League Rundown - Episode 607: League of Legends is SAVED!

[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. Oh my God. Stupid 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. The Nexus. Hello and welcome to episode 607 of the League Rundown. This is your 2026 spring split LEC week seven review and LCS week six review. And this episode is lovingly entitled League of Legends is Saved. I'm your host Kangas and I'm joined by two esteemed co hosts. Up first, fresh out of the can, we got Badger [00:01:29] Speaker B: something quippy in the beginning to say catchphrase. Whatever that. [00:01:35] Speaker A: Oh, that was a good one. Yes. [00:01:38] Speaker B: You definitely know what I was gonna say. [00:01:40] Speaker A: Response to catchphrase and not classic predictions. Yep, very witty, very fun. Also joining us, we have. I gotta come up with an LPL name for you too, because you also cast LPL. I got Mr. Mizelle PL. But now we have Yanni PL. That's just, you know, it doesn't sound right. [00:02:01] Speaker C: Nods head with slight approval, praises badgers catchphrase. [00:02:09] Speaker A: So China is in A and Yanni is a. N N I. So is there like a Yani Yanaich. [00:02:20] Speaker C: This. This is. [00:02:22] Speaker A: There's something there. There's some there. We'll keep Workshop. [00:02:26] Speaker C: Workshop. Yeah. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Anyway, this is the crew that we got today we're going to be talking about LEC and LCS both had pretty banger weekends as well as a lot of news around the horn. So let's just hop right into it because there's a lot to cover for this week's episode. Up first in. In terms of roster news, nothing confirmed between LEC or LCS that I've seen. But there have been rumors of potential shakeups at Dignitas before summer split. Yanni, were you watching on social media kind of the half fallout after Dignitas got eliminated from playoffs and Xu had a pretty candid interview which kind of led to this speculation. So. So what are your thoughts first off on like Dignitas's current position and then also the likelihood of roster changes? [00:03:14] Speaker C: Why did you give this to me? All right, so I talk about all the time how Dignitas and the 76ers in NBA basketball share an ownership group and the 76ers ownership group has been inept for years. So frankly, any issues that Dignitas may have do not surprise me. Feel really bad for Exu, mostly because it's just such a shame that you can play a game that is literally giving you joy at one point or another, has given a ton of people joy. Do it as a job, reach the pinnacle. And just due to the fact that you are on a team where there are just some internal issues, you can be like, damn, dude, I really don't want to do this anymore as a profession. Like, think about that. [00:03:58] Speaker B: The. [00:03:59] Speaker C: The quote dream profession. When you do it, when you're young, when you have time to be able to kind of do whatever you want in your life and you're doing it and it's just like, man, maybe this shitty. The trouble worth the trouble, you know? [00:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's tough to see a player lose that, like the spark. And it's not that Xu has claimed that he did, but in the interview that he had with Cloud Sid Key, he was basically saying, yeah, like, there's been times this past split that I was questioning, like, do I still have that same passion for the game? And he just straight up said, because of how bad this team environment is, I don't remember the exact quote. I'm trying to find it because I believe she put it out. It was a Cloud Sid Key interview. So shout out Cloud Sid Key for finding the information. And I think think sheep quoted it, but essentially it was along the lines of like, you either need to get along with your teammates or respect your teammates. And we have neither. Like, we're not friends, we don't respect each other. And it just kind of was like a pretty honest interview where he also mentioned that he had contemplated retirement multiple times this. This past split and this past year. So, ooh, heavy stuff. Badger your thoughts on just kind of like that candidness of a player. But then also, yeah, again, the likelihood of Dignitas making changes in this offseason. [00:05:26] Speaker B: I mean, Dignitas making off changes this offseason is likely. And this is very unsurprising to hear about Dignitas because you've been hearing stories like this for years at this point. Honestly, we always talked about, you know, Immortals being the likely candidates to like, jump out of the league now, like Dignitas, honestly, get. Get disguised like a permanent spot so that they actually have the ability to keep talent and get Dignitas out of my league. I'm tired of seeing this, like, genuinely speaking. I don't Care if you're a legacy org. I don't care what's going on with this. There's way too many of these stories at this point. Like I, I just, I. It seems like every year there's always something with the player and management and yeah, it doesn't matter who's at the helm of management because I know that they brought in. What was it Platypus was Jonathan. Yep, Jonathan. Yeah, from the old CLG days and [00:06:27] Speaker A: NRG and Golden Guardians. Yeah, he had a really good run of like putting together track record, but [00:06:34] Speaker B: unfortunately he went to Dignitas and Dignitas is literally cursed. Like. Yeah, I don't know what's going on with it. Like I just told you. I know there's the 76ers and the the same organization that decided that Paul George was a great move and takes [00:06:53] Speaker C: Paul George pulled out in these playoffs. All right. [00:06:56] Speaker B: I, yeah, I know, but he actually looked decent. It's just I, I love any chance to on the Sixers, so don't hate me. [00:07:04] Speaker C: No, I understand. [00:07:06] Speaker A: After, after they're getting shits on Dignitas. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah, just like, yeah, I just, I'm tired of hearing this and honestly, I' kind of tired of them wasting Photon at this point. Like Photon can be playing for a good team right now and unfortunately he just gets caught up and I mean he's also a victim of his own circumstances because he keeps choosing to go to teams like Dignitas and, and Previous Vitality. Previous Vitality? [00:07:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:36] Speaker B: After being this shining beacon of hope in the T1 challenger system, going to Vitality and then be Shictus versus and then a Dignitas kind of a rough stretch for a career. [00:07:47] Speaker A: Individually still looks good, but yeah, definitely wasted talent currently on this Dig roster. I, I, we'll talk more about kind of how their games went and Photon there, but I think for this roster going forward. Yeah, it just, it really seems like some change needs to come. They did do a Q and A on Friday. Leading into the weekend, Jonathan, the GM did like a live stream where he was answering questions to like six viewers. Really low viewership. Did not get a lot of eyes on it. Then the weekend happened. There was that XU interview. They decided to do another one on Monday. This is kind of unprecedented levels of, of like community outreach and interaction and at least the attempt. I think Jonathan is to his credit living up to the promise he made, which is his goal for the Org is to be a very honest and transparent organization from this point forward because that was kind of the issue with Dig in the past was that they sucked and nobody understood what was going on. Now if they're going to suck, at least like we're going to hear about it from the people at Dignitas. Xu was on it, Raz was on the Monday stream. I did not get through the entire thing because it was like three hours long. But I'll give you some of the spark notes of what I heard essentially to talk about kind of the, the lack of trust building on the team. Xu kind of shared a story about how it started off with there's an expectation that the veterans would be the shot callers on the, on the team and on the roster. And that was his expectation going in and FBI was name dropped as having a very particular vision of how he wants to play League of Legends and everybody was on board for that initially. Then when that wasn't working in scrims and it wasn't working on stage games, you know, trust started to get lost and then they didn't really have a fallback of another play style or another in game leader. So then it's just been this cascading like failures of you know, okay, well what we were trying to do, what we built the roster to do isn't working and they, they weren't able to pivot in any meaningful way. And a lot of that was because people just didn't trust each other and didn't believe each other's opinions of like how to play the game. That's, that's kind of like summarized of what Xu had said. Now I feel like there was also just a lot of nothing burgers from what I had heard in the stream is just kind of talking heads talking around certain points. I wish that there was more meat to it. I did not get to any point where Xu mentioned his conversation about potentially retiring. So I can't share any more there. But go check it out everybody if you have time. It's a long watch, but you can find it on the dig and Toss Twitch channel. And I think that they're gonna upload it to YouTube. Please upload it to YouTube because otherwise part of what made me stop watching it was I was getting hit by like 45 second ads every 10 minutes and I was like this sucks. But yeah, at least they're talking about it. So we'll, we'll see what changes come. Other roster shakeups. Sorry, final thoughts? [00:10:54] Speaker C: No, just saying they, they deserve credit for doing that. Not a lot of orgs yeah outright do that. So I do want to give them praise and Plaudits there. