at the 40 minute mark where like they, they pushed down the bottom inhibitor and then they had the fight near the dragon with like three members near the Dragon and two members at the inhibitor and they lost both fights. And that's. That's just how they lost the game. They lost the 2v2 and they lost the 3v3. And it's like, that was kind of embarrassing. And then they, they traded. They. They took Baron and traded away the Elder and the other. I mean, like, I don't know, I feel like when you're getting pushed in, it's kind of hard because, like, you don't want to give them the Baron because now you're dealing with Baron super minions in your base. But at the same time, like, Elder is just so oppressively powerful. They legitimately put Elder in the game to prevent games from going long. Like, I think that is almost always the stronger objective, personally. [00:47:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it did feel like G2 were rattled. They. I, I don't. I honestly don't think they expected this much competition from bds because, like, it didn't seem like they were respecting them in game one. [00:47:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:32] Speaker A: And then by the time game two happened, they were like, okay, now we gotta like, figure out how to close out and just were not able to do that. So close the door. Random loss. Sorry, what? [00:47:42] Speaker B: They closed the door on their toe. [00:47:44] Speaker A: Yeah, Exam Stubbed it real good. Random loss for G2. A tough loss for G2. Both pretty long games, all things considered. So they at least know how to kind of survive. But we're not able to get that perfect split. They were the last team undefeated, and if anybody had taken bets, I don't think it would have been BDS that you would have beating them. But now BDS are looking like. Like maybe we gotta put more respect on their name. You never know. Speaking of, we do have BDS up next. So, Yanni, talk to me about BDS's weekend. [00:48:18] Speaker B: Yeah, they 2 OG too. There's not much more you can say about that. That's great. That puts them at three and three. [00:48:24] Speaker A: Wow. That really was their only match, wasn't it? [00:48:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:26] Speaker C: Incredible. [00:48:27] Speaker B: With. You know, and now taking a look, you know, they. They've gotten through a difficult part of their schedule. They've. They've ticked the box of playing against kc. Obviously they lost. You've now ticked the box playing against G2. [00:48:41] Speaker A: Wow. So you have Giant X. Vitality up. [00:48:45] Speaker B: They have Vitality G2. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. They've. Yeah, they have Vitality, Fanatic Giant and Giant X. So you could reasonably go 2:1 overall here and kind of propel yourself into that fourth spot because you're fending Off Team Heretics, who's also at 3 and 3 and also 7 and 7. And I don't necessarily think Vitality or Giant X will be able to knock him off. I know, I know. Mazzella said. Team Vitality of the moon. [00:49:19] Speaker C: Yeah. From here on out, baby. [00:49:22] Speaker A: Why are you such a big fan? [00:49:25] Speaker C: You know, might be because they. They, they, they, they maybe they maybe they maybe put down our boy Jojo this weekend, you know? [00:49:33] Speaker B: Yeah, they put him out. [00:49:34] Speaker A: The past year, your fandom of Jojo has now spilled over to my. [00:49:38] Speaker C: Well, well, exactly. Whoever kills Jojo gets my fandom. [00:49:42] Speaker B: When you lose a pet, you have to go get another pet. [00:49:45] Speaker A: True. [00:49:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:49:46] Speaker B: Unfortunately, they, you know, sorry, Mizell. Jojo had to go to the. To the. To the big dog pound. You had to go to the farm. [00:49:53] Speaker C: Big dog in the sky. [00:49:54] Speaker B: You have to go to the farm. [00:49:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's talk about Team Heretics quick. And then we can talk about how JoJo got laid to pasture, because that was pretty toug. But Team Heretics, their weekend looked like one singular series against Vitality, and it was a win. A win's a win, baby. 2, 0. I actually thought that they would have a little more difficulty with this. I had it being a 2:1 series, but they did have difficulty, bro. They did not have difficulty. They had, like, one slight stumble in around the mid game versus Vitality in game one, but then we're able to bring it right on back. And then by