Flash Wolves heads into Worlds as the 1st seed from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau’s League of Legends Masters Series (LMS), notching itself up over its 2nd seed placing last year. Flash Wolves finally overcame its demon, ahq e-Sports Club, this year by taking the team out both in Spring and Summer, in LMS finals and the LMS semifinals. Flash Wolves trailed in spring, but exposed ahq’s carelessness in Spring and hasn’t looked back. As ahq’s bot lane began to underperform, Flash Wolves began to to mount even more advantages around mid, especially since MMD could finally stand up to Ziv without wilting.

Flash Wolves’ win in Spring and decent performance at the Mid Season Invitational had the pups going into what should have been a repeat season. The selling of Flash Wolves’ farm team, Flash Husky, showed that Flash Wolves were committing to their five man roster of MMD/Karsa/Maple/NL/SwordArT until the very end. There wouldn’t be any roster mixups in the beginning or performance-based benching, but merely one last split for the roster to do its best to succeed. It was concerning that Flash Wolves totally gave up on having Breeze play AD, but considering this may be the last split the roster will be together, the sentimentality rings true.

The summer split began as one might expect -- Flash Wolves were beating the snot out of everyone and weren’t pulling any punches. Karsa in particular was styling on just about anyone, solo carrying games on Lee Sin when he had no business playing it. The team’s closest match was probably against Machi 17, where the team was behind for most of the game, but snapped back to pull out a victory. Everything was smooth-sailing for the team, even if there was a hint of complacency in both draft and play emanating from the lineup. That would eventually prove to be their weakness getting closer to the second half of the split.

Flash Wolves went mostly uncontested despite some oddball picks like Karsa’s Kha’Zix, but once the team clashed with J Team at the midway point of the season, that changed. Flash Wolves played J Team four times in two back-to-back days, only able to take win off of the acclaimed chokers. MMD particularly faltered against Morning in the top lane, in losing matchups, and had the team falling behind in both side lanes while Maple couldn’t simply abuse FoFo either.

However, the pick/ban phase was most at fault, as Flash Wolves hadn’t quite picked up on the importance of Gangplank and Jhin until the third game of the set. There was also a particularly weird scenario where Flash Wolves last picked a support Leona that didn’t pan out so well. To Flash Wolves’ credit, the team mostly matched J Team in gameplay and even looked better in some regards, but crucially failed to keep up with the meta and punish J Team’s scaling compositions properly.

Flash Wolves adapted to the meta in time and began to seriously look at the importance of Jhin and the necessity for MMD to contest enemy top laners on Gnar and Gangplank. NL began playing Jhin and Karsa stopped locking Lee Sin for the fun of it, as the atmosphere seemed to regain some seriousness. There were still a few bumps in the road though, as Flash Wolves dropped games to both ahq e-Sports Club and Hong Kong eSports toward the close of the regular season, with MMD being targeted well by his opposition. The pups were certainly still looking good, but they definitely needed to work on a few things before the playoffs came on.

Before playoffs took place, it was questionable if Flash Wolves were going to be able to hold up in the new laneswap-less meta, as the team seemingly refined the craft over just about every team in the LMS. Also, considering that MMD had been punished for not respecting carry top laners and that NL seemingly always finds a way to do something wrong, it seemed that patch 6.15 was going to be a real thorn in their side. Even at the start of the playoffs, this looked the case.

Flash Wolves came into a match against ahq, almost a bit unfavored with the recent meta shift, and quickly fell down 2-0 due to Ziv’s immense pressure top and Flash Wolves’ inability to compensate elsewhere. However, as the wolves roared back in the following three games, Karsa adjusted his pathing to be an aid to MMD and properly snowball him against Ziv, granting a solid pressure block top. Proper pick/ban focus on Westdoor’s champion pool also allowed Maple to really go wild against Westdoor’s poor Taliyah and a weak laning Kassadin. Flash Wolves adapted perfectly during the series and while it was a pretty close call in game 4 for an ahq 3-1 victory, the pups held on 3-2 for the reverse sweep.

Finally, Flash Wolves had the chance to test its mettle against J Team after convincingly losing 3 out of 4 games against them earlier. The team was coming in with a clear ability to play around the top side of the map and a clear understanding of the meta, as opposed to before, in hopes of taking out the regular season dominated J Team. However, J Team really didn’t show up and Flash Wolves consistently had them in their claws, save for a few moments in game 2. Karsa and Maple outclassed REFRA1N and FoFo to an extreme degree, while MMD had no trouble with Morning. J Team even attempted a laneswap and were rightfully stamped out by the wolves, making for a surprisingly one-sided 3-0. While the ending may have been uneventful, Flash Wolves were victorious over the LMS for the second straight split and earned their way to their second straight World Championship.

Flash Wolves are far more favored going into the World Championship than ahq, on account of their dominating finals performance and much strong regular season. It also helps that Flash Wolves proved that they’re perfectly competent internationally at the 2016 Mid Season Invitational. However, Flash Wolves are running into tough competition with world-class top laners and strong carry duos to boot, with SK Telecom T1 and Cloud 9 being drafted into their group.

The wolves' recent play shows that MMD will probably be okay against Impact and Duke, especially considering that the pups have wised up to banning Gnar every game. However, NL is always a looming concern, as Sneaky and Bang are clearly both a level up on the lovable loose-cannon. Flash Wolves’ main advantage comes from Karsa and Maple’s synergy as Blank and Meteos have shown their own struggles recently and it’s not improbable that Karsa can snowball the game from there. It will be tough for Flash Wolves with perceived side lane deficiencies, but if any team has shown poise in the face of a tall challenge, it’s the pups.

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Images courtesy of Riot Games, Lolesports Flickr, and their respective authors.