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Also shout out Raz for hopping on for the time and helping out get. Get eyeballs on it too. Because the first one I think was a nice attempt. Nobody knew it was happening. So then they did it again basically, especially after the interview came out. One other. It's not a roster shakeup, but I'll mention it looks like Nuke Duck over to Team Heretics as head coach. So Team Heretics had a really bad showing year of the Duck. I mean he won in NA with. With the old Fly Quest roster. Maybe he's able to make some magic happen over there. But obviously Team Heretics were last place in LEC regular season, so making a change in the coaching staff as opposed to another roster change where they already shook up. [00:11:47] Speaker C: Are you sure about that? How long before he has to play a game of mid lane? [00:11:51] Speaker A: Oh my God, dude, could you imagine? Didn't Nuke Duck actually play a mid lane game at some point? [00:11:57] Speaker C: Why do you think I. Why do you think I said that? [00:12:00] Speaker A: Wait, when. What was the context around that? I forgot. I was like that week one in like quad. [00:12:06] Speaker C: Yeah, it was visa issues. When was this was. [00:12:11] Speaker A: Or that might have been the Jensen roster because I think he was coaching even all the way back then. [00:12:15] Speaker C: That was LCS 2023 Summer Quid roster issues. 100 Thieves. [00:12:20] Speaker A: Okay. Oh, that was on 100 Thieves. Yes. Okay, that's funny. [00:12:26] Speaker C: Either way, someday Closer, Nuke Duck, Doublelift and Busio. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Oh my God. God, they won that game though, didn't they? Yeah. [00:12:34] Speaker C: Yeah. I don't know. I actually don't remember. I'll say. Yes. [00:12:38] Speaker A: That's so funny. That's so funny. Either way, that's. You know what? I like that you bring that up. We'll have our eyes to see. We'll keep track if Nuke Duck's gonna actually play any games. That would be hilarious. Other variety topics going around, some cool news, some funny news. Let's start with a funny. Now, the LEC had a roadshow this past weekend and Badger, there was a lot of hype around it because it was four of the best teams. But there was also hype around a potential show match happening that never ended up actually happening. What happened there? [00:13:16] Speaker B: So. [00:13:17] Speaker A: Okay. [00:13:18] Speaker B: All right, Bucky, your seat belts for this one. This one's fucking wild. Commento, who's the co founder of kc, was supposed to appear in a show match on Saturday against ibuy and I think it was like a France versus Spain, like show match. But then Commento abruptly just announces on stream that the the show match, his stream on Friday, he announces that the show match tomorrow will be canceled. And everyone's like, what the hell is going on? So essentially the long story short is there's some streamer, there's a co streamer for G2 that said something about the attendance. Cage reacted to it. The streamer in question is French. His name is Trayton and he thought it was related to Casey because he's French. So I buy starts to insult Carmine Core as an organization and fires off a series of tweets in presidential fashion. And then Pimento's just like, you know what? Fuck this shit. He cancels his flight, cancels the show match, and everyone's just like, God, Commento's [00:14:53] Speaker A: such a little bitch. Oh, why would he do this? [00:14:55] Speaker B: Why would. Why is he going on about this? And all the Spanish fans were pissed. Meanwhile, no one G2 is not catching any flack for it. The streamer from GT is not catching any flack for it. And I buy is like not catching any shit from it from anybody besides the French fans. [00:15:11] Speaker C: So. [00:15:13] Speaker B: So between Cage roll and a G2 streamer that got the MCOI fans to fucking get the pitchforks and the torches out to go after the KC organization, which prompted to cancel the show match, which I don't know what it ended up being. I didn't really pay attention after that. I just was like, damn, that's fucking crazy. And you know what that added to the game on Saturday? [00:15:39] Speaker A: A lot of stakes, A lot of extra stakes. [00:15:42] Speaker B: I can't remember what day it was, but it added stakes because it was like coy versus Casey. You know, who. Who wins? Who wins the beef? Pretty much, dude. [00:15:55] Speaker A: It made it very entertaining. And that was also just always going to be an entertaining match regardless. And it definitely lived up to. [00:16:04] Speaker B: Is one of the better rivalries that we have just because. [00:16:07] Speaker A: Oh, it's fantastic. [00:16:09] Speaker B: The bulk of the French fans, I mean the ones who suffer and are fans of Giant X, that's your fault, not ours. Oh God. I can't say that because of the span. [00:16:20] Speaker A: They had a good show. They had a good show. And we'll talk about that later. But it's just funny that like, we got that type of heat and rivalry between two orgs and that it just devolves on social media and then it cancels a show match, like affecting the broadcast. God, it just made that Saturday match so hype. Very, very exciting. So obviously we'll talk more about that later. I just thought it'd be funny to highlight that to start but then also we have some fun news. Kind of inspiring. The name of this week's episode was a combination of the LEC road show being such a success from the crowd standpoint of the narratives, but also even in North America. We had some fun event happen this past week as well. Actually just wrapped up last night. Yanni. There was the Jinxy tournament, which we talked about last week on the episode, but it's kind of more of a passing thing. Didn't realize how big it was going to be, but this thing got pretty big. [00:17:20] Speaker C: It was massive. Almost a million viewers. Probably between other streams and stuff like that may have actually gotten over the top. We'll probably never know the true number. We've got an approximation of high 900 thousands, which was super awesome. Couple of names that people would notice. MOE, Doublelift, Pobelter, Tyler1, Dantes, Sneaky, Alois, XQC, Emeru, Courage, Tarik. Mr. Beast was in this tournament. Ludwig was here. Jinxy, of course, was playing as well. Greek God X disguised toast, Moist Critical, own Pixel. The guy who's got the crazy CSGO inventories and stuff like that. I want to shout out moist critical for a second. The reason why I want to shout out moist criticals. I cannot remember who he is playing against in the top lane, but I remember watching the the mockumentary of moist critical with his team winning, like tier four clash. This guy played Mordekaiser and went like 12, 0 and 1 in one game and like just absolutely destroyed his opposing top laner. It's like, okay, Charlie, I didn't know you had it like that. But I think the funniest moment in the tournament had to be from team Marlin. It was Marlin, which was Marlin, Greek out X, Deji Courage and Doublelift, where Doublelift is doing everything he can to macro everybody around. Say, marlin, come over here. Stand here. Greek God X takes as amumu and engages and hits a hits a curse the tab 1 onto 2. There are multiple opportunities for Marlon to use his Malphite ultimate. He did not. And then finally double the shouted Marlin press R and you see him click R. You know, because he doesn't have smart cast and you can see the indicator and the indicator is right on top of him. And then you see him click and just malfite alt in place. [00:19:10] Speaker A: That's incredible, dude. There were some funny moments. It was great for the community, especially for new people to like kind of discover League of Legends or get back into League of Legends. I know a lot of people there's been Reddit threads about like, hey, I started playing league because just last night because of this tournament, I saw threads being like, hey, I'm getting back into league because of the hype around this event. It was just cool. I think it's worth celebrating something. That type of content usually isn't my cup of tea. I tuned in and I was like, it's funny, but I'm not gonna watch the whole thing. But I think it's awesome that it's getting more people into League of Legends because if the game is doing well and if the game is popular, the esport is gonna be popular and do better as well. So there's a immediate spillover effect when you just the player number goes up. Viewership also goes up with it for our product. So always happy to see content creators and community events like that. But yeah, fourth most watched event this year. It was like, like estimated around 900,000 as the updated number. Initially it was like recorded like 800k or something. So it's more than LEC finals from split one, but under like first stand LCK finals and like a regular season LCK match. LCK just stays undefeated, but yeah, there we go. [00:20:34] Speaker C: That's congratulations to Team Ray who