the time game two rolled around, yes, they again kind of gave over a bit of their lead. But then. Then despite Carlson still being kind of the weak link, I still think flacked and sho, like, sh. Especially, dude, this guy's really stepping up this split and finding a lot of, like, really clutch engages. But can we also talk about what the hell was out of Nivea? Top lane from neck Neko in game two? Like, you're playing in a Rumble, which I suppose you're just like, I'm just not going to interact with the Rumble. I don't. I don't know if I was convinced by it. [00:51:08] Speaker B: It was a little odd. Bro thinks he's Meerwin. Bro thinks he's Whippo. [00:51:14] Speaker A: Oh, we'll talk about Merwin later. Don't you worry. [00:51:18] Speaker B: Bro thinks he's the shy. I don't know, man. [00:51:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that was. That was a wild one. I don't think that was the reason they lost, necessarily, but it did just feel like their damage was a little inconsistent. Like, they were all pretty much, like, topside of Nivia. Is not known for burst damage. In my mind, it's especially now with this build. It's like the slow burn take people out in the team fights, but you're also trying to follow up on like a yone and you know, like a Skarner who's kind of hard, usually gonna go a little deep before he's able to drag people back towards you. So it's. It's hard to fully follow up on what some of the other comp or parts of their composition were trying to do. And yeah, again, flack, it just had some really clutch misfortune setups. So yeah, shout out to team Heretics for having a pretty, you know, solid performance overall outside of some shaky mid games. I still think that they are looking like a solid middle of the pack team. All right, Mazzella, it's time. Talk to me about your boy Jojo. [00:52:19] Speaker C: And movie the man. The man went 04 on Talia to start off the series. I. I don't think it was all on Jojo though. Obvious. I went through and like looked at some of the highlights and stuff and especially the way that the map just kind of broke down across the solo lanes felt really bad. And that happened kind of in both games. I think if anything, like not having any advantages, bot Lane can definitely affect that. But I think JoJo played really rough this time around, especially on the Talea. [00:52:54] Speaker A: Yeah, he had one cool play on the Ahri when he outset. [00:52:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I was going to say the Ahri looks like the Ari definitely looked better. But I think again, I just don't see the connection between him and Eliol working out as often as I feel like it should. And I think they're both very good players, but I think they just need to get on the same page. [00:53:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I gotta agree. I also think that Linkus had just an insane performance at this series, specifically Pantheon into the Naafiri and just crushed both of those. Anywhere he went. All of movie Starkoi was just falling apart. So JoJo was struggling in the mid lane, but Merwin also had a really tough series. I would actually say it was more on Merwin across both games than it was just JoJo. But when both your solo laners are struggling, I think I agree part of that's Elio not really being able to like stabilize them. But Merwin, when he isn't on his fun silly picks and he does play more standard. He played the gnar in game two and I play. It was Gwen. Yeah, Gwen, Game one one. Yeah, he just. He did not look great. And I. Maybe we just disrespected Knack Naco. Like maybe this guy actually is good. I did not. I was not convinced by him earlier in the split, but the more I see of his games, I'm like, you know what? I could get behind this guy because Jackson was solid. Yeah. Yeah. So there we go. We've talked about team vitality, we've talked about Coy. Now sk, this is one of the last teams that we haven't really mentioned here. Yanni, what do you think about SK and their one series against Rogue? [00:54:31] Speaker B: Well, the good news is they managed to weather the storm of Rogues cosplay of Fnatic where your Kalista gets a couple of kills early. A bunch of kills really. And Rogue could not win the game off that early power. SK drafted a really nice double AD carry composition in that first game that was, you know, really solid. Uh, that rumble too against like this team fighting composition that Rogue put together. It took a while, but, uh, you know, know they, they drafted pretty well there. And then