TrevorJ
2017-12-21 08:25:13
As the 2018 Spring Split approaches, the newly franchised Golden Guardians have been quickly pegged as the basement floor for NA LCS teams.
The Guardian’s mid laner and captain, Hai “Hai” Lam knows this weight of expected failure too well. At this time last year his all North American challenger series roster, FlyQuest, qualified for the 2017 NA LCS and was met with the same reaction: water may turn to wine, but nothing can turn FlyQuest into a playoff caliber team.
When the Spring Split came around, FlyQuest replicated a miracle of their own by not only making the playoffs, but winning a best of 5 and finishing finishing 4th overall.
However, with proper context it’s clear it was no miracle that caused Hai and his group of NA misfits to exceed expectations, but rather it was the environment in Spring 2017 that provided perfect conditions for them to succeed.
Substitutes and freshly imported players plagued the competition with identity and communication issues that split while FLY spoke one language and had one roster change.
Comparing this to the climate ahead of the upcoming Spring split, Golden Guardians sit in nearly the same position as Fly was. The similarities begin with an underestimated roster that already has more integrated and second-nature synergy between its members than much of the middle-table competition
Golden Guardians official all North American line-up for the 2018 Season. Source: Golden Guardians/Warriors
Unlike Hai’s FlyQuest roster, this Golden Guardians team hasn’t faced the trials of a long NACS season and gotten the experience as a team that comes with that.
Where they make up for it is in raw talent compared to that ragtag group on FQ, which lost in hindsight their star player Juan “Contractz” Garcia when he moved to the Cloud 9 main roster in 2017. During Garcia’s time on Cloud 9 Challenger he was mentored by Hai, posting a 16-3 overall win-loss before qualifying and earning a pretty penny in the buyout by FlyQuest.
Golden Guardians was perceptive in reuniting that potent mid-jungle duo with an even further developed Contractz after his breakout year on C9. Compared to on C9C, Contractz is a much sharper weapon for Hai to command around the map against opponents and this second-nature synergy will put them leaps ahead of the new mid/jungle duos trying to find their own at the start of the split.
As for the side lanes complimenting them on the roster, GG has another duo that’s also experienced their share of trials and hardship together. Top laner Sam “Lourlo” Jackson and support Matthew “Matt” Elento have played together since Spring 2016 under Team Liquid. Though neither have been consistent in their brief careers, they’ve both shown bursts of potential while playing under an infamously turmoil ridden organization. Every iteration of TL has lacked a true in-game leader that stays level headed and has a grip on the macro game, often having this fall as a second-hand responsibility for Matt who was young and inexperienced.
Delegating the comms and macro-game hinders the execution of the duo’s team based engage playstyle that they excel with. Adding Hai to the roster acting as overseer means these responsibilities will be filled, leaving the duo free to focus on themselves and their own performance.
To act as the sentry gun wedged between the pair of duos is a young promising AD Carry from eUnited, Matthew “Deftly” Chen. A core of 3 relatively young players that haven’t had a chance at proper development to bring out their potential backed by a proven mid/jungle duo is a perfect foundation for a team identity.
Maintaining a solid team identity becomes easier when there’s no language barrier and your roster has motivation to achieve beyond what’s expected of them. These qualities are reminiscent of another edge FlyQuest possesed over their competition off the break in the first half of 2017.
The two most important keystones of success for any competitive team are uniting under an identity and committing to a vision as a collective. According to Phil Jackson who was an eleven time NBA Champion coach, achieving this hinges on one important condition: “Before a vision can become a reality, it must be owned by every member of the group.”
The likelihood of a roster succeeding in doing this within the first 6 months plummets when they’re mixed with imports, creating clashes in languages and cultures/habits out of game. Though these rosters can brute force with sheer talent, if they’re tested as a unit an inexperienced bi-language team will tend to breakdown. In addition, the Best of One format coming back means these teams with a hindered ability to communicate macro strategy with struggle to respond against obscure strategies, something Hai was known for on FlyQuest. Golden Guardians Head Coach, Choi “Locodoco” Yoon-seop, would be theorycrafting these strategies and is the perfect representative to make sense of the organization’s goals with this roster.
Locodoco coaching Gold Coin United backstage at the Promotion Tournament Source: Riot Games
Yoon-seop served as the head coach of a tumultuous Team Liquid during the Breaking Point years of 2016 alongside Lourlo and Matt. Communication issues overran because they had two imports, Fenix and Piglet, combined with Dardoch who was combative during his time with the team. These clashes quickly led to other problems festering with the team and the eventual implosion we saw through the documentary.
From there he went on to coach Gold Coin United, an NACS organization that took a more reserved approach at using imports by signing OGN veterans Fly and MadLife. Instead of haphazard and combative internal issues, GCU succumbed to different for passive and fundamental issues caused by the same symptoms: a clash caused by imports.
Loco showed dedication trying to integrate Korean imports into the North American scene properly and did so using two different approaches, investing a large amount of his professional time into these attempts.
His arrival at coaching an all North American roster without a single import puts an end to that era of Loco’s career, but also opens up for revelatory era in the future under Golden Guardians.
For the first time in his career Locodoco will be coaching a team without a Korean player on the roster which altogether avoids the pitfalls that can come with imports.
Foundational issues like slow adaptation to metas between patches, shaky execution of in-game strategy and overcome them to become fully-functioning team within a 6 month split will only be thought of as factors that hold back opponents the Guardians prepare against.
In the first stretch of the competitive year every team is assigned the task of figuring out the new meta Riot created in the Preseason, but beyond that most teams also have to assemble what their team created in the offseason.
The offseason of FlyQuest’s 2017 run was ample with newly created rosters and in the NA LCS that year their competition averaged 2 new players (18 total) per roster. Five of these rosters had Korean imports on their team and subsequently faced an uphill battle building their team identity while FlyQuest had theirs long set before the split.
However, this doesn’t mean those teams with imports and new players won’t develop into a full-fledged roster given time. As evidence by FLY falling to 7th place come Summer split, their competition improved given enough time to develop a communications system and make slight roster tweaks to perfect the formula.
Three of the teams with imports (DIG, IMT and NV) all improved in ranking from Spring to Summer with the latter two jumping more than 4 places in the standings. While we can’t predict the standings of 2018, the conditions surrounding rosters before the splits mirrors what we saw last year.
FlyQuest celebrates their victory in the first round of Spring Playoffs 2017 Source: Riot Games
The 2018 Spring rosters contain the same average number of new players per team (2) as 2017 and the Golden Guardians take the place of FlyQuest as a slightly more dismantled all NA-core.
With the best of one format making a return this split the odds of GG upsetting teams above their level in individual skill with better team cohesion or suprise strategies is even higher than their counterparts last Spring. All things considered, the current format and makeup of rosters in the LCS is as good if not better for the Guardians coming into 2018 than is was for FlyQuest entering 2017.
Their resources in Locodoco as coach, Hai as a legendary IGL and Contractz as a carry jungler backed by team fighting side lanes are extreme upsides in a split of unknowns.
Though the powerhouse franchise teams may outpace them down the stretch and take over the league come Summer, it’s an open field for the Spring where teams fight over supremacy by becoming the first team to coalesce as a unit.
At the bottom of the table Golden Guardians sits quietly as a dark horse, uninhibited by any of the import and cross-map synergy problems that nearly every other franchised organization will face in the opening months of NA LCS 2018.
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Sources: lolesports flickr, lolesports, gamepedia, golden guardians announcement, gamesoflegends