won the event. That was Kingsman Sapnap Ray. XQC Deloitte's XQC put on a show in this event. He played really well. [00:20:45] Speaker A: He won. [00:20:46] Speaker C: He played. He played really, really well in the games that his team won. Like he was the main carry. He did crazy otherwise set him up for success a lot. But XQC had to deliver and he did all. [00:20:59] Speaker A: The only time that I tuned into the stream it was just Tyler1, Dante's and Jinxy casting together and it was Tyler1 just completely on XQC saying he really doesn't want him to win. So that was the level of commentary we got. [00:21:16] Speaker C: Unlucky. [00:21:17] Speaker A: Unlucky. Truly. All right, that's gonna do it. For news around the horn. If we missed anything, let us know in the community. Discord. A reminder you can join that there's a link in the description wherever you are listening and also shout out anybody who supports a pod if you want to help support the pod, we have our merch shop and we have a patreon. Links to those are also in the description. Final shout out as well for Fantasy because we do have the league rundown. Fantasy running still and podium not much moving. It's Puppet in first, Cor in second, God Pachi in third. I am so close to the podium I'm fourth place and I am behind by like 15 points. No, wait, I did my math wrong. I'm behind by 20 points. But still, I can make that up and hopefully end in the podium because at least for the lcs, our bet there is only through regular season. So if anybody had not heard on the LCS broadcast, we're doing a bet where whoever's in last place on the broadcast has to wear clown makeup for a show and the whoever's in first place gets to apply the clown makeup. So that's fantastic. Currently, it's looking like as long as I set a roster, I'm not going to lose to Raz, who is in firmly last place for the lcs. But for the league rundown, I'd love to make a podium finish. [00:22:37] Speaker B: Okay. [00:22:37] Speaker A: With that said, let's talk about LEC and lcs. We're going to start in Europe for the simple fact that there is no. There's no games next weekend or this coming weekend. They're taking a week off before playoffs start. Playoffs will sync up with lcs, which is not taking a break. I don't know why they do that. It's like there's always LEC is a week ahead of us, but then takes a week off to link up with us. I'm like, why? Why do we. Okay, whatever. [00:23:03] Speaker B: Hey, man, all I know is the same thing happened in Valorant, where America's started one week later than the rest of the world. So like every other region. So that. So the basically the MSI of Valorant's coming up. It's the second masters tournament of the year, and each region has two or more teams already figured out who's going, except for America's because their playoffs start this weekend. [00:23:30] Speaker A: Nice. [00:23:32] Speaker B: So it's like, well, what the hell? What the hell is going on? I don't know why we're always a week behind on everything, but hey, here we are. [00:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah, here we are. So with that being said, let's talk lec just because it's only going to be reacting to this past week. Then we'll end with LCS where we'll kind of preview the coming weekend. Lec Badger. This was a banger. We're going to talk a lot about the matches, but actually before that, I'm getting ahead of myself. Yanni, just walk me through the standings from first to last because the regular season's over. How did the regular season standings shake out in the lec? [00:24:02] Speaker C: Yep. So from top to bottom, we have Team vitality, who finished 8 and 1 on a streak of eight straight wins, they started 0 and 1. They did not look back. They. Then we have Carmine core sitting at 7 and 2, then G2 in third at 6 and 3 with movie star Koi and fourth also at 6 and 3. But off game differential, G2 gets the break there. Navi in fifth again, a game differential diff. They were also 6 and 3, but their win loss in games was very odd. They were 12 and 11 overall. [00:24:33] Speaker A: They got two out a lot. [00:24:34] Speaker C: And they. [00:24:36] Speaker A: Yeah, gave up a lot of games in their series wins too. [00:24:39] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, unfortunate for them. And then Giant X making the cutoff at 5 and 4. And then we got the bottom of the table. The teams that did not make it. Fnatic at 3 and 6, SK Gaming at 2 and 7. Shifters and Team Heretics sitting at the bottom each at 1 and 8. [00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it was actually really close in the 5th to 7th. If you just look at game score, match score, it's. It's a little more swingy. But game score. Navi were 12 and 11. Fnatic were 10 and 13. Fnatic lost two more games than Navi, but lost three more series. That's crazy. Fnatic just won a bunch of games in their series losses and Navi were not winning a lot of games in some of their series losses. So that. That, like win loss record in just game score is actually very close. Giant X with the even 1111 game score as well. They definitely fell from grace from a pretty strong early start, but still had a good showing this past weekend. So, Badger, let's talk about it. What were the matches this past weekend? We had three days of them. Run me through what we saw and who won. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So we started off with one one of the. I think what I would consider what could have been the match of the week on Friday with Casey versus G2 and J2 wins 2 0. And then we have the Spanish Civil War to close out day one of the road show and of McCoy versus GX and McCoy wins two. Oh, so it's like, all right, cool, cool, cool. Day two, it's G2GX and G2 2OS. And then we get the grudge match of. Of Twitter right now, right here, right now. And Casey wins 21 over MCOI. And then going into the final day where seating is on the line and there are stakes in this. And Casey fumble the bag and they lose 2:1 to GX and a game which. Kangas, I don't mean to throw you under the bus, but Kangas was Watching the highlights. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Go for it. Yeah, of course. [00:26:54] Speaker B: Gx Casey and he was sitting there the entire time. Oh, they're. They're up 6k gold and they have Dragon soul point. Oh wait, wait. [00:27:05] Speaker C: How. [00:27:05] Speaker B: How do Casey lose this game? And I just told him keep watching, just keep watching. If you've been listening to this show for the last couple of months at this point I've said that if you ever lose a team fight after 28 minutes the game is over. Like it can end at any point after 28 minutes and lo and behold, Casey lose a team fight while on Dragon soul up like 5k gold or whatever it is. [00:27:44] Speaker A: 6k. 6k gold at that point. [00:27:46] Speaker B: And GX just ends the game. They win. They win the series. They knock Casey down to the two seed. Carsy had a more than not safe for work reply to GX winning this game. If you. If you haven't seen it and you are over the age of 18, go check cars these Twitter because it was hilarious. And then it was followed up by Jackie's from Giant X just posting a picture of the door to Vitality Office. It's. It's a great two set. It's set of two tweets. [00:28:28] Speaker C: Can I, can I, can I, can I read the tweet off? [00:28:32] Speaker B: Yes, go ahead. [00:28:32] Speaker C: And are we that kind of podcast? Yeah. Gx, we are sucking you dry when you come back to office. Gx GX X DDDDD Goats my goat. I sprained my ankle trying to block a 10 year old kid at football today. Wait a minute. Yep, that's an addition. [00:28:53] Speaker A: What a series of three tweets right there. And then my favorite part is Lore's reply is just Giant sex. Oh my God. [00:29:02] Speaker B: That's. [00:29:03] Speaker A: That's a giant exit. [00:29:06] Speaker C: So good. [00:29:07] Speaker A: Y. Yeah, dude, that. That was a crazy one to to kind of end the weekend on. But then we also had kind of another upset. You could argue. [00:29:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So to end the weekend G2 after seeing the series play out the way that it did before, if they beat MCOIT they're the 2 seed and they have side selected the first round of playoffs against Casey. But they fumble the bag and McCoy beats G2 21 to close out the road show. And those fans were insane all weekend long when they were in the building. Gosh, I. I love European road shows. [00:29:55] Speaker A: I they're so fun. [00:29:56] Speaker B: They're so fun to watch. They make the game so much better. Like nothing against like the Berlin crowd. You guys are great but like when you. [00:30:06] Speaker A: It's not the same when you are [00:30:08] Speaker B: when you're KC and you're walking into a Spanish arena and everybody wants to prey on your downfall in that moment. It just makes the game so much better at that point. [00:30:23] Speaker A: Dude, when. When they. When Kalist like stood up, there's like this one team fight. He pops off, gets a pentakill, stands up to try and give the shush. And as he's standing up they like did a breakdown of this on the ad afterwards. His headset cord is too short so it like kind of tugs and falls off which is a fineable offense. You're not supposed to take your headset off on stage as a player that's like. Because you might hear something the casters are saying that you're not supposed to hear. But it was