Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Gets hit Kimmy kids a little too far here. He's gonna have to try and get himself out. Living O Tillery and the rest of
[00:00:17] Speaker B: the shots of fire.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Zion is just killing the next Zion can eat single handedly win the game by game by game by game by
[00:00:26] Speaker B: should be.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Oh my God. Stupid. Marches through and manages to the table with Messiah tanking it up. I do not believe he just believe.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: 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 616 of the League Rundown. This is your 2026 summer split. LEC and LCS week one preview. That's right. We are actually aligned on the schedule for once. This episode title is lovingly entitled Top 4 Regions in the World. Let's go. MSI has concluded and now we're ready to talk regular season. But joining us to give a quick reaction to MSI because we haven't gotten them yet. We have first fresh out of the can. It's bad Badger. How's it feel to be a top three region in the world?
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Woo.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: We did it.
We did it. We.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: We sure did it. And LEC was right there next to us. But below us, you know, right there
[00:01:48] Speaker B: I think you know, as the ordering
[00:01:50] Speaker A: typically should be with LCS not dropping a game to them. Also to celebrate the LCS's victory over the LEC at MSI, we got Mr. Mizelpl.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm gonna focus on that for sure. Because nothing else bad happened for me at all.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Yeah, no, let's go with the finals. I don't even remember a finals happening.
[00:02:11] Speaker C: Yeah, me neither.
I think it did took that part of my brain out.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well hey, at least you can celebrate NA being the third place region in the world right now. Definitively stomping G2 30 and also TL taking down KC3. Oh, we celebrated that last week, me and Yanni. But I just wanted to give both of you a brief podium there to.
That's not the right word. Not podium. What about pedestal? There we go. Pedestal. To celebrate. Celebrate.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Can I. Can I flex my pickups ranking globally?
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Oh yeah, sure. Go for it.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: So I finished number 1631 in the world and pickums out of everybody who did a pick them at some point.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: I don't know if my audio is picking it up, but I am applauding you right now.
I'm sure that sounded fantastic in the audio edit and Ian will make it sound better.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: That sounds pretty good.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah, but that is cool out of all the hundreds of thousands of people that did it. That is pretty high up there. So well done. And you. You told me earlier tell, tell the audience what was kind of the big thing that messed up your prediction.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: So the G2 lion series that saw lion winning three over G2, I had that as T1 top esports. So like really it's top losing to Secret Whales and G2 beating T1 in that like second round of the lower bracket or I would have had a perfect bracket. My entire top side was, was perfect and the, the, the bottom half was not so good. So yeah, ease what it is.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: It is what it is. But it. There's always next year and that's still a very impressive ranking.
We got some news around the horn. We got to talk about some global news as well as some kind of last minute roster shakeups. We're recording this episode on Wednesday. So by the time this is live and you're hearing it, we might already have some confirmations on some of these things. But right up first in the LCS, lion, the team that got third at MSI, that smashed G2, that won the spring split, they have a rough position to start off summer split here. Mizell. Because they just announced today Inspired for at least Week 1 of the LCS Summer Split will not be playing.
How big of a bummer is that for lion and for fans of the Org, especially coming off of a great MSI performance.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it's, it's tough. I'm really curious at how that team functions without Inspired.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: Because I feel like it's just going to be a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. But so we'll see how that all works out. It sucks. Especially in like the most important split of the year. To start out without your captain, it feels like is really tough. And I know the, the thing else, the thing that also affects the LCS is he's not available to practice against.
Which immediately brings the level of the entirety of the LCS down.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: That's an interesting take I've not heard yet is that that is at least a week if not two weeks of scrims.
[00:05:11] Speaker C: I mean he's not here now so he's been go however long since they got done with with msi.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Interesting. Pretty vague reasonings as well as to why the post that went out. I there actually was a video. I didn't watch the the whole thing but it was just personal family reasons. He's back in Poland right now and needed to. To take a step away kind of as an emergency. So it did not seem like this was at all planned, obviously. Like, it would be crazy to think that they would plan for him to miss a couple weeks of the summer split. So, hey, heart goes out to Inspired. Hope that everything works out for him. There's rumors going around. Because then the next question is, who's going to replace him in the jungle?
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Reign over. Reign over.
Bring rain over.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: I saw you tweet that out. Yeah, I. I saw. I saw people talking about rain over as, like, the one coming. Maybe it was Raz. Actually, I didn't say anything.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: I didn't have a public tweet about it, but I've in the background been saying rain over. Just.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: See, I just knew. I just knew that you'd be saying rain over one of the coaches for the team.
No, the rumor I'm hearing is a returning jungler, a North American returning jungler, somebody who has played in the LCS before.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: The odd drum roll, please.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: No, it's not the odd one who's playing in the LCS show match. We're gonna. We're gonna talk about that later. It's our Mayo. Is the rumor I'm hearing as the one subbing in for Inspired, who most recently was playing collegiate as a top laner, not even playing competitively in the jungle. Last time he would have played a competitive jungle game would have been, I believe, 2024.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
You said chicken with their heads cut off earlier. Do you think that this changes that perspective?
[00:06:58] Speaker C: I mean, depends on what kind of attitude he brings into the team, because he was known as a big leader back in the day, especially.
I'm just curious why we couldn't pick literally anybody else in tier 2, but whatever.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: The biggest name that comes to my mind is Kizno, who was subbing in on DSG earlier in the spring split, got to play. Or was it lock in? I don't even remember. I think it was lock in at this point. But he got to play, like, the. The first week of games and looked pretty good.
So, yeah, somebody like that would have been nice. Who are other NaCl or Tier 2 junglers that you like immediately come to mind as somebody that you think could have at least gotten the opportunity to show off some of their chops here?
[00:07:43] Speaker C: I mean, I mean, I think you have a decent amount of choices. I mean, you have Shimmer, who's kind of sitting in the sideline as well, which is somebody who I would love to see take an opportunity. You have Tomio, who's available as well. Unfortunately, Yuji. I don't know if anybody knew this, but the dates for NACL got changed like last second or not last second. Rather, the information that was shared with teams was different from what was actual. And so Yuji's not playing for like two or three weeks because he's on vacation somewhere because they had bought. You know, there's a lot of players that aren't available the first like two weeks because they did not know what the schedule was.
So we have a couple of our jugglers that aren't available. But I mean, even like Dardochrome, I think it'd be awesome if Dardoch was available for that. I think that would be sick. But there's. There's like a couple good names that would still be available even though Dardoch would have been.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Could you imagine inspired subbed out and Dardoch comes in to replace him.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: Oh, he's a very different player now though.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: You think he's mellowed out?
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Oh, no. 100%. The guy he is lot like. And that's the thing, we're trying to change this split about people's narrative because he became a pretty big face last split. He's been doing really good. He's been kind of leading the jungle meta in the NaCl, but he is also just praised by literally every single person in the league. All the players love talking with him, love playing with him. He's like a mentor to so many players in the NACL right now.
It's. It's really cool to see him kind of change that narrative.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Well, I'm happy to hear because that was always like the story around Dardoch was always who can fix him? Like can't, bro.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: He's like the long haired collegiate guru right now.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: He's got long hair.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, he's got like super long hair now.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: All right, I'm on board. Drop or Mayo if. If that's the rumor's true.
Come on, guys, what are we doing?
Well, either way, that's gonna be tough for Line at the beginning of the split. They got a tough opponent in fly quest week one. We'll talk more about expectations on that later. But if this changes anybody's fantasy draft, I would recommend maybe not grabbing lion players as I'm not expecting look good in this week one.
One other roster piece of information mazel over in the LPL blg. It looks like they're having some. Some difficulties post MSI specifically with their top lane. So can you share a little information about this sure.
[00:10:15] Speaker C: Rumor. These are all rumors.
So nothing has been fully confirmed, but the rumors are that Ben had a falling out with both Knight and Shun at msi.
They got into a really bad argument.
No idea what it was about. I'm going to guess it's about gameplay and some of the failings that they were having.
