Rift Life - Issue 5 - The FOX says GG

Greetings from this side, it’s ya boi Hoff (@belcam). First off, I want to apologize for not posting last week, got a bit busy on me and before i knew it the week was over. Anywho.. I’m back this week with a look at one of the two teams tied for the #1 spot coming out of week 4 and heading into week 5 of NA LCS, ECHO FOX. Landing page for this can be found HERE.

ECHO FOX, WHO IS THIS EVEN

For those of you who aren’t in the loop when it comes to LCS or just don’t have general knowledge of teams outside of their names and maybe a player or two. FOX is owned by this beautiful bastard

Rick Fox is an ex NBA player for LA Lakers, the man played on the dream team with Kobe and Shaq. He decided to buy Gravity’s LCS Team Spring 2016 spot. From there Echo Fox was born and would remain in the league through the Franchising done in 2018. Rick Fox becoming involved in LCS was, in my opinion, a HUGE deal for esports. His involvement started to open the way for more looks from NBA related sponsorships. This year we see Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, and Cleveland Cavaliers all sponsoring LCS teams in the new franchise move. In my honest opinion, his involvement coupled with the overall popularity of LoL has made it possible for the LCS to get into franchising and really increase the legitimacy of esports as a whole. OK.. that covers the who and what so let's move on to the team and how they are performing this year.

COMIN IN HOT

FOX is looking good coming out of week 4 sitting pretty with a 7W-1L record and tied for top spot with the formidable Cloud9. Coming into the 2018 Spring Split, FOX made a full roster swap, see image above, coming into the 2018 LCS season and as far as the first half of this split is looking it appears to be working out for them. They remained undefeated till week 3 when they fell to CLG, a monster upset at that point, but haven’t lost since. One thing to note for FOX is that they have come back in most of their games to win in the late game. TSM matchup had them on the ropes, Huni was getting crushed top by Hauntzer and MikeYeung, and Dardoch just could not find a way to help the mid and bot lanes out much. TSM was in the lead going into mid game but FOX was able to farm up and stall to late game where they came away with some team fight victories and finished the game. Their only loss was to C9 and it had a lot to do with how well C9 is able to carry an early game lead to a victory without letting the other team regroup.

As a team they are playing well together. Dardoch is a very capable jungle but has never really stuck on a team for long, this has been attributed to his attitude off the rift. So far it appears that he has turned a corner in his maturity and this may be where we see him settling down and playing well with others. Huni is a monster in the top lane and has shown his prowess on more than one occasion. A lot of people were saying that he was going to be the carry for the team, but the rest of the team has shown that they are more than capable. Multiple games, Huni has been beat early game and his team was able to step up and fill the void till he was able to scale back into the game. Huni is a great player but it doesn’t diminish the fact that he is playing with strong teammates. Fenix is solid in the mid and coming out with some big plays of his own. Altec and Adrian hold their own on the bottom side of the map and have come through big on more than one occasion. This FOX team looks to be really solid and have good synergy.

FOX has had good starts in the past but could never really follow them up in the end. It will be interesting to see if this new squad can carry this early split success through to the end and into next split and playoffs. We will see them facing off with 100 Thieves and Cloud9 this weekend.