literally part of a celebration. You can see him stand up and do like the shush and then it tugs and pulls and he kind of like stumbles a little bit but still gives the shush and then sits back down. I and like dude, that crowd, oh my God, I loved it. [00:31:07] Speaker B: It was so, so good. So good. [00:31:09] Speaker A: And again with all like the social media stuff going on too ahead of that like it just made the whole moment incredible. So yeah, shout out the. The crowd, shout out LEC road shows. They are fantastic. And shout out this past weekend of games. It delivered. I was a little worried that games I was a little worried that GX would just get bullied the whole time. And the start of the weekend kind of felt like that with day one and two just two O's pretty one sided but them taking that series against Casey was crazy. Game two I think was a little more earned. Looking back on that game three, it literally was their giga behind. One team fight, win and they take it. But game two was a lot more back and forward and like Jackie was having a really good team fight towards the end and it really just was. Yeah. Who could. Who could win the team fight to kind of close out the game? I'll also say Kana, he's playing. I think he had a mission to play as many weird picks on the top lane as possible. I feel like every LEC top laner to an extent, extent has this side quest. But Connor especially this weekend, brand top, Cassiopeia top. [00:32:13] Speaker B: It just feels like meta right now. Like I feel. I. I fear, I fear as someone who likes the old style of top lane of watching fighters just duke it out. I fear we. I fear we are heading towards mages being in top lane. [00:32:30] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah, we might. But that's the Thing I think you can play anything in top. You have tanks, you have bruisers, you have Jace still being played. You have, you know, you have like AP Shyvana. Like everything's up there. [00:32:46] Speaker C: Yeah, very top lane was played like. [00:32:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's. Let's go through the games and just list off the champions that Merwin played. [00:32:56] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [00:32:57] Speaker B: True Rumble Shen Shyvana, Rumble Zeri. And then in the last series it was Rumble Gnar Anivia. [00:33:12] Speaker C: Yep. [00:33:13] Speaker A: Yeah, top lane's not real anymore folks. It's such an island that you literally can put any champion up there that just fits the draft or you can pick any top laner that just hard wins the matchup because no jungler is ever going to look up there anyway. So you just either get turret plates and fed early or it doesn't matter what you pick because it's just going to be like Anivia to show up for team fights. [00:33:41] Speaker B: Connor in the series against Giant X played Aurora Cassiopeia Brand in the three games. Yep. [00:33:49] Speaker A: But the brand one I will say was part of the demise. You could tell it was good in like the. The team fights when he could group. But in lane he was like he got targeted a little early and then fell behind and then in the late game he was the one getting picked. I think it was like back to back to back times that Kana on brand just dies and that was kind of the first domino to fall for the game end was he gets picked in the mid lane and then dies. So yeah, yeah, tough stuff there. But I will say, um, I think GX really hammered home the point that you were making Badger that like one team fight win in the late game can just end the game. It's comical when it happens like that where it's one team fight and then you literally take mid outer turret, mid inner turret inhibitor. It inhib both Nexus turrets went. It was that fast. But sometimes that's how you win a game. So let's talk about the highlights though because I feel like that one was a weird game. I want to talk about like the. The most entertaining games. KCM Coy we already touched on. What do we feel about you know, like KCG2? Did this live up to any amount of hype in your eyes Badger? Because this is one that I had a lot of expectation for. You mentioned that it was kind of like previewed to be your match of the weekend, but it was a 20 so. So how do you feel like those games went? [00:35:11] Speaker B: I mean I think. I think the big thing about was a mix of. I think G2 showed showed up day one and Casey just nothing was going right for him. Especially that first game that they played against G2 that was almost a perfect game. If there wasn't the two kills that came bot Lane. [00:35:35] Speaker A: I. [00:35:40] Speaker B: Casey started Strong and then G2 then basically perfect game to them afterwards. Besides losing a turret like [00:35:50] Speaker A: it was basically callist like the. The clist show. [00:35:53] Speaker B: It was 1v9ing and and somehow his teammates were like seven of the nine that he was going against. It felt like [00:36:04] Speaker A: the draft did not help them either. I don't understand what they're really trying to accomplish. [00:36:08] Speaker B: Might have had the worst weekend of anybody at this. This road show. I'm gonna be so for real. [00:36:14] Speaker C: He is the biggest loser. [00:36:16] Speaker B: He was in fact the weakest link. [00:36:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I think like the one Aurora game against G2 he played all right. But every other one and even then like in Lane it wasn't the strength. It was like he just had a good moment later in the game. But [00:36:33] Speaker B: ah. [00:36:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know what to say about Casey in terms of expectations going into playoffs now other than they didn't show up for the roadshow. I still think that they're a really solid team. But we are seeing the cracks in the armor that they are not like the top dog in Europe. Still. They just looked a really good beating up the teams much lower in the standings. You badger had them going undefeated this weekend. And being undefeated I thought. [00:36:59] Speaker B: I thought Casey was going to show the fuck up. And they. They've always played well when they go to opposing roadshows. I think partially is because the French crowd is scarier than anything that a Spanish crowd can produce at this point. Don't hate me guys, please. I. [00:37:18] Speaker A: Hey. They got 100 win rate against MCO in front of Spanish crowds. [00:37:21] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely true. [00:37:24] Speaker A: That's kind of funny. [00:37:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So. But I just thought. I just thought, you know, this is going to be a great time. Like Casey, I think they put the exclamation point down that they are the number one team in Europe going to playoffs. And then that turned out to be, you know, a bold faced lie for me. I apologize in advance. [00:37:47] Speaker A: It's fun to make predictions like that though because then even if you're wrong at least. Yeah. [00:37:51] Speaker B: Hey, we start with the banger that is G2 versus KC in playoffs. True. [00:37:57] Speaker A: We will get that run back. We'll preview more of playoffs on next week's episode. Just because it's. It's going to be a whole week away, so it'll be a little more fresh there. But, Yanni, I want to get your thoughts here to kind of close out LEC regular season. Vitality's at the top. Do you think the Vitality are the best team going into playoffs, or do you think that they just, you know, hit gold a little earlier than everybody else? [00:38:20] Speaker C: That's so tough, man. I think this team plays really well together. I think pound for pound, there are some rosters that are players individually are stronger on other teams, but just a matter of, like, will those teams be able to put it together? Because, like, you can't tell me that you don't look at, you know, even MCO or you look at the obvious like G2 and be like, yeah, man. Like, this is a team of like 5 near bis best in slot players in their role, you know, but credits of Vitality for the way that they've been playing. They've been playing so, so well as a team. So I definitely think they can't continue it. But I mean, playoff, G2, right? It's always the difference. [00:39:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. I. I think I'm in a similar spot where Vitality, they convinced me that they were the best in the regular season, but the problem is G2 is in a bracket, and once G2 is in a bracket, oh, my God, they just look so different. I do expect to be Vitality versus G2 in the upper bracket finals again. We'll preview more of that next week, [00:39:24] Speaker C: but I would like to see Vitality go to msi. I think that would be very cool. [00:39:28] Speaker A: Oh, please. This team would be so entertaining at msi. [00:39:32] Speaker C: They deserve it. They. They really do deserve it. With the work that they've put in in the regular split. Now it's just a matter of, like, can they carry that into the playoffs? [00:39:40] Speaker A: Right. [00:39:40] Speaker C: Even if they play. [00:39:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:41] Speaker C: You know, 75, as good as they've been, they would still deserve it. Even if, you know, they wouldn't get. [00:39:47] Speaker A: We need Vitality and Lion in the in MSI so we can get a Carsy versus Dokla no shirt, like, content piece. After Carsy's bit where he, like, took his shirt off in