So that continued no news after msi, after the other thing that happened as well, the other tournament.
And then we come to find out that the rumor is Ben's parents met with Knight's parents and it did not go well.
And there is a history of Ben's parents being very big instigators and also flamers onto his teammates and his teams as well as Ben. Ben is also culpable for this. He, he has been very inflammatory in the past about his teammates as well on social media, but apparently the parents also got into big arguments about this and it has just led to a huge falling out and Ben taking a quote unquote, health break, mental health break. Trying to take some time away from the team. Which means that Wenbo, the BLG junior jungler who was called up last split as well, whenever there was the walk out from Ben, will be officially getting the start. He's on the starting roster tonight. It has already been announced.
So Ben will be taking a break. And there's tons and tons and tons of rumors going on throughout the the league itself about Flandra now coming over to blg potentially being a weak side top lane. Because that's supposedly what the issue is is Ben really wants resources, but he's playing with Knight and you can't take resources away from the best player in the world right now.
And I think that's coming to kind of a falling out. So they're talking about bringing on, you know, they're talking about bringing on like a weak side top laner, trying to figure out how they want to play around that.
But Flandra is also not starting for al. So the rumors got even more fuel today as the rosters were announced for al And Breathe is starting for AL today instead of for ig.
So there's a lot of craziness going into the last split for the lpl.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: That's crazy.
Also, quick note there. I got to respect badgers continuous glaze of showmaker. Like, man, if, if you're one thing, it's consistent.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: He's a, he's a World cup champion. What do you put some respect on his name?
[00:12:44] Speaker A: True, true.
But yeah, I, I, that that's gonna be tough for BLG because obviously this, like, yes, Knight, if you want to claim best player in the world right now, I think there's a very strong argument, give resources to that player. Ben's a top laner that historically has taken resources, but also the additional performance is like, he's the best top later in the world.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: It's like, like, so that's, that's kind of tough. That's a tough position to be in as a roster.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: There were even comms that were like, you could hear Ben pitifully like, hey, if you want to come up here, you can.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Like, yeah, as he's probably just like at least going even in a losing matchup or if not crushing NCS department. Yeah. I've been a Big Ben believer.
Big Ben believer that's got a fix.
[00:13:38] Speaker C: He can't. He can't be walking out like that last split. He can't be causing this kind of drama when he's not even the best performing player like that. That just can't be happening. He needs to get himself right.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: All right, well, hey, let's see if he, if he does, if he's able to turn things around and get into a better position because it seems like he's just taking a break. It's not like he's dropped from the roster. Right. I haven't seen anything.
[00:13:58] Speaker C: No, he's still not on blg.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
So who knows? Maybe a little bench time, we'll fix an attitude to make him play better. Those are the only two roster news pieces that I was able to find. There's a couple other variety topics. Up first, some fun.
Actually, you know what, let's start with the less fun news just because then we can end on lcs. It'll be a nice little transition.
Badger over in the lck.
Dk, speaking of showmaker, has been struggling to pay their players. This story broke last week right after we recorded the episode.
Yeah. What do you know about this? Like, what's going on over at dk?
[00:14:37] Speaker B: So there's a big report from Kenzie, who's one of the biggest big Korean esport journalist that also does coverage in English, that essentially they're two months behind on salary to all of their teams that they have that compete underneath them. But one month's pay was recently settled, so there's still, you know, $2 million in the hole with a delayed. From a delayed sale that's been going on as of recent.
So, yeah, the, the players haven't been getting paid. You know, this, that, that one tournament that they just won you know, the. The prize pool that they get from that, congratulations. That's like a month's worth of pay for those guys, like having to essentially play for their salary at this point. But there is a sale that is in the work that has been delayed. But the interesting thing in all of it is players and coaches can request contract termination at any point over these next couple months until the sale is completed based on the fact that they still aren't being paid.
So.
But given there's a quote here that says quote. Given the tight schedule of the league and the structure leading into the World Championship, it. It won't be simp. It'd be easy to simply talk about terminating a contract.
So I don't think anything like roster wise is going to happen. It's just something to keep monitoring over the next couple of months as we're getting into like the summer season and towards Worlds qualification for a team that should be, you know, at least fighting KT Rolster for that fourth spot from Korea. Worlds over the next couple of months. So who knows though, at this point, I mean, it's.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: It's a weird time for something like this to happen because it's like the team's looking good, the roster pro. I would imagine the roster doesn't want to change anything. Like they want to keep riding some of this momentum that they're getting. But the org.
They don't got no money. They're trying to sell. They're trying to get a. A new owner to come in and then pay all these bills that they have. But if that doesn't happen, this could be disaster for a roster and organization that is on the cusp of being able to make international appearance.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Did somebody say tsm?
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, it does kind of feel similar to that, even like legacy Org has tasted success in the region, even success internationally, but yeah, yeah, heart goes out to DK and those players. Hopefully the players are able to get paid. Hopefully the sale is able to go through. It feels like one of those situations. I don't have nearly enough information of what's actually going on behind the scenes to say definitively, but it feels like a situation from the outside that's like everyone's probably annoyed and frustrated by this, not knowing the exact timeline. Of course, I could also imagine the current ownerships being like, oh man, like, this sucks. And they made like a whole public statement apologizing to the players and the public and the fans and stuff. So I was like, yeah, at least they. They made that call before the trucks
[00:17:56] Speaker B: get Sent to the cardboard boxes outside of the building.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: And you are an expert on cardboard boxes. We did confirm this earlier during the pre tape.
Cool. I'm not just. Just gonna leave no context on that one.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: Subscribe to the Patreon
[00:18:14] Speaker A: LPL Update. What's going on over in the lpl, Mosel?
[00:18:22] Speaker C: Yeah, we just started last night. Things are going well. Jackie Love is the best Zerith Bot in the world.
It's gonna be great.
Times are a changing.
I hate it.
Yeah, we had Zarith vs Syndra bot lane last night. It was great.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Oh beautiful.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was wonderful. Jackie Love's actually popping off though. He earned player of the match last night. We are just getting started though. LPL is a weird schedule this week. This time around it's five weeks of regular season but five days out of the week. So we have two days off again consistently.
But three days out of five are three best of threes. So be a lot of games just in a short time span.
And God Group Ascend.
I don't know if I can call it the best group anymore after what we saw last night. We have a lot of Nirvana teams from Split two who made it. Three out of four made it into Group Ascent for this split. So the opening marquee matchup yesterday of the split was LGD versus EDG and it went pretty, pretty badly for EDG. It was very one sided. LGD came out 20 and then Top Esports kind of snuffed out the we magic last night in a 20 as well.
But the league is going to be interesting. I think people are going to be really interested to check out Group Nirvana games just because we have a lot of big names in Group Nirvana now like ig, Weibo, Crisp is back in the league. We have a lot of like new faces back in the league. I guess. I guess not new faces but like returning faces which is really cool.
But the league itself is going to be quick and we're going to be getting to the playoffs in five or six weeks time. So make sure you.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Okay.
That is quick. That's a fast turnaround.
Also since you have the microphone, let's keep it rolling because I also wanted you to give a little plug for NaCl. Well, you wanted to check out tier two North America.
That has just started this week, correct?
[00:20:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, true. One thing I forgot to say sorry about LPL and then I'll go into acl.
They changed it. Also this, this split where every week we are in like a venue, the same venue all week for the same.
The same week. And it's going to be transitioning across the country. So it's really cool for fans. If you're in China, you get to like actually go see all the teams instead of being random pockets of teams all over the place.
So make sure you know if you're there. If you want to watch, you can buy tickets for any team you want. Now NaCl on the same trend. If I'm looking at what's happening on my screen because NaCl is happening right now. We have Victor versus Syndra bot lane. We have a goal off top. We have. We have Jace mid with Aurora top Lane. We. What's happening with the meta guys. But if you want to tune in for NaCl, it's going to be on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays typically. Sometimes it will just be on Thursdays and Fridays. Be two best of threes a day.
