Zechs Files Uncut

Quick disclaimer. I originally started writing this as a script for some kind of video essay or something like that. I kinda chickened out in the end, and also I know very little about making videos, so here it is as 2.5k word essay instead.

Unless you’re old like me, you might not know that Esports World Cup is actually heading into its third decade of existence. Things have changed considerably in the 21 years since its first event in 2003, not least its ownership, but the entity known as ESWC is not, strictly speaking, new.

What I don’t want to do today is get into the sports washing issue. Plenty of others have covered that already and it’s too complicated a topic to try and squeeze into this piece. Suffice to say, while I’m undecided on where I stand, I fully understand why people many of you will be giving this event a miss.

Today I want to delve into the roller-coaster history of a tournament organiser that is near and dear to my heart. In 2005 I attended my first international event as a journalist – the third ever ESWC finals in Paris. I was awestruck by the entire week, from being in a foreign city alone for the first time to the fact that my nerdy hobby could really host an event of this size. Looking back at photos of the venue, the latter part of that seems particularly quaint. Although the stage was extremely cool, I reckon there were maybe a couple of thousand spectators at most.

Still, in 2005 that was huge. The main competitor at the time, Cyber Athlete Professional League (CPL), pretty much just didn’t have an in-person spectatorship at all to begin with and when they did try to attract fans, results were mixed. Back then, Esports was a far cry from AR pop groups performing opening ceremonies for a stadium of thousands and a stream viewership in the millions. World Cyber Games (WCG), which is theoretically still in existence but hasn’t run a tournament since 2020,was the closest thing to a modern event. It had Olympics-style branding, an opening ceremony and even its own theme song, but its viewership paled in comparison to today’s events. ESWC, in the early 2000’s, was a moderately large fish in pretty small pond.

Despite many changes down the years, one thing that has remained the same about under the new regime is the multi-game format. When I went to Paris in 2005, I mostly covered Warcraft 3 despite being on GotFrag’s staff as a Counter-Strike writer at the time. There was also Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Pro Evolution Soccer and more. CS was definitely The Main Event, but every game had its final played on the main stage. Every game had its moment in the spotlight. ESWC was even ahead of the curve in having a women’s CS tournament, and I remember my American colleagues being hyped for Girls Got Game making an American CS double, with Complexity winning the men’s event.

Looking back, I wonder how much of this was out of necessity. With so much less money coming into esports in its early days, perhaps it made more financial sense to host multiple games in one venue, in order to maximize both viewership and participation while only needing to pay for one venue. It’s no coincidence that most tournaments back in the day were attached to other attractions. Dreamhack, obviously, was always attached to a BYOC event, but other organises did similar things. Even as late as 2010, I remember wading through thousands of people, past the hundreds of booths that made up CeBIT to reach the ESL IEM stage.

Fun aside: this was the event where Azael became a “literal world champion,” after winning the World of Warcraft tournament with Evil Geniuses. I will never not cringe when I think about how inappropriately quickly I leapt on him and his teammates to ask for an interview after the game. I didn’t even wait for them to finish celebrating their victory. Azael, reasonably, told me to give them a minute. I have never watched any of my interviews from this event, and I don’t think SK’s site has them hosted any more – what a pity.

By the way, if this sounds weird now, that’s because it was. I had a press pass, sure, but I was sitting in the crowd of a couple of hundred people and simply wandered up to the stage without needing to show it to anyone.

I went back to ESWC in 2006, solely as a WC3 guy now. Ironically, I barely recall the WC3 final at all, but the MIBR vs Fnatic CS final turned out to be a banger. To those of us on the outside, ESWC seemed to be tootling along just nicely but capitalism demands growth and “tootling along” was never going to be enough in the long run.

That was my last in-person event for a few years. I left GotFrag a few months after it got bought by Major League Gaming in 2007. Similarly, ESWC soldiered on as-is for a while, but the organisers had to switch things up. They changed formats in 2008, moving to something closer to the IEM and Blast Pro series formats we know today but this would only last one year. In 2009, under the weight of a global financial crisis, ESWC closed its doors for, erm, like a year.

They weren’t the only casualty, and Counter-Strike’s love-hate relationship with CPL ended in early 2008. An official statement read “The current fragmentation of the sport, a crowded field of competing leagues, and the current economic climate have prompted the CPL to suspend its pro-tournament operations.” Matthieu Dallon, founder of ESWC, echoed this sentiment in an interview with Fragster.de (https://complexity.gg/matthieu-dallon-interviewed-on-eswc-bankruptcy/ not the og link): “We have contacted several dozen of potential partners, big and small brands. We always received the same answer: Our stock value is in free fall, the sales decline, we are going to lose money this quarter, nobody knows when all will restart, so we have to reduce all our marketing and communication budgets, we have to target our direct consumers, and we have to cut all special budgets as sponsoring or alternate advertising.”