the team room and was like, chasing down the camera. That would be. That's peak if we just get the two of them. I don't know what that's gonna happen. [00:40:07] Speaker C: And then inspire is gonna be like, what is my top laner doing, man? [00:40:10] Speaker A: Yeah, good segue because it's time to talk about that. A big talking boy from LCS this past weekend as we wrap up LEC again. We'll cover more playoffs next week because there will be no LEC this coming weekend. So stay tuned for that but go back and re watch this past weekend if you have not. I think all of it is worth watching but especially I'd say recommend McOid KC and then McOi G2 and KCG2 or rather I'm sorry KCGX. So basically like the last three. Good. Check out those matches. But LCS, let's hop across the pond and talk about the North American League of Legends Championship Series because we had four matches this past weekend and one more week of regular season ahead of us. But playoffs already taking shape here. Badger talk me through top to bottom the standings currently in the lcs. [00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah so in LCS right now at the top of the leaderboard we have C9 60 tied for second we have lion and TL [00:41:20] Speaker A: the Animal House [00:41:23] Speaker B: Lions versus horses and we'll talk about that later. So Lioner and TL are 5 and 1. Fly Quest sitting at 4th at 3 and 3 and then oh boy here we go. Disguised or tied for fifth at 2 and 4. Shopify Rebellion is seventh at 1 and 5 and then Dignitas, the aforementioned is 06 yarp. The wildest statistic in all of this disguised as 2 and 4 in series with a 4 and 9 game score. [00:42:03] Speaker C: Are you? I think the wildest one is that is that Disguised has the tiebreaker over Sentinels. So that puts them ahead of Sentinels in the standings. But Sentinels is locked for playoffs and Disguise does not. [00:42:20] Speaker A: It's so funny. So Disguise had to win out this weekend despite being in that like one in four group just because of the way that our tiebreakers work. Head to head matters more than game score which actually does kind of help Disguise in a way because they had a really bad game score but they have the head to head against Sentinels. But then like the way that Sentinels other head to heads work, they beat Shopify and they had beaten Dignitas so it's like they were guaranteed in if Disguised had won. So it's really weird. Like if you go to Leaguepedia and check it right now before this weekend's games. I've never seen this before where there's like they do blue for locking in upper bracket, green for locking in playoffs. At any point I've never seen the gray bar above a green bar. [00:43:07] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:07] Speaker A: Because of just the way the playoffs implications work. [00:43:10] Speaker B: But it's. [00:43:11] Speaker A: It's weird. It's funny. Let's talk about the games Now Yanni, what were the matchups this past weekend and who won which ones? [00:43:19] Speaker C: Yep. So we had Sentinels taking on Shopify Rebellion to kick things off and they two owed Shopify. Then we had disguise two owing Dignitas. No surprise there. [00:43:28] Speaker A: That's day one. Yeah. [00:43:29] Speaker C: And then Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. C9. A 2:1 victory over Fly Quest and Lion. A 2:1 victory over Team Liquid. Top of the standings are getting. Getting a little. Getting a little tight here, especially with FlyQuest taking a game off C9 means that it's really truly anybody's game at the top. [00:43:51] Speaker A: Yep. And I realized I marked it incorrectly. Yeah, it was a 2:1 for C9. For some reason my head, it was a 2.0. But they did lose that game one. FlyQuest were able to close that one out. So I, I think it's, it's awesome to see day one the, the lower end teams going against each other. They were still entertaining games, but those were fast series overall. But day two, these were the close ones between the top teams and they were very close, both of them going to the full three games. And we're gonna have a very similar schedule next week. Just like a little teaser here, it's the bottom four playing against each other and the top four playing against each other still. Let's talk about some of the. The matchups now. Badger, what was your favorite series from this past weekend when it comes to lcs? [00:44:36] Speaker C: Oh, [00:44:43] Speaker A: Brother. [00:44:44] Speaker B: It's one of the. It's one of the Sunday ones. Because I think the top of the table matchups are way more exciting to watch than the. The bottom of the barrel teams scrapping it out. I think we've reached a point that I can confidently say there are three teams that are at the top of the table. Yep. So that's C9, TL and then Lion. No particular order. [00:45:07] Speaker A: What's. What's the thing? It would be Lions, Horses and Clouds. Oh my. [00:45:10] Speaker B: Lions. Oh my. Or something like that. And then Fly Quest is just sitting nice and pretty right there in the middle. They beat all the teams above them. They're. They're the. They're the tre. They're. They're the line. They're the. [00:45:24] Speaker A: Yeah, they beat the teams below. [00:45:26] Speaker B: They're the Fabi. They're the gatekeeper to the upper echelon. And then there's this just absolute bar fight going on at the bottom of the table. Yep. Honestly, kind of like I prefer watching the bar. I do like, prefer watching the bar fight because there are sub games that there's just Shit shows like disguised Game one versus dignitas is the definition of a shellacking. Dignitas that was 25 and a half minutes, had one kill and one grub. That's all they got. [00:46:17] Speaker C: Yep. You know what's even more incredible? There were only two void grubs slain this game. [00:46:25] Speaker B: Yes. [00:46:26] Speaker C: I think that's even. [00:46:27] Speaker A: Oh, the third one was never taken. [00:46:28] Speaker C: No, I think it's even more rare. [00:46:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that is. [00:46:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. This was a very one side matchup. And also the big story going into this one was 30 in top lane because of the castle pickup. Dignity or sorry lion picked up castle. We'll talk more about how his old team. And he freaking popped off, dude. One of the odds we had going into this. [00:46:54] Speaker B: Yeah, his scion game, you know, textbook scion. Just you don't have to be flashy, you don't have to be, you know, you don't have to be winning lane. You don't have to be doing all these things. Just control your lane opponent and control the team fight. Make space for your carries. And by God that man was just a wall of meat in the front line. Just. [00:47:19] Speaker A: Yeah. This game was like game two if you want to start. There was 30 playing space maker scion for Sajed who kind of like tagged in early game. It was call me. Yeah, that was like the big carry and was like having some really impressive [00:47:35] Speaker B: economy supposed to work. Like sorry, Dignitas disguise played this like this style of draft so well. Just because you know you have the mid game bridge of a collie to your late game of the yunara and they just played it perfectly. Like call me was controlling the mid game getting saged online just. And then Sujed was untouchable in these team fights real quick. [00:47:57] Speaker A: Especially because of how Kryra and Serdi both worked together. Like there was one big fight. I remember I was casting this game. Sajed has like a crazy pop off team fight after call me gets picked. So it's like a 4v5 basically. But disguise are like we have a 4 item ynara and a lulu behind her. Like we can still fight this. And Kryra. Just 1v1 zones FBI who went 61 and 6. You'd think he did really well but he just could never hit Sajed. It was always a scion or a J4 in his face. The only things he was allowed to [00:48:31] Speaker C: hit this was draft malpractice by the way. So you get Orion one as dignitas which is like super great. The response is Like Akali Jarvan which is a great response into. Into Ori. And then you go Poppy Ezreal and disguise goes. You have Ori Ezreal as your damage carries and scions up. Sure bro. And then Dignitas goes well they ban Gnar and they banned Gwen. So I guess we'll just pick Shen. Like bro, what? And like what is this? [00:49:00] Speaker A: Which Shen did put in frickin work dude. So we kind of kill Sion. Yeah. We had teased like the. The Photon narrative earlier and I think in game two we really saw it come to fruition. He was a menace, dude. There was one particular fight around. I think it was the Herald where it's a jed like Photon has his two item spike as Shen which is Titanic Hydra plus the dusk and dawn. Actually it must have been after the Herald because in order to have both of that. But either way Sajed like walks into melee range of a Shen and almost gets one shot because of how much damage those two items do. The problem is you build tank for the rest of the build and it just completely falls off in the late game like and especially even with those two you're never killing the Scion. So it's like if he can get on Call Me or Sajed and even cry right in the Baron Pit at one point he was able to just kind of like assassinate people on Shen. Photon had a really good early game but you just fall off like you're just not able to hard carry a game a 5v5 game against a