It's a weird schedule as well. There was groups that were drafted by the top two teams from last split and we heard information that the teams really wanted to have good scrim partners. So one of the teams chose all the best teams to be in their group so that they could get practice. Which means that we have two very lopsided groups. One is literally all the best teams. The other is literally all the developmental teams and the teams that were extremely bad last split.
So it's. It's gonna be. And teams in the same group don't play each other. That's what the idea was, is like they will be scrim partners instead of being played against until playoffs. So we have a lot of upset players, a lot of players that are like, I just really wanted to play against everybody they don't get to.
But it's gonna be fun. It's also a very quick turnaround. It's like five weeks as well before we get going into playoffs. So it'll be interesting. But tune in. It'll be on NaCl on Twitch and it's been pretty cool so far. We've had some fun games.
Nothing too crazy, but some of the picks have been interesting. We had Lock for the first time as well today.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw that. I saw a tweet that it was first picked earlier today. So yeah, interesting to see the Lock is going to be crazy when he hits competitive.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: Oh, he's already hit. Yeah, he already hit it in like LCP and stuff. He was banned away all night last night for LPL.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thanks for the updates for LPL and NaCl. Moselle.
One other update that we can give for news before we get into our kind of roster update heading into summer split and then our predictions. Is a fun little show match happening? Both LCS and LEC will have League Classic show matches this Friday.
I don't remember offhand the rosters. We covered them last week, me and Yanni. But just a reminder, if we get this episode out before Friday, then set your alarms.
If you're an NA to watch LEC in the morning or like if you're at work, you can just have it up and be watching the classic show match. It's going to be on the old league map. It's going to be old players from LEC teams as well as na. It's a little more focused with TSM and CLG X players sans Bjergsen who was supposed to play had to come out last minute and High is subbing in. So TSM has one non TSM player, but everybody else is historical kind of TSM guys, I I'm trying to procure two tickets for myself and Mizell so that way we can go with CLG jerseys and scream our butts off as CLG takes down tsm. I'm very excited for that. I've also never cheered for CLG Doublelift. This could be my first time because I started watching in 2016. The split that he left, that was a big narrative. So that's gonna be weird. It's gonna be weird in my. In my brain.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: It's gonna be cool. I also think it's really weird. What else is weird is LPL is also doing a classic match, but it's on the 31st.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Well, good for them.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: They get a participation. That's weird.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: I feel like everybody individually got their yeah, I think everybody individually got there like, oh, here's the League Classic announcement. Like you can plan whatever you want for your show. And this is my theory. I don't know if this is true, but this is my theory. N A was first to plan something with our show match of CLG tsm because those are two legacy orgs that we have a lot of the players, good relationships with these players and these orgs don't exist anymore. So it was like a pretty clear, oh, let's just do this. And then my theory is LEC KN heard we were doing it and was like, oh, we should do something too, because their announcement was way later than ours and they just did the full roster announcements on Twitter as opposed to na, which did like teases of like, oh, here's the top lanes here's the jungles. Like, every day was a new announcement, so it seemed a little more planned out. I don't know if that's true. If anybody from the LEC socials team or broadcast ever hears us, I'm sorry if I'm way off the ball, but that's just my assumption is that like n A planned it and then EU was like, oh, let's get that rolling too, because it's a. It's a good idea and do it kind of connected to our show because it'll be right beforehand.
[00:25:40] Speaker C: So.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: But yeah, that'll be fun to watch and it'll be good to cheer for CLG again. You know, I didn't even think to reach out to Duffy. We should have reached out to Duffy and be like, yo, are you gonna drive up? Are you doing this?
That's the one thing that would get Duffy back into League of Legends.
[00:25:55] Speaker C: I think it was just here a couple nights ago, so.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Yeah, but not for League of Legends. That was for the Odyssey, which I was not able to make, unfortunately. But was it good? Did you like the Odyssey? Miss all?
[00:26:07] Speaker C: I give it a seven out of ten.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: I've been living somewhere within three hours of an IMAX 70 millimeter screen. That's great.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: We have three of them here.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: I know. Yeah. The closest one for me is either Indianapolis or Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is. Which are both three plus hour drives.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Get some pretzels and some. Some five hour energies. You'll make it.
All right, that's it for news. If we missed anything, reminder to let us know in the community. Discord. You can find a link to that in the description if you're not already in there.
A lot of news happens and sometimes stuff comes out like, literally minutes after we record, so. Or like during a recording.
But sometimes we also just miss stuff. So let us know if there's something you want to talk about for next week. Also, shout out to anybody who supports the podcast, either through the Patreon or through the Merch Shop. Links to both of those are also both in the description. With that said, we got some regions to preview. Gentlemen, we're going to do this starting with LCS and then end with lec. And the way it's going to work is we're just going to go through the rosters of different teams and then specifically the teams that have made changes. A lot of teams have not made changes, but we're just going to kind of COVID all the roster updates and then give thoughts on if this makes the team Better if it makes it worse. Just give our general thoughts on these players and then we're gonna give our predictions for week one. And then we're gonna do the same thing for lec. Rinse and repeat and then we're gonna close out the episode. So starting with LCS Badger, I'm gonna toss this one to you. If you go to the bottom of our document, you'll see all of the changes. What's the first team on the list that has made changes and what are said changes and then let's talk about it.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: It.
Yeah. So that didn't make changes or did make changes.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: That did make changes.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Okay, so the first roster going down the page is this roster called Cloud9
[00:28:11] Speaker A: where I've heard of them. Yes.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: The changes that were made is now I will dominate is the head coach with Yamato as the quote unquote assistant coach.
And they now have a seven man roster with this mid laner that you might have heard of named Loki, playing mid lane, splitting time with APA and an AD carry by the name of Tactical that you might have also heard of in the past. So it's Thanatos Blabber, APA slash Loki, Sven Slash Tactical and Vulcan with.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Dom and Yamato as coaches specifically.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Funny because Dom now head coach. I was honestly like the big change in my mind is Dom coming in as assistant coach behind an Arrow and within one year, within a couple of months, an arrow's gone and errors out of there. Dom now head coach, Yamato's coming in as assistant coach. They still have Veigar V2 and Arrow as additional coaching staff, but Yamato is kind of like a big addition to it.
And Dom has not been kind about his co stream opinions. Back in the day when he was just co streaming of some of these players, specifically Tactical. He's flamed this guy on his own co streams and now he gets to coach him. Yamato has also heavily flamed APA on his reviews and in like streams where he like goes over LCS games and stuff. So it's gonna be a weird environment. I'm not gonna lie. I. I'm curious how the players are going to manage their relationship with these coaches because first off they're both kind of like personality creator coaches, but also they've been very opinionated negatively about some of these players. Mizel, what. What are your thoughts on the C9 7 man roster and the coaching staff changes?
[00:30:04] Speaker C: I think the coaching jazz changes are okay. I think the roster changes. I don't Know if they're needed, but whatever. I guess if they feel like they need to. I still think that APA has what it takes. I would hate to see him lose a spot to Loki. I think Tactical was really good last year in NaCl last split, rather sorry. And I think he'll be a welcome addition. Like I think he's got much better mindset now this time around and he went on like a long tangent on his Twitter about how he's kind of changing his view and mindset and how he's approaching being a pro player. So I want to see what that has in store for Tier one because if you remember at one point Tactical was like the best ADC we'd had in forever and he was contesting the old guard. He's really what kind of switched over to the new guard of ADCs. Yeah, he was kind of start of that.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: So he kind of paved the way. Yeah, it was, it was him and Core JJ in the bot lane replacing Doublelift. That was huge back in the day of like, oh my God, Doublelift got bench and Tacticals in. Tactical looks great. He never looked as good without Core jj, but maybe he will look better with this roster together.