Other leagues such as ESL and Dreamhack hung on, changed their models and adapted. They became hosts and organisers for the likes of Blizzard and Valve, eventually becoming more of a media company than a league. But when ESWC returned in 2010, it more-or-less picked up where it left off: multiple games (including WC3, surprisingly) and a spectacular venue in Disneyland Paris.

In 2011, my beloved WC3 was replaced by Starcraft II and ESWC attached itself to Paris Games Week. This meant a change of season. Until now, ESWC had always been a summer spectacle. Paris Games Week took place in late October – presumably to give Parisians something to do indoors during the miserable weather.

Still, the event continued to be a fairly important part of the esports calendar. We still hadn’t quite reached the era of The Major and there was plenty of room at the table for competition. Although my own interest in many of the included titles was waning during this period, ESWC looked to be going strong. They took the move to CS:GO and DOTA2 in their stride and added more and more -Mania games. ESWC had always been one of the strongest proponents of Trackmania, but they even added Shootmania for a few years towards the end. Remember Shootmania? Kinda? Yeah, same.

It wasn’t until 2014 that things started to get silly. Call of Duty gets top billing on the official ESWC page for that year. This is the first time that anything other than Counter-Strike sits atop the list of champions, which is a subtle but important change. But okay, people like COD, whatever. It made sense to add another popular FPS game.

Just Dance, though? I think this is where ESWC’s reliance on other parties started to become an issue. Just Dance is an Ubisoft game, developed by Ubisoft Paris specifically. ESWC always had strong ties to its home country of France and while Ubisoft’s Trackmania series made a lot of sense as a competitive game, dancing, just kinda doesn’t. Well, I guess it did go on to be part of the Olympic Series, so joke’s on me, right?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit rude. If you like Just Dance then that’s great. I watched the highlights for this video and everybody looked like they were having a great time. But after so many years of pining for mainstream acceptance, the fact that the Olympics chose a dancing game that a lot of esports fans had never even heard of (myself included), instead of CS or a MOBA of some kind was absurd. Viewers thought so, too – all 800 of them. Yeah, according to esports charts (https://escharts.com/tournaments/other/olympic-esport-series-finals-just-dance) the peak viewership for Just Dance at the Olympics was 777 people.

Look, I’m not suggesting that ESWC immediately shrunk in 2015 because of Just dance and Call of Duty, but they played their part. From the outside looking in, their seems to have been a lack of direction and these two games were part of that. Or rather, there was a direction, but that direction was advertising Ubisoft products. ESWC spread itself too thin at a time when single-title leagues and tournaments were quickly becoming the norm.

ESWC did try its hand at this in 2015, running a COD-only tournament in May and a CS-only event in July (though they do deserve credit for continuing to support female Counter-Strike), but in October they were back to their Olympics-style approach. The list of games at the final event of 2015 paints a picture: FIFA, Women’s LoL (but no men), Trackmania, Shootmania and Just Dance. You might generously call it an eclectic mix, but I’d argue it’s a collection of games nobody else wanted.

ESWC’s website lists a highlight for every year. Usually it’s an iconic moment of game play, sometimes it’s the first use of a game on such a big stage. Tellingly, in 2015, they list the creation of France Esports. Sure, this was a big deal (probably), and it was headed up by Matthieu Dallon of ESWC, but this comes across as a tacit admission that nothing important happened at their own tournaments during that whole year.

In 2016, the spiral into irrelevancy was well underway. Another COD tournament in May was followed by a downsized October tournament. CS was back on the menu, but the list of entrants paints an ugly picture. Alternate Attax beat LDLC in the final – two teams who, in 2016, had no business being in an international final. They did have players who would go onto bigger things, but Attax has never qualified for a Major, before or since. They earned their victory, but it came against a very weak field.

Even more damning, though, is the fourth and final game on the list for that year: Clash Royale. The shark had well and truly been jumped. You can never recover your credibility after you take money from mobile games.

ESWC stumbled on for a few more years after that, but the list of titles became more and more muddled while the CS tournament became populated by fewer and fewer big names. ESWC Africa took place in December of 2018 – a Counter-Strike only tournament that was the last thing ESWC ever ran. While it was cool to see organisers creating tournaments outside of the usual esports hotbeds, it’s no surprise that ESWC disappeared shortly after that.