coordinated team. [00:50:05] Speaker B: As a. [00:50:05] Speaker A: As a Shen you need your damage dealers to step up and unfortunately they were not able to. Very entertaining series. Though I would recommend going back and watching this one specifically Game two. Game one was like just a smash. Game two was pretty close and it showed grit from Disguised and s' Jet in particular who I don't think had had many moments to like make highlight real level plays. He. We know he's good in team fights. We know he can DPS as an AD carry but I think we saw some more of the like okay, you can trust him to actually carry a game at least against a team like this like Dignitas. Obviously if this is like Team Liquid or Lion, probably they're not going to get to the same game states but entertaining to say the least. We love Shopify vs Sentinels was less entertaining for me. I felt like Sentinels rather Shopify. They just depressed me still, dude. Like God damn it. [00:51:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:51:04] Speaker A: Watching this team play is so sad [00:51:06] Speaker B: because like you just see it's rough. [00:51:08] Speaker A: Every now and then a spark of brilliance and then somebody's gonna throw and then that. That throw, it just feels so depressing. [00:51:16] Speaker C: Spark of brilliance. And then from a butt. [00:51:20] Speaker A: From a butt. [00:51:20] Speaker B: Yep. [00:51:21] Speaker A: And again it's just one team fight. Win and the game's over. In. In the late game and obviously Sentinels were doing a great job of putting themselves in positions to win those fights. I loved the. The composition in game two, which was like Orn ash Seraphine that like adding orange to the mix because typically you see like the Xin Zhao ash Seraphine. I like that combo because the Xinjiang is almost impossible to kill. As we saw also in in the Disguise vs Dignitas game, Cryra pulled off like the fun Tyson a Kaidra into dusk and Dawn Shen build, which we hadn't seen many people do. But then you like throw an Orn into the mix and now you have in gauge galore. Plus the team fighting of the ashen Seraphine. So Sentinels were able to close that one out pretty confidently. And then day two, we had the actual fun bangers. So Yanni, out of the C9 Fly Quest or TL lion, which one do you think was more entertaining? Because I think both were very entertaining for their own unique reasons. [00:52:24] Speaker C: Yeah, man, it's so. It's so tough, like to. [00:52:31] Speaker A: I can get my answer first if you need time to think. [00:52:34] Speaker C: I think the answer has to be, dude, I don't know. And this is. All right, so I am a little biased because I am a TL enjoyer. Like some of the gays games went long and they weren't like really that close. Whereas like C9Fly quest, like we had a. We had a really close game too. By virtue of that, I think I have to choose C9Fly Quest. [00:53:04] Speaker A: Okay, so for. For the. The closest of the series, I was gonna go Lion Team Liquid for the voice comms. Oh yeah. Funniest voice comms that we've ever heard in the history of pro play. Saint just going shut up. Inspired. Inspired. Also saying shut up to Dokla at one point. Like, oh my God. [00:53:26] Speaker C: When. When Yone goes and uses his ultimate, there's an opportunity there. You need to communicate with the team. So I know where I need to be. Otherwise I am going to the top side and then I need to be on the bottom side. Shut up. [00:53:45] Speaker A: But if you want to start with Cloud 9 Fly Quest, we can start there because this one was a pretty impressive showing from FlyQuest in game one. It was a very back and forward game in terms of like who was getting leads. Different people having different gold leads at different times. As ven hard throwing a turret dive bot lane in the 2v2. Which then kind of got FlyQuest back in it despite having a rough, you know, early gank from Griffin. But I liked the cop of like Shen Jungle and Divide Jungle. Anywhere blabber looks Shen just presses R and the VI old just does nothing. And in fact VI is probably going to die afterwards. Oh yeah. And then so that was a nice Fly Quest win game one. Game two. It felt like fly quests were gonna 2 0. I honestly thought that they should have just smashed this game. They dives Venn like three times in the first 10 minutes. Sven is just Giga out of the game on Senna. But doesn't matter like Apa hard carries and it's just like an unkillable monster on the Victor. Thought we still would see Fly Quest win. They're at C9's Nexus and then they overdive after C9 had done basically the same thing of pushing FlyQuest Nexus, backing off, fighting in the jungle, losing Fly Quest. Go top push in. Go to aggressive diving onto the Nexus turrets. Lose the game as like, oh my God, dude. [00:55:08] Speaker B: The back and forth was crazy. [00:55:10] Speaker A: But it felt like this could easily have been a 20 for FlyQuest if they had just played a little more patient at that that Nexus push. [00:55:20] Speaker C: I wonder if in game two they attack Apa instead of Sven next time. [00:55:25] Speaker A: Right. [00:55:25] Speaker C: Because. Yeah, because the problem that you run into with this composition that Cloud9 put together is that you've got two late game carries in the form of Victor Senna. So you need to really set one behind and hope the other doesn't get the job done. Right. I am more afraid of a late game Victor than I am a late game Senna when I'm playing Ash, Jarvan and Aurora. Right. Because Senate does have a little bit less defensive tools. Then you've got the early game combo of Zinn and Renekton along with the sustain that comes out of the Seraphine and the Senna. There's a really well crafted composition by Cloud9 ensuring that they were never going to be weak at any point in the game, which allowed them to overcome the fact that Sven got set behind. [00:56:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And again, big props to APA for stepping up as a big carry in some key moments there. Sven was able to turn it around though. He Game one, he like gets a. I think it was either a kill or a double kill. He killed Griffin at any point had double buffs. Then fails a dive under turret and diesel and then comes back, still has a pretty good game. Game two, he gets dove a bunch, gets completely slammed, still kind of comes back and does well. Late game. Game three, I think he was just pissed. Like, Sven popped the off. In game three, Masu had zero room to breathe. Sven was Corky into Masu's gin, and Sven took like eight turret plates. The game between bot and mid lane, it was like, I've never seen a Corki just completely destroy a matchup so holistically. And then C9 had like a couple of oopsies where anytime they played away from Sven, they would lose. And then they're like, okay, we never go anywhere that Corky's not. We're just gonna follow Sven and then [00:57:19] Speaker B: he will witness the game. [00:57:20] Speaker A: And he did just that. So can we talk about. I think that. [00:57:25] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. So can we talk about how Vulcan has a KDA of 11 this season? [00:57:28] Speaker A: By the way, he did go into the series. I don't know what it was at the end of this series, though. [00:57:35] Speaker C: It's 11. [00:57:36] Speaker A: He was 0, 0, 14. Game three, let's take a look. [00:57:39] Speaker B: I mean, he only had four deaths, and he had 14, 15, 29, and 35 assists with a kill. [00:57:47] Speaker C: So he actually lowered his KDA, which is a shame. [00:57:50] Speaker A: He did lower his KDA. [00:57:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:52] Speaker A: He was on track going into the day to beat his own record of the best KDA for support in the league. [00:58:00] Speaker B: Yeah, trash. [00:58:01] Speaker A: He holds the record right now. [00:58:02] Speaker B: One more good week over. His MVP case is done. [00:58:05] Speaker C: One more good week and maybe he can get there. Who knows? [00:58:08] Speaker A: Dude, that was a legendary interview, by the way, before their match, Jet interviewed him, and Vulcan was like, I just. Our number one objective is to not live in a world where Jose Dioto is MVP of the league. So it's up to me and inspired to make sure that doesn't happen. Yeah, I was like, that was. That's a legendary hater moment on an interviewer. It's just unprompted, too. [00:58:30] Speaker B: It's so funny. [00:58:33] Speaker A: Okay, so my. My read on C9 right now is I was happy to see Sven step up in a big way against relatively hard opponent because I felt like Sven had for a bit been a little inconsistent in one of the weaker points of the team. But especially that game three and Game two, his mental was so good. I was like, you know what? I'm happy to see Sven pop off. I think that that gives me more confidence in C9 going into this final week as well. Team Liquid lion let's talk about the big one because this was a battle to see if team Liquid could remain undefeated. They were also undefeated with C9 and they're playing C9 this coming week. It would have been this kind of. Oh, undefeated versus undefeated. The battle cs. Yeah. [00:59:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean it's still the battle of the Giants too. It just makes things interesting at the top of the table if they win. But they didn't, unfortunately. [00:59:26] Speaker A: So in spectacular fashion. Lion Bot Lane. Oh my