Important to note that the way that they communicated this publicly at least was this is an experiment and that they, it didn't feel like they were saying hey, we have a seven man active roster. It seemed like they were saying hey, we have seven players signed. But I anticipate by like week three of summer split we're only going to see five players play that they're going to kind of decide it based on scrims, based on stage games, who they're going to commit to and then commit to those players to gear up for Worlds. In my mind this doesn't read like the type of team environment and coaching staff that would do an actual true seven man roster going into Worlds or, or like six man roster going into Worlds.
It feels like they're, they're trying to find the best possible combination to just get to Worlds. Because getting to Worlds has been a struggle for C9 historically at least recent history.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: They're not gonna, they're not gonna trade for a player, have them play like three games in total and then play. Just release them over the off season.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Well, no, that was only two games that Castle played. But I like that you gave them the benefit of the doubt for, for three, right?
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Shoot.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Actually, was it three? I thought it was only two.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: I thought it was three games, but I damn, I don't Know.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Well, one of us is right.
Point is.
[00:32:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Good. Good burn. I like that burn. I. I approve.
Mazel. Going down the list, what is the next team to make a roster change? What is it and what do we think about it?
[00:32:42] Speaker B: It.
[00:32:44] Speaker C: Oh, it. It's. It's a. A big one. It's.
It's Daddy Denor coming in for Dignitas.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: Is that the official title?
[00:32:55] Speaker C: Is that.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Is that what NaCl?
[00:32:56] Speaker C: Gwynor, Daddy Denor.
Denanar, whatever you want. Anything.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: I thought Denthor's dad was Pill Scar. I thought that that was dad.
Shout out pillar for anybody.
He's nothing. Twitch out a lot.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: True.
Huge shout out to Denethor. I think he's been deserving of this for a long time. He's a guy that has a really good mindset. I still remember back at watching the finals at World of Worlds at the Fly Quest facility way back when, when Weibo got destroyed in the finals. That was great.
I got to sit and talk with him for a decent amount and I got to like watch him interact with Whippo who at the time hadn't been an idiot.
And it was really cool to hear how he approaches improvement and we got to see a lot of that. He signed with Winthrop University and he never left the org. He was with them through their promotion to the nacl. Well, I guess their buy in to the NACL and. And has been with them ever since. And there hasn't been any drama, nothing around him, which I think has been really cool. He's just a solid guy that loves playing for Winthrop University and now he gets his opportunity at tier one, which I think we've all been saying he's been deserving of. He's always been kind of second or third fiddle with some of the other big names like Zamuto and. And Serdy was coming through and everything. But Denethor is truly that next level up it feels like after those guys. And it's cool to see him finally get his shot.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I feel like the names that are above him currently custardes in LCS as well. So the other names in tier 2 would be like Zamudo and Hoarder. I would. I would say in there as well.
[00:34:31] Speaker C: But Dennis better than Hoarder for sure.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, fair.
[00:34:35] Speaker C: I think Denethor contests Zamuto also.
[00:34:38] Speaker A: Hoarder and Zamudo are Canadian, which it's been tough to get Canadians in to play in the LCS recently.
So for a couple reasons, Denethor has been able to get his Opportunity earning his spot in. I remember watching him in scouting combines back a few years back like running the Rift evil geniuses combine and also being very impressed with his carry performances and he's definitely made a name for himself specifically on Gnar. He was also like a Camille one trick back before he joined competitive and is still a very good Camille player
[00:35:08] Speaker C: is what you have to be the most scared about that that man will carry any game with Gwen even if they're down 0:20. It's crazy.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Well, we'll keep our eyes peeled if he's able to do that Week one of LCS or at least at any point throughout the lcs. Please dig.
[00:35:22] Speaker C: Don't mess this up, man.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, very.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: Except every other top later you've ever signed from tier two, please.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Oh my God. Wait, you're right. They did sign 30. They did. They ever signed Samuto? I don't. I don't think so. That was lion that had Zamuto for a while.
[00:35:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I am.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Well either way I believe in Jonathan, believe in GM Jonathan. Hopefully it works out for him.
Badger, the one thing that me and Yanni talked about last week, I'm curious your thoughts on it. For a team like Dignitas, Photon was kind of like a rock for them in the top lane, like FBI, I would say is the firepower. He's the one that's like the primary carry on this roster. But Photon often would be in a really good spot in lane.
Are you concerned at all that this makes Dignitas worse? I mean, I think we can all say we're excited for a rookie and a top laner to come in. So I don't want to take the wheels off right. That narrative. But in terms of like expectations for how good Dignitas will look on the rift, what do we think about this change in effect? Think.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: I think the big thing that I'm taking out of it in this situation is that they're playing for next year. Like sure. Is there anybody who genuinely thinks that they have a chance at Worlds at this point? I mean you get the rookie in. If you think you're going to stick with him long term, you can go ahead and get him some reps, get him acclimated to the space so the next year you can come in, figure out what you're gonna do with the rest of the roster at that point and then work towards creating your dream roster to start contending in 2027, I would say is how I would play this out. Now am I worried because it's Dignitas abs. Absolutely, yes, 100%.
So wish him the best.
Expect the middle of the pack maybe like okay. I mean I, I'm looking up and down at the names like it's going to be good practice. There's. There's some good players in the region for him to get experience from just whether that be within scrims or that be within like the actual stage matches like getting your rear end handed to you by Impact and Morgan and is going to be great practice for down the line, especially for a rookie. So true.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: And who knows maybe he steps up and surprises us. There are only three NA top laners in the LCS right now. DeNA and Serdi Fudge, oceanic player Gat goes European and then we got Morgan Impact Thanatos as the Korean top laners. So yeah, it's almost half the league. That's NA Den definitely has a lot to prove but I think that it the. The whole focus on like this is about next year makes a lot of sense to me. Like I don't think Diggs in any sort of delusional state to be like oh this is going to get us to worlds like bringing a rookie top laner. But it is definitely a scrappy low to the ground build of a roster to begin with and now this kind of at least is giving them more like NA development on top of that which I'm excited for next team. Shopify Rebellion. I'll take this one.
They made one change in the off season. It was not the change that a lot of folks expected, which for me, I. I don't know if actually anybody here agrees. I thought it'd be a coaching staff change for Shopify Rebellion. I thought for sure Revan would be out. Maybe Demonte would move up to head coach. At least they would try and get somebody else in. Just from the the document or docu series. It wasn't even a series. It was like the one long form video that they put out. Definitely felt like there was some just like I don't even know the word to describe it. Just non cohesion between the coaching staff and the players. But no, the change is actually in support. SEOs gonna be heading back to Brazil and it's Zazel coming in. The biggest beard in the LCS is back baby. As Zazel had played on Shopify Rebellion briefly last year when SEOs was still waiting for his visa to be approved. I believe Zazel got one week of games if not two.
And now full circle, he's back. He's going to be replacing SEO's full time for the summer split. I think that this is going to make the roster better. I do not think that Zazel will be a top of the pack support. I think he'll still be towards the bottom, probably above players like Lions, maybe Ignar.
But I think that cohesion with the team Zazel will work better with contracts and maybe even players like A Zani. Casios just look kind of lost a lot last year.
Misell, let's get your thoughts here because I know that you've been pretty high in Zazel as well.
[00:40:21] Speaker C: So.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: So what are your. What are your thoughts on Zazel going to Shopify Rebellion?
[00:40:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I thought he was the reason why Luminosity was able to do so many dominant things last year in the nacl. I was surprised that he wasn't on either a Tier two team or even a Tier one team coming into the year. And it's nice to see him finally get a shot. It's overdue.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: It is. He's been, I think with support as a role in Tier two, it's so hard to like just develop supports that will actually succeed in Tier one. It's very rare that we get that. Busio was the most recent example and then Cryogen is like a current one that's still being tested of like is he gonna be a good support long term? It's a very young roster. He's looking promising. Very promising. But like the last success story we had was Busio. Before Busio.
I feel like the last success story of a rookie support coming into tier one was Zazel. It was like 2016 or 20, 2018 I believe was the year that he came in.