But the universe had a different fate in mind for ESWC. In 2024, it is being brought back to life in a hideous experiment, worthy of any Gothic Horror. It will return as a shell of its former self, bathed in riches it never had in its previous life, but devoid of all the glory and all the good will it had created over the years.

And yet, ESWC being bought out is nothing new. Behind the scenes, ownership changed several times of the years. Even the name was switched to Esports World Convention at some point – a fact I only learned during my research for this piece. Starting out as an expansion of Ligarena’s domestic LAN tournaments in France, Games-Solution bought the brand in 2009. They passed things onto Oxent in 2011 until Oxent itself was bought out by Webedia in 2016.

What is particularly interesting here is that Matthieu Dallon was in charge of Oxent, too. Despite the bankruptcy of his previous company, he clearly wanted to make his dream of an esports Olympics a reality. He could have easily disappeared into some or other other mundane business and I assume he would have had offers to join other esports organisations, but we chose to resurrect ESWC instead.

And then he sold it to Webedia.

Webedia is a lot of things. A kind of smorgasbord of “online stuff,” featuring typically, deliberately nebulous “Web3” concepts such as “Content Production,” “IP Development” and “Brand Partnership.” If you rolled your eyes at any or all of these phrases, you’re not alone. Essentially, their main role seems to be managing streamers and talent but their reach goes much wider than that. Indeed, esports is only the third entry on their “Webedia Networks” page, below Movies and Gaming. This is the company behind LFL’s broadcasts, however, so they do remain relevant in the esports community, at least in France.

Oh, and they shill NFTs because of course they do.

Is it a coincidence that the year ESWC became part of a larger media empire is the same year they moved into mobile gaming? Probably not. Mobile games, whatever you think of them, do make a lot of money. There’s an Always Sunny scene for every occasion, isn’t there? What do companies like Webedia make? Money, Charlie, they make money.

Still, it’s clear in retrospect that this was the beginning of the end for ESWC. What had started out in 2003 as a passion project based on a love of esports had turned into just another media asset. Viewed in that light, it’s almost sort of fitting that it has now become a sportswashing project – a sad but common arc in today’s hyper-capitalist world. Anything with positive emotional attachment can and will be commodified, either for money or PR, or, more commonly, both. Yes, I’m looking at you, football.

I remember when I first started writing about esports, people always talked about “going mainstream” as though it was a good thing. As though being popular and making money was what made something legitimate or worthwhile. The closer we got to that goal, the worse it seemed to me. ESWC’s fate – a once-loved institution of a small community turned into a heartless advertising entity for an oil state – is about as damning an indictment of that as you could wish to find. The delicious irony in all of this is that ESWC will lose money, and this is by design, but it will also lose the legitimacy it once had. Nobody who used to love ESWC in the early 2000’s will care about its new zombie form and many of them will boycott it, myself included.

It’s been a couple of weeks now, but I’m currently writing for https://tips.gg/ I’ll try and update this place once in a while, maybe even with Excel stuff, but we’ll see how that goes.

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

Admittedly, it’s a bit harder to do that when you had two match points, but Excel has a lot to be happy about after their 3-2 defeat to Vitality. The two games they won, Excel dominated. Unfortunately, it was one of those series where every game was fairly one-sided, but if you’d given Excel a 3-2 loss in play-offs to Vitality before the season started, I expect they would have taken it.

I liked Excel’s overall approach to the series, though. They had the best of the early game in three games of the series. Obviously, that means they weren’t able to convert in one of those games, but I was happy with the fact that XL took the game to their opponents. They were assertive, aggressive, and showed no signs of play-off debut nerves.

It’s easy to sit here and say Vitality’s experience showed through, and it’s true, but it’s important to note when it came up. Vitality were on the ropes at various times, both in individual games and during the series as a whole, and it was their ability to avoid a killer blow from XL that made the difference.

Snoredekaiser

Alphari, in particular, really grew into the series. After getting fairly styled upon by Finn in game one, his Gnar in games two and four was exemplary. In game five, his Camille was a nightmare, and Finn’s interesting answer in Moderkaiser was, well… not an answer. According to my Google-Fu, Mordekaiser should beat Camille, but soloqueue and pro play are very different beasts. Selfmade’s Olaf made easy work of the immobile juggernaut, and game five quickly started to look like XL had run out of steam. Where they had dominated the early game in previous games, game five was all VIT from start to finish.

