Rift Life - Issue #1 - What's new?
Hey there, I’m Tate (aka captenredbeard). As part of ‘The Rift Life’ blog series, I’ll be going over changes to the LCS to get people caught up to speed before the games start playing. The landing page for this week’s issue can be found Here... Issue #1
What’s new for 2018?
Format Changes
The LCS will now be played as best of 1’s (again). Each week, every team will play once a day (saturday/sunday) allowing for each team to play every other team twice throughout the season.
Team Changes
Earlier in 2017 Riot Games announced its’ intention to create a permanent partnership structure with the LCS teams. Announcement. Essentially bringing eSports into more of the standard ‘American football franchise’ style that most Americans recognize.
Previously LCS teams were dropped into relegation matches if they ended up at the bottom of the pile (bottom 3) after the split final... that is all over now. Moving forward there are 10 teams and 10 teams only (for now?). All 10 teams had to prove to Riot that they were worthy of remaining, or becoming, part of the new LCS. This required each team to submit an application for entry where their team strategy, business and brand plans, support staff structure, and a variety of other aspects were analyzed. Not to mention the significant financial cost involved with the application (reportedly in the range of ~$10mill investment).
This total shake-up of the status quo provided the fans with some jaw dropping changes. Immortals? Gone. Dignitas? Bye-bye. Team Envy? GG. Phoenix1? Yep, also gone. Whether you were a fan of these teams or not, this is a serious change to the LCS.
Source: Giphy
So what happened? Well, most of our known teams completely changed their rosters and new teams came out of nowhere. Maybe not out of nowhere, but the average LCS fan/viewer had no idea that a few NBA (yes, I’m talking about the ‘real’ sport with 7 foot tall athletes) team owners would decide to buy LCS teams. Pros from all the dissolved teams instantly became free agents and were picked up by the 10 franchised teams. We will get more into that as we go along leading up to the split. Did teams blow a ton of money picking up free agents, hoping they’d stack their new rosters into an unbeatable team (I’m looking at you Team Liquid)?
Rosters
With all the applications in, and the teams announced, we watched a massive wave of what could only be called LoL’s first draft, and holy moly was it crazy. Major changes almost no one would have predicted. Let’s look at some highlights:
- TSM drops Doublelift, Biofrost, Svenskeren, and removes Parth as Coach
- C9 drops Impact and Contractz, and picks up Svenskeren and Licorice
- CLG drops... everyone.
- Echo Fox drops... everyone.
- FLY drops everyone except WildTurtle
- Team Liquid...oh man, this organization...drops everyone, picks up some big names
- New teams 100 Thieves, Clutch Gaming, Golden Guardians, and OpTic are formed (we’ll go into more about these teams in another post)
Take a look at the schedules and rosters below. Courtesy, Riot Games for the beautiful wallpapers, also available without schedules. Feel free to go download, get your represent on, and get hyped! (Players in order Top, Jungle, Mid, ADC, Support)
100 Thieves (100)
SSumday, Meteos, Rya, Cody Sun, Aphromoo
Cloud 9 (C9)
Licorice, Svenskeren, Jensen, Sneaky, Smoothie
Clutch Gaming (CG)
Solo, Lira,Febiven, Apollo, Hakuho
Counter Logic Gaming (CLG)
Darshan, Reignover, Huhi, Stixxay, Biofrost
Flyquest (FLY)
Flame, AnDa, Fly, WildTurtle, Stunt
Echo Fox (FOX)
Huni, Dardoch, Fenix, Altec, Adrian
Golden Guardians (GGS)
Lourlo, Contractz, Hai, Deftly, Matt
OpTic (OPT)
Zig, Akaadian, PoE, Arrow, Lemon
Team Liquid (TL)
Impact, Xmithie, Pobelter, Doublelift, Olleh
Team Solo Mid (TSM)
Hauntzer, MikeYeung, Bjergsen, Zven, Mithy
Tate’s Rates
Many of the analysts and casters in the NALCS and EULCS have power rankings and such. I thought it would be fun to do something similar. Since the theme of this post has been going over all the team changes, I’ll focus on that.
Based on the starting rosters for Spring split 2018, the following is my ranking of teams for week 1. Which teams will synergize right off the bat? We’ll just have to wait and see. Here is how I think it will pan out.
C9 and TSM going 2-0 in week 1 seems to be a no brainer, both teams have solid talent and should synergize well with each other. CG going 2-0 is a risky bet, but I think their team looks primed for success with Solo being the only weakness at the moment. 100, CLG, and TL look like good teams, but have decently tough matches and I believe each of them will drop a game over the weekend. The rest, FLY, FOX, and GGS through a combination of just plain weaker teams and overall tough schedule because of that will likely finish the weekend without a win.
| Team | Wins | Losses | Rank Prediction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
| C9 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| CG | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| CLG | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| FLY | 0 | 2 | 9 |
| FOX | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| GGS | 0 | 2 | 8 |
| OPT | 0 | 2 | 10 |
| TL | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| TSM | 2 | 0 | 1 |
I’m really pretty hyped for Clutch Gaming. Maybe it’s the team..maybe it’s the ownership (let’s go Houston! My home city. We’ll discuss this in another post). I really hope they lay the smackdown on some of the other teams, including the team I previously fan boy’d, TSM.
Source:Giphy
Let me know if you agree, disagree, or don’t care.