And then they went to Worlds as like this six man roster and he was able to get to the semifinals taking down a freak of freaks in quarterfinals. So know crazy to think about. But Zazel definitely has the experience and can add that experience to Shop of Rebellion. Badger, do you have any big thoughts on Zazel or are we ready to move on to the next team?
[00:41:45] Speaker B: Fear the Beard.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Fear the Beard.
Exactly. Next team. Speaking of Badger, talk to me, what is the next team in the LCS in order here? Actually, I believe this is the last one. There weren't many changes in the LCS during this office.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: No, there was. It was a pretty tame, you know, a.
A couple of roster changes.
Serdy. Welcome back to the Rift, brother.
Playing for disguised.
Taking Castle's spot. Yep.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Technically this was already like happening last split because he came in for the last two weeks when Castle got picked up by Lion. And then we already joked about it. Only played a handful of games, a sprinkling of games before getting dropped from the roster, so. But Serdy stayed on.
[00:42:32] Speaker C: Speaking of, just really quick feels. Feels so bad. The guy had such a glowing personality. It was so kind. And like, the few interviews we got for him, like, I could genuinely feel, like, how excited he was and stuff. And then the dude just gets picked up by a team, take it away from T where he was already playing to be on a secondary spot and try to earn the spot, and then just doesn't get playing time and then just gets dropped. Dropped. Like.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:42:56] Speaker C: Or I guess separates with the team. Feels bad, man.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: It feels awful. And I think it leaves a bad taste in my mouth for how that all happened. Like, I don't know where to point a finger in terms of, you know, who. Who's at fault here, but it's hard to not, like, question, like, what's going on, Lion? Like, what was that?
Especially the content we talked about briefly, like, a week or two ago. But the whole, like, I remember in some interviews the coaches even being like, this wasn't our decision. Like, this was management making this call. That's just like a. Oh, that's.
It's just a weird feel like I don't know what to do.
[00:43:31] Speaker C: Castle is screwed. So nice. Yeah.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: So sucks for. For Castle.
Serdi at least gets a starting position. It's his first starting position in a year. He's been a mercenary. He was on Dignitas, then he subbed in for lion, then he subbed in for dsg. Now he's on DSG as a starting top laner to start off a split. So it's been a year since he can say that, that happy to at least have him back in the league.
And I think that this will also similar to the dig thoughts that I had.
I feel like this makes DSG a little worse. Like, right now, my hope is that this roster just clicks and they find some magic. Because again, Castle. If you looked at any average, like, gold graph for dsg, everybody's behind in gold except for Castle. Castle was like, the only one that had a gold advantage pretty much at any point on average during the games.
Serdy looked good in his first four games last split when they closed out the season.
But is he gonna have the same type of impact that Castle did for kind of like, keeping this team competitive in games?
Yeah, that's. That's lcs though. A lot of half of the teams had changes. A lot of, like, small changes, though. Just like one player here or there. C9 with the biggest change for sure. So that leads into our expectations for week one.
[00:44:56] Speaker C: Let's.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: Let's cover predict for lcs. There are four series ahead of us. Two on Saturday, two on Sunday.
And let's go down the list. We have Fly Quest versus Lion to kick things off. This would have been a very exciting one, sans the news that Inspired will not be playing. Guaranteed. Week one expectation is our Mayo, if you believe the rumors, or at least some sub juggler coming in. And because of that, we have Fly Quests across the board. I have a FlyQuest 2. Oh, Badger and Mazzelle both agree. Two 1.
Badger, I'm gonna give this one to you. Why do you think FlyQuest lose a game? Why do you think lion are still able to get a game without Inspired?
[00:45:35] Speaker B: I mean, lion still just.
There's still a team that despite.
Despite Inspired absence, the rest of the pieces around the team can lift up whichever sub jungler they have.
Maybe Berserker's been practicing the Zerith bot or, you know, is that what you want?
[00:45:59] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: I don't. I don't want Mages that.
[00:46:02] Speaker C: Is that what I want?
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Get these rages out of my body, damn it.
[00:46:06] Speaker C: But he did really good.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: So fair. I guess.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: I. Yeah, I think the rest of the roster, I mean Berserker and Saint can carry a game against.
Against FlyQuest, but yeah, the. The inspired missing piece is a massive factor. Obviously we. We can't state it enough at this point. I mean, this dude's like the best player in the west potentially at this point.
And missing the best player in the west is not good for your team.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: This gives a huge opportunity for FlyQuest though. I know it's tough to like have these types of conversations when like competitive integrity matters so much to a sport, but hey, take the opportunity given to you. Fly Quest. If they can win this series, massive for playoff implications. If you think about three teams get to Worlds, FlyQuests were already fighting for that. Like they were in fourth. They were fighting for that third spot going towards MSI contention. And now the conversation after spring split finals was, ooh, C9 bombed out. Can Fly Quest take that third spot and go to Worlds instead of C9 now? If lion just kind of give them a Super Easy Week 1 matchup, huge opportunity for Fly Quest where one of the big three is just kind of out of the way and they can now just focus on Team Liquid and C9 and getting those wins for the rest of the Summer split, maybe like Sentinel Shopify can contest with them as well. But yeah, big, big opportunity for FlyQuest here to kind of catapult themselves ahead, taking a.
What would have been a rough matchup and, and now getting an easier path.
Sentinels versus Dignitas is the second match on Saturday. I got Sentinels 2 1. Badgers got Sentinels 2 1. Mezelle's got Dignitas 2 1. Dignity to us. Mizell, do you think that some of this Magic in the top lane is going to help him out now, Dennis, we're coming in making big plays.
[00:47:58] Speaker C: One game.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: You what?
[00:48:01] Speaker C: He gets Gwynethor for one game.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: All right, the Gwen for one game. How do they win the second game? Is. Is it Camila Thor, Magic Dunn and Are.
[00:48:12] Speaker C: No, probably, maybe Nar because it's a good blind.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
He's up against Impact for his debut, though.
[00:48:18] Speaker C: I don't know. There's just been a huge track record of in the first couple weeks, tier 2 player comes in and for some reason they win.
Right. We had like DSG last split or last year.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: Yes. The Jed looked like better on his first series than any of his other series, funnily enough.
[00:48:40] Speaker C: And then the Jungler sub as well. Oh, my God. Why can't I. His name. No, no, the other one.
The French guy. And he's not playing anymore.
Oh, my God.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: In lcs?
[00:48:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: Why am I not even processing this at all?
I remember Kizno being in for dsg.
[00:49:04] Speaker C: Oh, what was his name? Oh, my God.
This.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: I mean, Cryra's French Canadian is.
[00:49:10] Speaker C: There you go.
[00:49:12] Speaker B: I'm like, well, he's an active player,
[00:49:14] Speaker A: he's not a sub player, but. Oh, you're saying like his.
[00:49:17] Speaker C: When he first subbed in. Yeah, when he came in.
Yeah, he did really good. All right.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I actually. You're starting to convince me a little bit. I just feel like Sentinels, they have the same roster. Dignitas is gonna have to get used to a new top laner. So I just kind of default pick Sentinels. But you're making a compelling argument there. So either way, it should be a fun series. I'm going to be casting that one I Graphic because I don't know, but I had a hunch. It feels like Impact has played against a lot of rookies on their debut. Does anybody else feel like Impacts just constantly is like the welcome party for new top laners? I know Sniper's first matchup top lane was the Versus Impact. And I thought there was like another notable one.
I don't I can't remember for a Serdi or somebody else, but it's just. I asked Stats Leo, the stats guy who's been on the pod before, to be like, can you look into, like, all rookie top laners and who they debuted against? Because I feel like a lot of them debuted against Impact because he's always been playing since, like, 2015 in the league. So I imagine that historically, like, licorice, like, there's probably a lot of top laners that you could get back to and be like, who. Who played against Impact first? And how'd their stats look like? Because it's kind of a funny welcoming party.
Next day, though, Sunday, Team Liquid versus C9. I got Team Liquid 2.
