07
June
news
The Return of the NA veterans: Apex Gaming
10-man rosters in professional League of Legends can be tricky. On the surface,
the premise seems ingenious. What could be better than having a million
different combinations for your starting line-up to surprise the opposing team?
You're playing against a team that is weak at lane swapping and has a suspect
bottom lane? Put in your AD carry and support who play forward in the lane and
can snowball the game through pure raw power.
A starter is slumping? No problem. You have a player right behind him to take
his place and push him to improve. That's not even mentioning the added bonus
of having two separate five-man teams you can scrim against and bounce ideas
off of.
But like all great premises there are possible consequences. As great as a
10-man roster sounds on paper with the multiple line-ups and caveats, it
doesn't always work when applied to League Championship Series games on
Summoner's Rift. We saw Longzhu Gaming, a team with arguably the most skilled
roster pound-for-pound in Korea, completely embarrass itself last season and
miss the postseason. The number of starting fives possible turned from a luxury
to a major detriment, and none of the combinations were given enough time to
gel and become comfortable with one another.
The game of League has never been more teamwork based. Gone are the days where
one player could win an entire series. While there are still instances of a
lone player like Faker winning a game through a supreme carrying performance
like back in 2013, the game has transitioned into being more about how teammates
interact with one another. Large team fights, smart rotations around the map,
and objective control are what the elite teams utilize, and we're not in the
era anymore where a superstar player can say "one-on-one me, bro" and
win through talent alone.
With teamwork comes comfort and trust. You can only build that through
repetition. When you constantly swap out Top Laner A for Top Laner B, the rest
of the players on the squad have to switch their brains and rethink how they
play. Instead of always knowing the tendencies of one set lineup through
tribulations you've gone through together, you're left with a thousand
different possibilities and off-balance in your timings.
Apex Gaming has one-upped Longzhu Gaming from last split. Not only is the newly
promoted North American LCS team employing a 10-man lineup with its major and
minor league squads, but it's a melting pot of nationalities. It has all three
main countries of North America represented in Canada (Danny
"Shiphtur" Le), United States (Apollo "Apollo" Price, Alex
"Xpecial" Chu), and Mexico (Cristian Rosales).
There are also five South Koreans on the roster in Jeon "Ray" Ji-won,
Lee "Shrimp" Byeong-hoon, Jang "Keane" Lae-young, Oh
"Roar" Jang-won, and Kevin "KonKwon" Ken; and that's not
even including currently suspended jungler Seo "Eve" Jun-cheol.
Rounding out the globetrotting roster is one of Europe's greatest legends,
Danil "Diamondprox" Reshetnikov, who had to leave his home region of
Europe last split due to not being able to get a work visa in Germany, the
homeplace of the European LCS.
Staring at the roster, how can you even make a prediction of where Apex will
land in the standings? Although the common consensus currently is pointing
towards the bottom end and fighting out of the relegation zone, there is a vast
amount of talent on the roster. Ray, while not a starter in China, was in the
Edward Gaming system for two years and was considered a potential rising
prospect. Opposite of him is Cris, the man dubbed "King of Challenger"
for his knack of always performing in the clutch down in the minor leagues and
carrying his teams to the NA LCS. Unfortunately, he's not the king of the
majors, as he's always found himself back down in the lower rung sooner or
later.
Apex is the most interesting squad coming into the summer split. The team, from
a writer's perspective, is a dream. Can Cris finally become a force in NA's
premier league? Or will Ray fulfill his potential and become the next great
Korean import top laner like Immortals' Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon? How
will Diamond adapt to playing in a region where his former Moscow 5 comrades
Alexey "Alex Ich" Ichetovkin and Edward "Edward" Abgaryan
failed to make a major impact?
Can Xpecial prove himself to be an upper-echelon LCS support once again? How
will Roar adapt from playing in Korea his entire career? Will KonKwon's ability
to speak English and Korean fluently be the key in uniting the native Korean
and native English speakers? Is Keane's unique and unorthodox flair going to
take Apex to the playoffs like he did a year ago on Gravity, or can Shiphtur
find the form that made him one of the league's most talked about mid laners in
2014?
The storylines and pairings on this team are endless. The key, though, will
come from behind the scenes in the locker room and not in front of the computer
screens under the main stage lights. Two of North America's former junglers,
Brandon "Saintvicious" DiMarco and Alberto "Crumbz"
Rengifo, will be Apex's premier and minor league coaches respectively. It'll be
up to them to find the right balance for the two sides. If Saint and Crumbz can
find the correct starting five that can trust and play off each other well in
the NA LCS, the talent is there for the lions of Apex Gaming to make a
postseason trip in its debut season.
Apex isn't your normal Challenger team coming up through the ranks with
rookies. This is a squad where none of these players are true rookies. Even
Ray, who played on EDG's secondary team, has been around in the professional
world the past two years and has learned under an organization that has been at
the forefront of the Chinese scene.
This band of international talents is the true definition of a dark horse,
slightly overlooked yet equipped with firepower and a solid coaching team behind
them. Come these next few months we'll see if they're truly galloping horses,
or if things don't come together, a beautiful trainwreck in flames.