God. Berserker had the highest individual gold difference at 15 stat going into this weekend and I feel like that must have ballooned. Dude, his laning phase is so good. And their comps were pretty exciting too. They. The question was like, okay, are they gonna start Castle or Dokla? Both top laners got game time. Castle did not look good. That was in the team liquids win. Yeah, Dokla looked very good. So I think that the motivation alone for. For, you know, performance in top lane, definitely leaning Dokla's way. Berserker did have a rough game too, but like games one and three, the ones that they won. Berserker, very, very impressive. Even gets a pentakill in game three to kind of close out the series. [01:00:19] Speaker B: So can we how busted Corky Nami is? Is a lane real fast. [01:00:25] Speaker A: It's busted. [01:00:25] Speaker B: It's insane. It's so like. Remember when Lucian Nami was like taking over the world and then it's like, oh yeah, we've nerfed the interaction. No, no, you fucking did it. You just made it good on other characters. [01:00:40] Speaker A: Yep. Imagine if you get the Nami passive on every Gatling gun proc. [01:00:46] Speaker C: So good. [01:00:48] Speaker A: It's very good. Very, very good. And Berserker shows that he is a very, very good hyper carry. Late game ADC as well. I. I think that this still delivered to me in. In hoping for like high quality game plan to see who's gonna be at the top of the table. I think it is a three horse race. I agree with you, Badger. Between team liquid, lion and C9. I don't know who takes it at this point. I think that it's gonna only get more and more closely contested as we get into playoffs and we'll have to just kind of see which team steps up on the day to actually lift the trophy for spring split in Arizona. Which reminder tickets are on sale. If you have not gotten tickets and you want to go check it out, it's at the Mullet arena at Arizona State University. We got a road show for spring finals. So come say Hi. [01:01:37] Speaker B: I can't make the Arizona. [01:01:38] Speaker C: Unfortunately I also will not be there. We are saving money for Worlds and [01:01:42] Speaker A: going [01:01:45] Speaker B: to live on the east coast. Posted. I'm playing. [01:01:47] Speaker C: Yeah, same dude. [01:01:48] Speaker A: Worlds. [01:01:48] Speaker C: Same dude. [01:01:49] Speaker A: You know what, let's. Let's look into the league, the Patreon and merch store budget and see if we have enough to get all the cast members out there. You know, maybe if we get big ballers this month. [01:02:00] Speaker C: Thanks. [01:02:00] Speaker A: Question on the top lane shifts going on for, for Lion. I kind of want to talk about that because that was the big story coming into this weekend. Yanni, let's get your thoughts and the Badger. We'll get your thoughts. Dokla vs Castle, pros and cons of the six man roster and where do you think lion should kind of make decisions going forward? Do you think that they should stick with the six man or do you think that this is a silly experiment? [01:02:23] Speaker C: I think this is a pretty silly experiment. You're sitting at five and one like this is. This is just generally like you shouldn't be. It feels like they're making change for the sake of making change. Although the team does seem a little dysfunctional at times. That's kind of the deal that you get when you have an inspired roster because Inspired is very headstrong in the way that he plays because it's proven to work right. Like it's not headstrong for a negative reason. So I think that, you know, winning cures a lot and I, I don't think they should be doing this. I'm actually like kind of mystified by Castle's just really solid player, you know, like he's still wrong with nothing wrong with him at all. But I'm weirded out by this move. It never really made sense to me. [01:03:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I for the most part agree with the sentiment. Badger though, your thoughts? [01:03:17] Speaker B: You know, we've seen these top lane sword and shield combinations in the past and it feels like that is what the situation looks like is the old impact ray scenario. But if you're playing Castle, it significantly shifts the like dichotomy of the team. Because Castle is going to be a one. Castle will be your second. Well, Castle wants to be the second fiddle behind Berserker, but Inspired is the second fiddle behind Berserker at this point. So you have to like switch up how your jungle resources work with that and then it just turns Satan to a fourth fiddle and I don't know, I just think it shifts the roles of like, importance way too much between teams. Between the team. If you have Castle playing at this point, I think this is going to be a weird thing to say, but I think if this team Mrs. MSI, that's a good thing for them because then they can figure out what the hell is going on with the six man roster in the between spring and summer split and that'll put them in a better spot for Worlds. [01:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I I agree with Yanni's point that it is it feels like change for the sake of change. I agree with Badger's point that it can be too many cooks if you have too many carry focused players on a already carry. Kind of like it feels like too many carries in in this roster to begin with. Like you need somebody who's willing to play weak side and it's fantastic if you have a player that's adaptable enough to like oh I can play weak side or carry. That's the dream scenario. But a player like Castle, he just spent two years on terrible rosters where he had to be the carry. I'm worried that he's not going to be able to pivot as well. Maybe he proves me wrong. I'd love to be proven wrong in situations like this, but that's up to them. And yeah, we'll see if they have better showings because currently they're one loss with Castle and did not look nearly as functional as a team. Okay, that's that's it for LCS this past weekend. Really fun matches. Make sure to check them out. And also this coming weekend we also have very very close matchups. The the race for the final playoff spot is pretty contentious. It's between Disguised and Shopify Rebellion Disguised just have to win if Disguised because they play against each other. So like whoever wins this is in so Sentinels or rather Shopify versus DSG is kind of the only match that has big implications other than seeding for upper bracket between like C9. If they drop to Team Liquid then Team Liquid would have the head to head. In fact we we'd have a three way head to head tie, wouldn't we? Wait a minute, hang on. I'm just realizing because I think lion lost to C9. That's the only team Lions lost to. Team Liquid would have lost to lion and then C9 would have lost to liquid. So there'd be a three way tie at six and one and then it comes down it weirdly we talked about this last week. Weirdly it does not come down to game score. It would come down to I think it's strength of Win. And then after strength of win it would be something else. We had the rundown last week on our LCS meeting and it was a little confusing because usually just be game score. But for some reason the guys we [01:06:46] Speaker C: got to go back to games this week. [01:06:47] Speaker A: Like we honestly it's so simple to just do game score. But for some reason that's not how we're doing it for a three way head to head their three way tie this split. So yeah, whatever. Talk to talk to tournament organizers. That's not a broadcast, that's not an us thing. That is the the TOS on riot side. But this coming weekend those are the stakes basically is seeding for the top and then who makes the last playoff push team like A versus C9 starts things off. We all still believe in C9. A big part of that from my end was just the way Sven was playing this past weekend versus the way Jan was playing this past weekend. Jan did not show up in late game team fights and only had one game where he played really clean in early game as well. So I think Sven can be the difference maker there. Dignitas vs DSG. This match does not matter. Or sorry, what am I talking about? That was last weekend. Shopify Rebellion vs. GSG. This match does matter because this is who makes it in. Three of us believe in dsg, myself, Badger and Bickle. But Yanni thinks Shopify Rebellion takes it. Yanni, how do the Rebels clinch this? [01:07:56] Speaker C: I don't know, bro. I picked them because I backed them as my horse at the beginning of the year and yeah, I'm off the train. [01:08:06] Speaker B: For real. [01:08:07] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, I know I. I would be off but you know, I'm riding this train to the terminus. All right? [01:08:16] Speaker A: So I gotta believe I was so on the train and I'm so convinced that I have cursed them that I'm never gonna predict Shopify to win. [01:08:23] Speaker C: Get off. Yeah, get off. This is where they listen. You know what? Okay, I actually have a very interesting question. If Shopify were to win and make playoffs, what would they need to do between now or this weekend and the end of the year for us to say that Shopify was the best team at NA this year? [01:08:46] Speaker A: I mean win a split back to back, at least win summer, which if they make it into playoffs, there's a dark horse run that they could go on. So they only need to win crazy [01:08:59] Speaker C: this split in summer. Okay, that's not that bad. Yeah, I