Oh, baby. I think they're gonna smack them. Badgers got C921. Mazel's got C920.
[00:50:41] Speaker C: Whoa.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: So we got actually kind of all across the board here. I'll start first because I'm the odd man out. Team Liquid 2. Oh. I just feel like this experiment with C9 is going to wield.
It's going to bear better fruits later in the split than earlier. I feel like that first week is actually going to be the most awkward for them and that we'll see them kind of come into their own more later down the road in summer split.
Now, I say all that knowing it is regular season C9 and regular season C9, for some reason, just can't lose games, but I am, in fact, betting against them. Mizell, you're on the opposite side of the spectrum. Why do you think C920?
[00:51:17] Speaker C: Dude, everything's upside down in LCS. Anytime there's changes or anything, they do really good at the beginning, and then they fall off. So that's what's going to happen.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Okay. Damn.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: I mean, that has been the trend of C9 badgers. That kind of similar to. To your expectations.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Honeymoon phase. How will t TL know who C9's trotting out if C9 doesn't even know at this point who they're trotting out? Out. So
[00:51:44] Speaker A: that's a good.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: It just gets confused. Maybe they're like, wait a minute, are you allowed seven players? Maybe Jackson.
[00:51:51] Speaker B: They use Pot of Greed. They draw two additional cards from their deck.
[00:51:55] Speaker A: Draw two additional players from their roster. DSG versus Shopify Rebellion is the last game of the weekend for the LCS. I have DSG 2. 1. Badger has TSG 2.
[00:52:04] Speaker C: 1. Or.
[00:52:05] Speaker A: Sorry, I have 2. Oh. Badger is 2. 1 and Mizell has 2 1. Bickle did put his predictions in, and this is the only one that he's differentiated from Badger on. He's actually got Shopify Rebellion winning that one, but he's not here to defend himself. So, Badger, what's your reason to, you know, preference DSG over Shopify?
[00:52:27] Speaker B: I'm gonna be so for real with you. I flipped a coin and that's where I was, where I went with this. I.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: That is pretty based.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
I.
I do not know what to expect from these teams. So roster changes. I mean, apparently it's not really a roster change because they're playing with the same roster that they played with.
[00:52:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
And Shopify, this was the same DSG roster from last split because they played them the last week to see who made it into playoffs. DSG had a shot to make it Shopify one, and so they were able to get in. I gave her as a stunner. It was a whole thing.
But now Shopify is the one with a different roster coming in, and Zazel is in support. So that is kind of the. The change here. I think that does make Shopify better. So I'm actually wondering to myself now, why the hell did I put DSG2? Oh, I'm kind of convincing myself the Shopify will win this.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: I put DSG2O because if I want Shopify to win, I can't predict them. That's what it was that. Now I remember my reasoning here. There we go.
We're caught up.
Shopify Rebellion. Zs to your team. Okay, that's it for lcs. We were wrapped up on. On the rosters, on the expectations went a little longer on that than I was hoping. So for Lec, there's more roster changes, but we probably won't go as in depth on them as LCs just because we've In. In. You know, we. We got to get through the podcast. We don't have that much time. But similar to how we did before four, let's go down the order. I'll start off. G2 has a new coach coming in. You might have heard of him. His name is Perks. Apparently he was a pretty big deal back when he was a player in the mid lane. He made it to World's Finals.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: I heard his azir was bad and his rise was somehow worse.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: Oh, that's not a good two to have be bad. What was he good at? Was it Pike? I think he was good at pike at some point.
[00:54:21] Speaker B: He was. Yeah.
[00:54:22] Speaker C: One of the.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:54:24] Speaker A: Something like that. Well, either way, he's going to step in as coach for G2. Dylan Falco is out. This was a big change in the off season.
I don't love it. I feel like we're getting a similar thing in C9 where like a more established coach is getting ousted for a player coach to step in. And to me, I always press X to doubt. Kind of like if you're a player like X player like Dom or X player like Perks sitting behind a coach watching them coach, I got to imagine there's part of you that's like, I could do this better. Like, ah, I, I like if you ever disagree with them, but they're the head coach and you're the assistant coach. I feel like that's gotta be a tough situation to navigate and usually owners will just like defer, oh, this player like Perks made it to World's Finals. Yeah, like we're gonna go with him over Dylan Falco despite Dylan Falco being a legendary coach in the region. And I don't know, Miselle, do you think I'm, I'm talking on my ass here or do you think there's any truth to that or what are your thoughts in general about a player coach replacing a legacy coach?
[00:55:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I think it's the best world would be to work in tandem, but people have egos so that's never going to happen.
I, I agree it's got to be a tough situation. I don't know if I agree with the switch out, especially when we're seeing it so many places. But, but I mean having some of that experience is always good. I think they can see things maybe that a coach who hasn't played or been at that level can see. But that's why I think it works best in tandem. So I guess we'll see.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's going to be my reaction to a lot of these is we'll see how things shape up here.
Actually, you know, Badger, let's get your thoughts as well. This is one we'll take a little longer on just because there's some more meat to it. And also you have done coaching in the past. So as a coach, whether for league or Overwatch or whatever Valorant. Is that what you're doing right now? You do like every game. What are your thoughts on like a player coming in and replacing a legacy coach?
[00:56:28] Speaker B: I think this is a terrible fucking decision.
I, I'm gonna just, I'm just gonna be blunt off the top and then kind of explain the rationale behind it. So one of the things that I always hated in the system was players coaching other players.
It just felt like it was creating an environment where you weren't able to give the proper feedback to the players. Especially with someone who's like. Someone like Perks who's either played a ton of matches against these players or with these players. In the case of like, I mean him and Caps were on the same team for three years together for the longest time he's played against Hans, he's played against bb. He's. I guess Lebrov wasn't around really at that point when he was at his peak but like just getting that relation and I mean I might be wrong. Their relationship might be in a good spot where he's able to give the hard feedback and Caps is able to take that and not take it personally or as like a slight just based on how things are.
So.
But then on the other side you have Dylan Falco who is one of the most, if not the most successful coach that the west has ever produced in League of Legends regions, who if he's inactive and he still has the desire to keep coaching at this point there are, I was about to say 19. There are 17 other teams across both of these regions that should be blowing up his email, getting into his Twitter dms, finding out how to contact him like who's his representation just to at least get the opportunity to talk to him him to bring him into this team. Hell, there are probably LCK or LPL teams that are very interested in Dylan, Dylan Falco's services at this point too. He could go anywhere in the world honestly and coach a team and I think the players there would respect him based on his track record that he's had at this point throughout his entire tenure with all of the teams that he's been with at this point. Point.
[00:58:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's a tough one to see go and I definitely agree that he will get a team.
I'm surprised he did not already make it to one. Maybe some G2 shenanigans.
[00:58:44] Speaker C: I.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: They've had a kind of a bad track record of like contract jailing people or like non compete clauses and stuff but I imagine at some point he will get onto a team and elevate whatever team he makes it onto after that fact. He had a great run on Fanatic, you know, making it to. He. I believe he was coaching them at the. That World's Final. Yeah, it was 2018 that he was on Fanatic make. Getting them to World's Finals was incredible.
Went to Schalke and had some success there. But then his entire tenure at G2, I mean, like, they won everything while he was on G2.
[00:59:20] Speaker B: He was the coach of the 2016 Immortals team that went 17 and 1.
[00:59:25] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:59:26] Speaker B: He was. Yes. Like, he's been around for 10 years at this point. He's had. He's. I'm looking it up right now. He's won 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. 12 splits. Essentially, he's 1.
He has won 12 splits as a coach.
[00:59:49] Speaker A: Pretty good. That's pretty good.
I. I think that's a good track record.
So whoever gets him gonna be in a good spot. We'll see when he gets picked up by another team.