in game two, you know, they're getting picks back and forth, back and forth, like competitive game. And then SK goes and takes out Aon and they lose mid tier one, mid tier two, top tier two. [00:55:15] Speaker A: That was an insane trade. And then they just waste the otacon diving. [00:55:20] Speaker B: Yes. Was that dude then, then, yeah, then Rogue just clean it up, get it pick, win the fight, win the game. Adam had a really good ambesa game. I thought he was quite impressive in that one. And then in game three, I mean, you could tell this was a team that was just defeated, man. They just. It was not close. I. I think the kill score was like six to nothing at one point really early on in the game. And Adam's got two kills on Aatrox, Larson's got two kills on Tristana, and Patrick's got two kills on Kaisa. Like another double 80 carry comp that you have. It's just legitimately impossible for them to Play. [00:55:55] Speaker A: Adam went 12, 0 and 6. [00:55:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that dude, that dude, he. He slapped something. Slapped something that I ain't willing to say on the podcast. [00:56:06] Speaker A: Yeah, JNX had he pulled out the Urgot in game two. And even the casters invokes the name of Bwipo. Like, hey, he's taking notes. He did all right early and then just kept getting popped later in the game because Urgot's not a true tank, not a true front line. And JX is playing it like it. Then he plays Jax and for some reason still thinks he's kind of a front line line. [00:56:24] Speaker B: Meanwhile, when I play against an ergot and he hits like level 14, he becomes unkillable. [00:56:29] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Crazy, I guess. Jan X giving hope to the balance team right there. We don't need to tweak him at all. He's fine. [00:56:34] Speaker B: No, please make him weaker. I hate this champ. [00:56:37] Speaker A: Rogue's just a weird team, man. [00:56:39] Speaker B: I. [00:56:39] Speaker A: It is impossible to predict if they're gonna win or lose a game. They are just all over the goddamn place and they actually have only two games left to play. This is how tough it is for them to actually try and make it into playoffs. They have both KC and Koi ahead of them. [00:56:59] Speaker B: Shouldn't be too tough to predict in week six, my friend. [00:57:02] Speaker A: But this win is saying there's. They're still around. You know, we still got to keep talking about them. There's a chance they could actually make it in. You never know. You never know. All right, but with that said, that's pretty much all the teams we've talked about. Rogue and their games. Giant X is the last team to talk talk about here, but we already kind of said it from the KC side. Yes, GX got the one. They were not able to get more than that and are still looking like the bottom of the barrel in lec. [00:57:29] Speaker B: It'll look that bad though, like, was that they actually really didn't look that bad in this series against Casey. [00:57:35] Speaker A: Okay, well, what are the bright lights for for GX then? [00:57:39] Speaker B: I mean, they're. They're doing a good job of like getting early picks, team fighting like these early objectives. But then like, as the game progresses is where they really tend to struggle. You know, I take a look at this game one where like June is just like a pop blossoming, like one person, like completely disconnected from his team. And you know, in fairness to them, the composition is pretty hard to play against. Like, Talia Wall can really split a team, especially if you're not as coordinated as like a top team. So like, you know, if they were a little bit better coordinated, they probably would have had a little bit better of a time. Maybe could have even won that first game. And then the second game was just kind of like game of throws. So like anybody, anybody could want. But like the fact that you're like in game of throws with Carmine Core means that like, yes, while they are making mistakes, you are eventually capitalizing on those mistakes. Right? I mean, you know, they. They had a really good composition with. With Jax and Azir year and like played for the Late game and scaled well. They kind of like understood the assignment there. And Kevin and Noah was well protected because of his Zaya game. [00:58:50] Speaker A: Considering it was the last place team versus the first place team. [00:58:53] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot closer. [00:58:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But