thought you were gonna say [01:09:03] Speaker A: they needed to like do well at [01:09:04] Speaker C: an international No, I mean at least [01:09:07] Speaker A: they just have to win summer split. If they win summer split, we can at least meme that like, hey, yeah, they see that by the end of the year they were. [01:09:13] Speaker C: They. They can still. [01:09:14] Speaker A: I don't see that happening currently. Currently their game score for the entire year, taking into account split one, they are three and 18. [01:09:24] Speaker C: Wow. That's actually almost worse than than team W e over in the LPL team. We are 4 and 23, by the way. [01:09:34] Speaker A: Also, sorry, 3 and 16. I'm assuming 83 and 18 is going to be there or 18 to loss is going to be the record at the end of this weekend. [01:09:42] Speaker C: But Shopify 316 said I just whoop your ass. [01:09:49] Speaker A: That's actually pretty funny. Wait, that's a good bit. Wait, that's a really good bit. [01:09:52] Speaker C: Oh my God. Stone cold. [01:09:54] Speaker A: I'm message their content team and be like, get on this now before this weekend. [01:09:59] Speaker C: You're. You're welcome. [01:10:01] Speaker A: In fact, I might have to reference that because I'm casting this that series and I'm going to take full credit for the joke. [01:10:05] Speaker C: That is totally fine. But please let them know that I you. I can be easily whisked away from my current employer of. Of my. Of my IRL job. [01:10:16] Speaker A: All right, well, just in case they need an idea content writer, if you just write like one catchphrase for each team every week, honestly, that would elevate the broadcast. We need something like that. Then we have Sentinels versus Dig to kick things off on Sunday. This is the one that has no big implications. It's just kind of whether Sentinels is on the top or bottom of the losers bracket. Wait, but essentially they're. They're losers bracket regardless. [01:10:43] Speaker C: You said there's no implications here. [01:10:45] Speaker A: Dignitas is not a man. Also, wait, I. I am realizing I've misspoken because there is a chance of Fly Quest if they lose and Sentinels win. Sentinels have the head to head. So you know what? I'm gonna take back a lot of what I just said. I feel have for some reason completely blanks that Sentinels could lock in upper bracket if they win and FlyQuest loses, which I think is pretty likely to happen. Sentinels has the head to head against FlyQuest. They both be 3 and 4 in the series. Wow, that's actually really interesting. Okay, well, there we go. That's a big one for Sentinels. Then we all have Sentinels 2 0. Except for Badger 2 1. Badger. What the hell? Why do you have Dignitas winning one? [01:11:34] Speaker B: They. They squeak one out. They. I don't know how this team has, I don't know what, what they did, but this team somehow wins a game [01:11:43] Speaker A: every series now, like unless it's against bad teams. But you're right, they actually happen against Cloud 9, lion and Team Liquid. They have won a game, which means [01:11:53] Speaker B: they're going to ride this momentum in and they're going to lose or they're going to win a game and then they're going to lose game two and then game three. They're going to be in such a great spot. They're in a commanding position ahead 5k gold at 25 minutes. The same thing that happened to Casey versus Gian X last week is going to happen to Dignitas. [01:12:15] Speaker A: Just one team fight loss at 30 minutes. [01:12:17] Speaker B: Just one team fight loss and then it's all over. [01:12:21] Speaker A: I thought you were going to go back even further and say what happened in split one during the tiebreaker where FBI knows that there's an eco minion and walks up anyway because he thinks he has Flash. [01:12:31] Speaker B: I mean that could be the, that that could be how the play starts that ends their. Ends their run. But you know, is what it is [01:12:39] Speaker A: is what it is. Final match of the weekend is FlyQuest versus Lion. We all have lion across the board. So based on all of our predictions, we all actually expect it to be Sentinels in the upper bracket and then FlyQuest dropping down which would more align with split ones. End of kind of like the playoffs run, it was Sentinels in top three still. But I demand, I just feel like that would be. Who do we think is better between FlyQuest and Sentinel? Sentinels did beat FlyQuest, but my heart says Fly Quest is so much better than them. [01:13:15] Speaker B: I, I think FlyQuest is the better team for sure. But yeah, 100 Sentinels if they can figure it out. I think Sentinels is in. I think they're ahead of timeline from what they were saying because I think, I think the, the big thing was when they came in and got this roster was we want to be competing [01:13:38] Speaker A: next year [01:13:41] Speaker B: and the, the pieces are good. Like I like the pieces on the team. It's just, it's going to take time to develop, you know and once they gel and I think once they get a better top laner than Impact, I'm gonna be for real. [01:13:58] Speaker A: Ooh. Yeah. He's still not looked stellar sometimes. He's looked good on Tanks like his team. [01:14:04] Speaker B: When he's on tanks, it's good but like if the meta's going away from it, like yeah, he's not the one [01:14:10] Speaker A: that's gonna be pulling out the Zeri top and the Varys top and the Cassiopeia top. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes. [01:14:18] Speaker C: Sometimes you. You know, you. You rub your eyes and you look back and you see the T1 on his jersey and you're like, whoa, what was that? [01:14:27] Speaker A: No, it's actually SK T on his jersey that you would see. [01:14:30] Speaker C: Right, okay. But the symbol was T1 with the wings. [01:14:34] Speaker A: So [01:14:36] Speaker C: was it? Yeah, man. [01:14:39] Speaker A: Even back then. [01:14:40] Speaker C: Yes. [01:14:42] Speaker A: I'm going to google search SKT old jersey images. [01:14:47] Speaker B: Shit. [01:14:48] Speaker A: It was a T1 with the wings on it. Oh, look at that. [01:14:51] Speaker C: Yeah, this guy doesn't know Ball. [01:14:54] Speaker A: You know what? I did just out myself. It's been so long. So long. [01:14:58] Speaker B: Crazy. [01:14:59] Speaker A: It's been like four years. But it's been so long. All right, that's going to do it [01:15:02] Speaker B: for this week's episode. [01:15:05] Speaker C: Did you say only. It's been more than that. [01:15:07] Speaker B: Dude, it's been way more than four years. But 2013, I was going to let that one slide. [01:15:12] Speaker A: No, no, four years since SK T changed to T. Oh. [01:15:15] Speaker C: Oh, okay. [01:15:16] Speaker A: Sorry. Yeah, I guess that's what I meant because that sounds like it's been so long since, like, they changed the org name that I just kind of, like, forgot. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, that's it for this week's episode of League Rundown. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Yanni, since you called out that I didn't know Ball, you have to tell people how many stars to leave for the review this week. [01:15:36] Speaker C: Oh, man. All right, so we got. We got 13 colonies and the 50 states with 13 minus 50 dropped the 0. 50. No. God damn. 47 stars. Do you not know this meme? [01:15:56] Speaker A: Don't. [01:15:56] Speaker C: Oh, that just landed so flat. All right. [01:15:58] Speaker A: I thought you were doing like, WWE Steiner math at first, which I was excited for. [01:16:02] Speaker C: Well, the good news is I'm going [01:16:03] Speaker B: to send you a reference. [01:16:04] Speaker A: I understand. [01:16:05] Speaker C: The good news is I'm going to send you guys a video and you're probably going to laugh your ass off. The bad news is I look like an idiot. Give us five stars, please. Or however many you can max out on your preferred podcast. [01:16:18] Speaker A: Honestly, for that reference, it might need. It might be a one star. I don't even know if I can confidently say, leave us five stars this time. [01:16:23] Speaker C: Please leave us five stars. He won't bring me back [01:16:28] Speaker A: now you're stuck here. You're not going anywhere. [01:16:30] Speaker C: Oh, thank God. [01:16:31] Speaker A: Who else am I going to talk riftbound with on the show? Badger? [01:16:33] Speaker C: Don't worry. [01:16:34] Speaker A: Play card games. [01:16:35] Speaker B: You're right. I don't. [01:16:36] Speaker A: Married and cool. [01:16:37] Speaker C: And the only thing. The only thing you want to do is talk because, you know, you certainly don't want to play against me again. [01:16:44] Speaker A: Hey, I took a game. [01:16:47] Speaker C: You did do. You also were playing, like, one of the best decks in the format. [01:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah, but, like, think about it, you [01:16:54] Speaker C: know, I am thinking about it. [01:16:56] Speaker A: All right. [01:16:56] Speaker C: It was a tough series. [01:16:57] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in, everybody, to another week of the league rundown. Bit scatterbrained this week, but thanks for tuning in regardless. Hopefully some of that was listed. And if you made it this far into the episode, the most important message that we have for you is that we love you and we'll see you next time. [01:17:13] Speaker B: Bye. [01:17:13] Speaker C: Bye. See you. [01:17:16] Speaker A: Oh, yes, Daddy.