Moving on, though. There's one. Actually, not one. I don't know why I even pretended there was one. There's a lot. So, again, we're gonna get through some of these a little faster. This next one we can take some time on, though, because. Mazel. You actually have some information on this player. So next up, Fnatic made a change in the top lane and Piros is out and a new player is in. And this is a player that you actually are a little familiar with right now, right?
[01:00:22] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's not gonna take very long.
Saboro is coming in for Fnatic and I can't do the soundboard because I don't have it, but. That guy stinks.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: Oh, brother, this guy stinks.
[01:00:36] Speaker C: He was. He was really rough in his debut in lpl, this last split and. Or at least the. The beginning of this year. And I don't know. I mean, the only thing that we are saying or like thinking as a LPL collective is like, did Fnatic watch, like, his lck VODs? Because two years ago he was in LCK and it was like he was okay, but in lpl, he never found his footing and it was really tough. And now he goes and be the premier top laner for one of the premier leagues in the. In Europe. So good luck, Fnatic. I don't know how it's going to look up. Maybe he does well. Maybe. Maybe he does great, but he was not great in lpl.
[01:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah. That's all well happy that we got some of the context there, because obviously the power level in the LC or LEC will be lower than the LPL on average.
The top end, you know, G2 was able to take down top esports and such, but in general, like, maybe Saboro is going to have a better mashup against this competition. I just don't see this fixing Fnatic bringing in a Korean player who was just playing in the lpl.
That's going to be a trend here. A lot of Korean imports in the LEC this summer. Split up Next Badger Shifter's got Shayo and Stend in.
[01:01:54] Speaker B: Do we stop Nothing Burger move that. This is like the most nothing like move that I've seen.
Like, I don't even know what to
[01:02:02] Speaker C: say at this point.
[01:02:03] Speaker B: Like I. I will admit though I cannot remember for the life of me who there.
Who their chunkler and support were last season. So like good, good on them. I getting more household names I guess. I guess SHO has been around for a while at this point.
[01:02:22] Speaker A: So it was Bukata and Trimby and technically.
[01:02:27] Speaker B: That's right, Trimby.
[01:02:28] Speaker A: Technically both are still on the roster.
Shayo is. These are just the listed starters, so Bukata could still play and Trimby is now listed as a substitute. So technically the roster is listed as like a six man roster with one sub.
[01:02:46] Speaker C: But.
[01:02:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't this feel exactly what you said. Nothing. Burger Shale for Bukata, stand for Trimby. Whatever. I feel like those are lateral moves at best.
And Shaya moving from Team Heretics means that Team Heretics made a change.
We can just skip to that one. Now it's Dagless in. So again just kind of moving players around from Tier 2 to Tier 1 to Tier 2 to Tier 1. Dagless coming in and then Hype coming in in the bottom lane.
Now I'm blanking. Was I believe Team Heretics. Were they the ones that had ice? No, it was Noah. I think Team Heretics had Noah.
[01:03:21] Speaker B: No, Noah was with Giant X.
[01:03:24] Speaker A: Okay, man. Okay.
[01:03:26] Speaker B: I know it was ice.
[01:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it. It was ice in the bot lane for Team Heretics getting replaced by another Korean bot laner in hot Hype. Do you have any information on Hype Badger? I. I know you have a little.
[01:03:39] Speaker B: Yeah, Liz Sandbox Challengers. KT Challengers. Kind of a middle of the pack. LCK Academy 80 carry did some time in Turkey at the start of the season.
[01:03:53] Speaker A: What like. Like jail time?
[01:03:57] Speaker B: I mean he was playing there, but yeah, essentially it could be considered jail time as well.
[01:04:00] Speaker C: Getting.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: Getting relegated to playing there. I mean went from okay, okay bro to Turkey and now on Heretics. So I mean did win best bot laner in 2024 spring and summer. So I guess that's a. Okay, a positive.
[01:04:20] Speaker A: Hey, that's pretty hype.
[01:04:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:04:24] Speaker B: There.
[01:04:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:04:28] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah.
All right.
[01:04:30] Speaker C: What else can we say?
[01:04:31] Speaker A: Here.
[01:04:32] Speaker B: I mean, his experience in Tier 1 was not that great. So, sure, maybe he'll be good, and maybe he'll be good in Europe. Who knows?
[01:04:40] Speaker A: And that's the thing. I feel like I said this before we went live on the. The podcast. LEC's. They're kind of getting the LCS treatment. LCS fans have been used to the revolving door of Korean challenger players coming in, leaving, coming in, leaving. And I think LEC over the last year and a half, now, they're really feeling that as well. Like, a lot of these rosters, we'll cover two together at the very end here are literally just, yeah, more. Throw more Korean challenger players into the mix and see if they make your team better. It did not work in the lcs.
I'm very concerned that the LEC seems to be having the same game plan here when they had had such a great track record from like 2020 to 2024 of bringing up European players and, you know, really showing that there was depth in the European player pool.
Let's cover GX next, because it's just, again, lateral moves. Oscar, Renan and Flackid. I'm not even gonna say anything about that. Whatever.
[01:05:37] Speaker B: They just really like taking fanatics, like, pieces that they throw in the dumpster. Like, someone needs to, like, check the security footage at the the Fanatic house to make sure that they aren't just, like, rummaging through their garbage at the end of the night.
[01:05:51] Speaker C: Jeez.
[01:05:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:05:54] Speaker A: Oscar and didn't look great on Fnatic. And now let's see if he looks great on gx. Again, the. The kind of catchphrase of LEC changes is let's see. Let's see what happens here. Something's gonna happen. Somebody's got to be last place. I don't know who it's gonna be.
[01:06:08] Speaker B: It didn't work for those other guys, but it might work for us.
[01:06:11] Speaker A: Maybe. Maybe. Speaking of SK Slow coming in in the mid lane and another Korean import mid laner. And then the final one is Vitality, who had a legendary bomb out in playoffs, looked great in the regular season.
Number one seed going into playoffs just straight bombed. They could not make anything happen in playoffs. And they're making a change with Fiesta coming in the mid lane to replace Humanoid Badger. Do you have any insight into either of these creators?
[01:06:39] Speaker B: Yeah, Slow Queue is actually Korean in Swedish, so. Oh, in the EU Masters, kind of Emea for entire career, so played with Casey Blue for a year.
Played in Turkey with Hype at the start of the Season on Misa.
Yeah. I mean could could easily come in be middle of the pack mid lane.
Gonna give him a shot definitely. But we'll see. Did win did win Emea's summer like Emea Masters challengers, whatever it is the summer main event and then Fiesta.
Oh boy. I I think Bickle and I both were just like in agreeance that this is like Fiesta is one of the names games to to pick up for a roster to replace Humanoid. So I mean spent a long time on Nongshim, got sent back down to Academy with Fear Ex Youth was the replacement for Daystar in that organization and then had you know, a halfway decent showing in spring.
Ish.
And then got called up to tier one leagues again. Somehow you don't really see it.
Yeah.
Good good, good luck vitality. I I, I, I hope you watched watch the tape. I I don't know what tape you
[01:08:24] Speaker A: watched but I just hope that the rest of the roster's mental holds because like man, Humanoid was so fun and like anytime you saw a footage of this team it seemed like they were having so much fun outside of like their post playoff depression content.
So I just hope that they maintain that.
[01:08:42] Speaker B: Let me just read you this roster that he was on when he played for Supermassive before he attack Armut Skins Unforgiven and Carrie as the bot Lane.
So yeah, those are, those are, those are names if yeah, those are names if I've ever heard them before.
[01:09:02] Speaker A: But yeah, not to be confused with forgiven who will be in the LEC show match.
[01:09:05] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah.
[01:09:09] Speaker A: Well, hey again, we'll see what happens.
[01:09:12] Speaker B: We'll see what happens.
[01:09:14] Speaker A: All right. LEC week one. Let's talk about predictions for the start of lec.
No note. It's going to be in Paris. Their road show or road trip as they've been calling them is kicking off week one. Mazel. You said that you were excited about this, right? It's pretty, pretty fun way to start off a split.