their strength of schedule is still tough. They got G2, they got Koi, they got BDS, they got Team Heretics. All teams that are top half conversation right now, one and three. Yeah, they've already played Rogue, Vitality, sk, so it's looking tough. It's looking tough, but we'll see. They're still technically not out yet. [00:59:16] Speaker B: You know, if. And this is a warning to all the other LEC teams, you know, we expect them to go three the, you know the team's playing against them to go three and one in that stretch. But like you could absolutely lose a series to Giant X. Like it is. [00:59:30] Speaker A: I think Giant X more so than being in the playoff conversation is going to be that upset conversation. He absolutely. GX could be the reason that like, like a team like Heretics or BDS bombs out and, and like SK overtakes them or something like that. So yeah, that, that could be big series to watch though. I got SK versus Rogue. Game one. I think game one was very entertaining. The rest of the series less so. And then G2 versus BDS just because like how the hell did G2 manage to lose those games? That's a question that we're going to be studying for a while. What you got, Yanni? [01:00:01] Speaker B: I actually have. I got Casey versus Giant X. I actually think it was pretty good. [01:00:06] Speaker C: Good. [01:00:07] Speaker A: Okay. [01:00:07] Speaker B: Pretty entertaining series all throughout. That last game was, you know, a little bit of, a. Little bit of a tough one for them to play because they had to play against. They had to play against Victor and Kogmaw. So you're probably gonna lose a Game three at that point if you're not immediately doing crazy stuff. But then I'll agree with you in going in, going BDSG2 just for the shock factor. [01:00:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's always fun for that. So let's get our attention to next weekend's games. We have week four reminder. It is a road trip for lec. That means that on Saturday and Sunday we're not going to be at the LEC studio in Berlin. We're actually going to be hosted by movie star Koi at the Madrid arena only for those two days. And then I believe the other games are playing back at Berlin and only some of the teams are traveling to the Madrid Arena. So you'll see kind of Like a mini round robin almost here on Saturday. Sunday it kicks off with G2 versus G X. We all have G2 taking it. Mazzella actually has GX getting a game, but me and Yanni still think the G2 can clean it up. And then after that, we have mcoid versus Fnatic and we all agree Fnatic should take that one. I have McCoy getting at least a game, but Fnatic are looking like a team that is consistently taking out the game or the teams below them other than SK. They're the anomaly. Then on Sunday we got G2 versus Fnatic. L Classico. Me and Yanni both think G2. Mazel. I like it. Keep things spicy here. You got Fnatic. Any big reason for why you have that? Or do you just like to root for the boys in orange over the boys in black? [01:01:43] Speaker C: I don't know. I mean, I think G2 losing over this weekend like blocked a little bit. My confidence, I think. Be a question as if they can bounce back or like how they bounce back, I guess. [01:01:53] Speaker A: All right, fair enough. Next up on Sunday, to close out the Madrid arena segment, that's going to be MCOIL versus GX. So again, it's only G2, GX, MCO and Fnatic that are going to be playing on Saturday and Sunday. I think it's kind of cool they planned the schedule around that. If you're wondering why have G2 only played 4 series and Carmine Core have played 6 already? This is why G2 are getting saved for both road trips. They're going to be at both of those doubling up on each weekend. So they just kind of like back half way to G2 games and series. Yeah, I mean, obviously you're going to want G2 at the arenas because that's going to bring in fans and get engagement more. So MCO versus gx. We all have MCO taking that one. Still not enough faith in gx despite the fact that they were able to push kc. Then on Monday, we're back in Berlin studio with Team Heretics versus sk. We have Team Heretics across the board there. And the vitality versus BDS. Myself and Yanni have BDS, but Mizelle has now the. The JoJo fandom has transferred to Nisk. Support another ex NA mid laner and vitality for taking that series. So there we have it. That's our predictions for this coming week in lec. Let us know if you agree. Let us know if you disagree. Let us know your thoughts. You can let us know in the community Discord. Again, link in the description wherever you are listening along. But with that being said, that's it for this week's episode of League Rundown. Thanks for tuning in, everybody, and mazel. If everyone at home listening along if they enjoyed the podcast, what's the number of stars that they could leave us to to signify their enjoyment listening today? