Echo Fox has announced their new main roster on the 8th of December, and on paper it appears to be a rock solid line-up:

Top – Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon

Jungle – Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett

Mid – Kim “FeniX” Jae-hun

ADC – Johnny “Altec” Ru

Support – Adrian “Adrian” Ma

The first impressions are that their highs will be high - as high as #1 in the NALCS, as Immortals’ 2016 iteration showed. Team Liquid’s very credible 4th placing in Spring of that year for the roster they fielded is also a testament to the limits of what Echo Fox can achieve in 2018. Factor in Altec and Adrian, a solid bot lane in summer this year and comparable to any in the NALCS, and the sky is the limit for this group.

In reality, the chances of there being a Breaking Point 2: Electric Boogaloo has never been higher. To nobody’s surprise given these players’ past track records, their biggest enemies might be, more than the established big four in Team Solo Mid, Cloud 9, Counter Logic Gaming and Team Liquid, none other than themselves. It does not help that NA’s bad boy jungler Dardoch has been through the revolving door of NALCS organizations in 2017, joining and then leaving three different orgs. Most fans are skeptical of Dardoch’s ability to change his ways, even after taking ownership of his follies over the past two years in an emotional farewell video made by Team Liquid.

At this point, what appears to fans to be be crocodile tears has worn down on their patience, who had been excited to see him in new environments, yet fail spectacularly to keep up relations with teammates. When it comes to Dardoch, it is no longer a matter of how well he stacks up to the competition, but about how long it will take before his teammates decide they do not want to play with him any longer.

That prevailing narrative has remained true even when his team was doing relatively well and were in line to make the play-offs, as in the case of CLG in the summer of 2017 - Dardoch’s last game for them was during the 1-2 series defeat against Immortals, where he was subbed out after the first game for OmarGod.

That game may have been a catalyst for his leaving the team abruptly; it was clear that Dardoch did not take losses well, and although the remainder of the year on Team Liquid ended in them narrowly avoiding relegations, there were few signs that Dardoch’s inability to deal with losses or mistakes by others on the chin had improved. This will inevitably be a significant talking point if or when Echo Fox begins to falter.

A saving grace might come in the form of Huni, whom Dardoch wished to team up with in 2017, until SKT Telecom T1 came for him - few players would reject the opportunity. Huni’s 2017 has had its highs and lows, but ultimately the highs of winning the LCK in spring and the Mid-Season Invitational could not make up for going on a losing streak during summer and losing to Longzhu Gaming, and then Samsung Galaxy, in consecutive finals in the LCK and Worlds respectively.

SKT T1’s gambit at moulding two already established stars with high skill ceilings into world champions ultimately did not work out, and there were too many inherent holes in Huni’s gameplay - such as his constant need for his jungler to guard him - for SKT to accommodate him, despite a few bright sparks in his play.

On Echo Fox, Huni should enjoy a good relationship with Dardoch -- back on Liquid, Dardoch was closest to the top laner Lourlo, and the top-jungler combination should rightly strike fear into the rest of the NALCS, for on paper, this is a potent combination that could potentially obliterate the other teams if they are not careful.

There is a fear that Huni could be targeted by enemy teams in hopes of making him and by extension, Dardoch, tilt into oblivion, and one would not be surprised if a few junglers decide to pitch a tent in the top lane. This is a mightily-fine double-edged sword that Echo Fox is wielding, but the payoff for harnessing the potency of Huni and Dardoch could be greater than anything the organization has ever seen.

It appears odd that the first acquisition Echo Fox made was FeniX, last seen on Gold Coin United’s unsuccessful qualification campaign to the NALCS in Spring, for while his overall record is not unremarkable, has seen repeated mental collapses in high-stakes scenarios.

During Spring Relegations against Team Liquid, FeniX seemed to ‘lose his mental’ (to paraphrase a Korean saying) after falling victim to an aggressive move mid by Piglet backed up by Matt, losing influence on the game as it wore on and making more and more questionable decisions. FeniX also fell in similar circumstances in the Game 5 decider against Team EnVyUs in the Losers’ Bracket, prompting a benching for Fly come the summer split.

For all of Froggen’s perceived faults, none of them seem to include losing to Piglet and Ninja. Given his past history, it seems difficult to hype up FeniX after his repeatedly failings on stage, where winning actually matters.

There is a case to be made for hyping up Altec and Adrian, the latter of whom revived the ailing Team Dignitas squad mid-summer and allowed the team to hit on a 6-2 streak, even defeating the more fancied Cloud 9 in the play-offs before losing to TSM in a series that certainly could not be attributed to the bot lane doing poorly.

Frequently the only players keeping DIG in the series, Adrian, who had been hit with accusations of having a bad attitude having a limited champion pool previously, more than answered his critics during his stint in Dignitas this past summer. The only players to have found moderate success in NA in 2017 - Altec having been part of the FlyQuest team that took fourth place in Spring despite expectations of being 10th place - they may be asked to be the anchors of a potentially volatile roster. This writer thinks they can do just that.

Collectively, these five players have won zero NALCS titles and made it to zero finals. However, all of these players have been touted as highly skilled at some point. Yet, their collective trophy cabinets ring hollow and on paper, there could not be a more likely combination of players who will implode at the first sign of disaster. If this were a matter of talent alone, this roster has it. What cannot be denied is that the potential - both for a title run and a nightmare - will undoubtedly keep fans on the edge of the seat all season long, and perhaps this roster might prove to be a masterstroke for Echo Fox as an organisation, whether in terms of competitiveness or entertainment.

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Images courtesy of Riot Games' LolEsports Flickr.