[01:09:32] Speaker C: Yeah, it makes the start of the split feel a little bit more hyphy. Also gives obviously road shows which are awesome in their own right. You get to go to Paris. You get to have some fun with the French teams as well. I think it's a win win and I think more leagues should do opening and closing and in road shows, especially
[01:09:52] Speaker A: the finals in road shows. Because I will say that was very funny in LEC when like the last week of the regular season was a huge big roadshow and then finals was just in the studio. It's like, okay, well, do we not have, like, overlapped that or something?
[01:10:07] Speaker B: No, no. Why would we do that?
[01:10:09] Speaker C: And when. When LCS does their finals in the studio, it's also the most lackluster thing.
[01:10:15] Speaker A: It's just. Yeah, nobody likes a studio finals. Like, you want the roadshow finals, they're way more fun.
But this is a roadshow. So let's talk about the teams. There will be four teams similar to all the past formats. It will be G2, MCOID, Vitality, and KC as the four teams represented. So they're just going to be doing like a little mini round robin amongst themselves to kick off the split. And they were also the top four teams from spring. So I think it's really cool that we just get arguably the best teams sans maybe Vitality, who they could struggle a bit here with their roster change.
But yeah, really, really cool way to start it off. G2 MCO kicks things off. I got MCOID 21. Badger agrees. Mizell's got G2.2 1. I have it as McCoy, because G2 is going to be coming off of MSI Blues and a bit of that post international hangover. So that's a big reason. I got mcoid. Miselle, do you think that. That there's like a strong reason? Usually you always go for your boy, JoJo. Sorry, what was that?
[01:11:15] Speaker C: I said ain't no hangover. One team region. Let's go.
[01:11:18] Speaker A: One team region. But I. I do want to note, I think this is the first time you've ever predicted against JoJo. I don't know if you've ever done this before. I'm kind of shocked. Yeah. Is he no longer American to you? He's no longer North American.
[01:11:28] Speaker C: Yeah, he's been there too long.
[01:11:30] Speaker B: He's been contaminated by. By a one team region. Too much.
[01:11:34] Speaker A: True, true Vitality. KC is next on. Oh, by the way, these are.
I believe I was about to say that with confidence, and then I realized I don't actually 100% know with confidence. Yes, they are Friday. So these are going to be this coming Friday. Hopefully this episode is out before these games air. But maybe we're talking about games that have already happened, in which case you can judge us if we're incorrect on our predictions because we all have KC2O versus Vitality. The second series of the day. Vitality just made the roster changes. We're not excited about them. KC's playing in front of what type of crowd, Mizell?
[01:12:08] Speaker C: Home crowd.
[01:12:09] Speaker A: I was gonna. Yeah, that works. I was gonna say French crowd.
And they are the French Org.
[01:12:14] Speaker B: They're. They're playing in front of the.
[01:12:16] Speaker C: The blue wall.
[01:12:17] Speaker A: Paris, France yes, the blue wall. They will be playing in front of a home crowd, French crowd, blue wall, crowd, whatever you want to call it. That should amp up kc. They have historically done very well when they play at home.
Next up, day two, Saturday. It's Vitality versus G2. And oh, my God, we all have G2 taking this one. Badger has one game to Vitality, though, so defend yourself, Badger. How does Vitality get their game?
[01:12:40] Speaker B: I don't. I don't know.
[01:12:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:12:42] Speaker B: Dylan Falco is not coaching this team anymore. It's the wild, wild west for G2. I have no idea what to expect.
[01:12:49] Speaker A: That is a good point. Actually, the draft.
[01:12:52] Speaker B: Dylan Falco is no longer the coach of gamers as well. I. That. That. That played such a big factor into my predictions for this week weekend, just based on that fact alone.
[01:13:05] Speaker A: Oh, hey, respect. I mean, I think a lot of us have G2 struggling this opening weekend, looking kind of ahead here.
So echo that sentiment. I do still think that G2 will be better than Vitality, though. So that's why I got the 2.0for them because I just. I do not have a lot of faith in this Vitality roster. Casey Versamco is always a banger, though. Oh, my God, man. The Spanish versus the French. A tale as old as time. I'm sure they fought for territory at some point. Point lately it's been Casey getting the better of McOil in their last couple of bouts, especially in front of the home crowd. So I got KC2 1. Badger and Mizell both agree to one, and that is now a second time that Mizell has voted against JoJo.
[01:13:45] Speaker C: I'm just gonna keep for Busio.
[01:13:47] Speaker A: So it is for Busio and it's for the French. And you know what? I'll give you credit because this next time, you have Mcoy taking it. I got MCOI, badgers got MCO, and Zell's got MCOID. We all got a 2:1.
I am happy that we all agreed on 2:1. I'm curious if we all a have the same reasoning. My reason was MCO is always a little tilted after losing to Casey, so I think that they will still win, but they will in a game due to mental Badger. What. What are your thoughts? Do you agree with that?
[01:14:14] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah.
I. It's hard to, like, put it into words, but yeah, that's the best way to put it of just like the. The losing to Casey the night before and then having to Play, say another French team and France.
I mean, they might just come out and just absolutely whip the sh.
Whip them BTA or whatever. And I'm trying to figure out, like, the best.
They might just like absolute belt to ass, like perfect.
[01:14:47] Speaker A: They might make them say, oh, yes,
[01:14:49] Speaker B: Daddy, yes, that exactly.
[01:14:53] Speaker A: That's not the end of the episode, by the way.
[01:14:54] Speaker B: That's not the end of the episode. I know.
[01:14:56] Speaker A: Also, I'm realizing, I almost confident, very confident that not everybody listens to the end of every episode. So that might have just been completely out of left field for a decent chunk of our viewers.
[01:15:07] Speaker C: True.
[01:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:08] Speaker B: So true.
[01:15:09] Speaker A: You got to listen to the end, everybody. It's tradition.
Next up Sunday after MCOID vitality, we got G2KC to close out the weekend. And we all have Casey taking this. G2 with their coaching change did not impress us. Casey, again, in front of a home crowd, are just super powered. I have them going 30 on the weekend. So does Mizelle and so does Badger, which means we've all cursed them. I hope you know that that true. I don't think it's possible.
[01:15:36] Speaker C: Good job, gentlemen.
[01:15:37] Speaker A: It's kind of crazy handshakes all around, but that's our predictions. Let us know if you think we're crazy in the community Discord. I don't think there were any super wild predictions other than me saying DSG was going to 20 shopify rebellion to try and reverse curse them. But outside of that, they're all pretty stock standard. But again, if you disagree, if you agree, let us know your thoughts through the community Discord. A link is in the description wherever you are listening to the podcast. Also, while you're checking out the description, might as well check out the review wherever you're listening to your podcast. And Badger, how many stars? If, if there's an option like, like a, like a gradient, gradient spectrum from 0 to 5, how many stars would you recommend the average listener?
[01:16:21] Speaker B: Somewhere between 4.7 and 5⅔ stars, I guess. I don't know. I, I, I think I'll just settle on five. Yeah, I think I'll just settle on five. Yes.
[01:16:32] Speaker A: I think we just make it easy.
[01:16:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:16:33] Speaker A: We don't want to confuse anybody.
[01:16:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:34] Speaker A: So rounded up five stars. Nice and clean. Good round number. Even though it's not technically a round number, but you get my drift.
It feels round. Am I alone in that five feels round sound?
[01:16:45] Speaker B: Yes, it does. You know what? I will, I will, I will say, yes, it does.
[01:16:50] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you for validating that. And thank you for listening. Dear listeners, just know as you walk away from this podcast on this day, in this moment, that we love you. And we'll see you next time. Bye.
[01:17:02] Speaker C: Bye.
[01:17:03] Speaker B: Bye, everyone.
[01:17:05] Speaker A: Oh, yes, Daddy. So you gotta stick around to the end, then. You hear that?
[01:17:10] Speaker B: It.
[01:17:36] Speaker C: Sam.