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. [01:03:42] Speaker C: Five. Five of them. [01:03:43] Speaker A: Oh, five. Okay, we stopped at five. Okay, five stars. Five star review, everybody, if you could. It helps us get noticed, helps us grow our audience as best as we can. Yanni, thanks for being on again. We might miss you next week. [01:03:57] Speaker B: We gotta talk NFL. [01:03:58] Speaker A: Hey, hopefully we got you back for more. Sorry, what was that? [01:04:00] Speaker B: We gotta talk. Na predictions. [01:04:02] Speaker A: We did do na predictions, did we not? [01:04:04] Speaker B: No. [01:04:06] Speaker A: Did we just skip? No, we. [01:04:08] Speaker B: Did we do them earlier? [01:04:11] Speaker A: I'm pretty sure we did. Okay, we got Fly Quest, Hunter, Thieves, C9 dig. [01:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we totally did. I'm crazy. I'm sorry. That was a long time ago. [01:04:23] Speaker A: It's okay. Nobody listens to the end of the episodes anyway. Nobody comments on the weird sound that we hear. [01:04:30] Speaker B: Oh, you know why? You know why? I forgot that was the part of the episode where my chair broke. [01:04:34] Speaker C: Nice. Nice. [01:04:36] Speaker A: You know what? You didn't have to admit that, but I. I appreciate the boldness of admitting this chair. [01:04:42] Speaker B: This chair's been. This chair has been messed up for, like, since I got it. I actually have my new. My new re. Chair coming in literally tomorrow. [01:04:48] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome. Awesome. Hopefully that works out for you. But a reminder, Yanni, this is an audio medium, so anything that happens visually again goes over the audience's heads. But if you want to get the play by play, feel free. [01:05:02] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, I heard. I heard a little. A little cracking noise and I was like, oh. And then I went to go lean my chair, I went to go lean my chair, my chair leaned a little too far and I was like, oh, it's not good. And then I muted myself and then I looked and I picked up my chair and I was like, like, what happened to the wheel? The wheel shot across the room. This is the. This is the. This is like the third wheel on this chair that is broken. Like, it's just a bad chair. So, like. So, like, here's what happened. Like, I'm a pretty big dude. Like, for reference, I am a pretty big dude. But this chair is rated to someone of my size. But the thing was so, you know, product placement incoming. I have a secret lab chair. Downstairs in my main setup, which works phenomenally. I love it. It's got the old LCS branding on it. Very nice chair. I got it recently. I started with this chair that I am sitting in right now because I didn't want to spend the money on a secret lab chair. So I went to Amazon, got like a 200 chair and then like within a week of me having it, I was like, I think I should have gotten like a secret lab chair or something like that because I've sat in them and I went to a friend's house and like I sat in his again and I was like, yeah, I made a big mistake. So I told myself I wasn't going to make that mistake again. [01:06:09] Speaker A: Okay, well, thank you for the play by play on that. That. What's the Aries chair though? Is that a faker themed one? [01:06:16] Speaker B: No, it's just a regular re themed one, I'm pretty sure. [01:06:18] Speaker A: Okay. [01:06:19] Speaker B: I wanted to get another LCS branded one, but they don't make them anymore. [01:06:23] Speaker A: Yeah, North, I don't think we make those either. [01:06:26] Speaker B: They do not make those. And the first stand chair is not out yet. [01:06:30] Speaker A: Ah, okay. Maybe an MSI one. We'll get something like that. But thank you for being on either way. Thank you everybody for listening along to our random hot take takes. But if there's any message that you actually take away from this episode, it's that we love you and we'll see you next time. [01:06:45] Speaker C: Bye bye. [01:06:47] Speaker B: See you. Oh yes. [01:06:49] Speaker A: Daddy even sticks around to hear that at the end of the episode. So we're fine. [01:06:53] Speaker B: Oh yes, Daddy.