Caitlyn/Lux never really got going and XL didn’t even get a kill until a poor teleport from Perkz donated one almost 17 minutes in. By this point, Vitality had seven of their own and were almost five thousand gold ahead. Camille’s early lead meant that taking a detour on her build path to pick up a QSS was barely an inconvenience, and the writing was on the wall. The split push was unstoppable, providing an answer to the question, how do you get Alphari to take advantage of his lane dominance? Apparently you just keep him in a lane by himself for 75% of the game.

Turtle Tortoise Power

LEC casters love to joke about narrative, but the story of this series was similar to The Tortoise and The Hare. Excel started out strong, getting out to an early lead, but Vitality never panicked. They stuck to their guns, grew into the series and really just outlasted XL. It was strange – and disappointing – to watch XL’s strong early game dissolve in the final two games of the series, but Selfmade took the last two games by the horns. Excel didn’t make it hard enough for him, but he looked like he was playing with Ragnarok from the start to the finish of game five.

The final game might have ended with a bit of a whimper, then, but looking back over the series as a whole, 3-2 was a fair reflection. Excel were the weaker team overall, but not by much. While it’s disappointing to lose in round one of play-offs, this was already the organisation’s best ever split and it makes a great platform to build on in summer. There was a lot to be happy about in the first half of the set and a lot of obvious things to work on from the final two games.

There was no LEC this past week, and there won’t be any this coming week, but I promised myself I would update this blog weekly. So what’s a boy to do when the team he’s attached himself to isn’t playing?

Time for a bit of a retrospective, I suppose. The spring split in review. It was Excel’s best ever split, after all, so why not revel in the glory of a 50% win rate?

Looking Back

What trends can we spot? What can we extrapolate from the regular season going into XL’s first ever play-offs? Well, the most obvious one to me is a little damning. Kind of.

Excel finished fifth in the regular season, but their record against the four teams above them is abysmal. They went 0-2 against every team in the top four except Fnatic, where they did win – and in dominant fashion, to be fair. If that isn’t a sign that the team has work to do in the current break, I don’t know what it is.

On the other hand, though, XL won’t be playing any of those teams if they can’t get past Vitality in the opening round. XL’s record against Vitality this year? 2-0.

All of this is based around small sample sizes, of course, but the reality of XL winning its first ever top level best-of-five series wouldn’t be that weird. While everyone expected Vitality to come together as the season drew on, they finished with the exact same record as XL and ended up in sixth, thanks to the aforementioned 2-0 head-to-head record. Now it’s possible that the greater experience in lengthy series makes a difference when it really counts, but that’s far from a guarantee.

I imagine Youngbuck might have a bit of a balancing act on his hands. On one side, he needs to try and prepare the team for the nuances of the “series meta” that analysts often talk about – the way a longer set develops its own unique quirks, independent of the broader meta-game. On the other side, he needs to remind his players that it’s still a series of individual games of League of Legends; it’s still the same game underneath it all; taking objectives and getting kills don’t stop being good just because there’s three to five games instead of just one.

What I’m getting at, really, is that the less-than-stellar record against higher ranked teams doesn’t really matter a ton when it comes to play-offs. Results from the regular split are useful indicators of what might happen, but as XL showed against Fnatic, anything can happen when the players get on the rift.

Moving Forward

Alright, that’s enough Hollywood bollocks. What actually needs to happen for XL to avoid their first play-off berth falling at the first hurdle?

Looking back at the regular season games dutifully provides some of those indicators I just mentioned. First up, Finn was just better than Alphari in almost every aspect. Certainly he was more impactful outside of his own lane in both games. Importantly, he showed that he can play both sides of a carry match-up, too. He looked superb on Malphite against Jayce, and arguably even better as Jayce against Wukong. Lack of pressure on the wider map has long been a critique of Alphari’s gameplay, and this is an area XL should look to utilize again. The Brit has a notoriously strong lane phase, but after so many years with the same issue dogging him, it seems unlikely that he will suddenly fix it in the weeks between regular season and play-offs.

Markoon has had a solid season after a bit of a shaky start, but I can’t see him outperforming one of Vitality’s only consistent players in Selfmade. I expect Markoon to do well, don’t get me wrong, but the jungle doesn’t seem like a place where XL is likely to find a lot of success, at least not individually.

Similarly, Nukeduck, despite an impressive KDA, is not likely to light up the most successful player in European history. What Nukeduck will do is what he has always done: he will be a rock for the rest of the team to build on. He hovers around the middle of almost every single statistic for mid-laners except for one: deaths. He averages less than two deaths per game, bettered only by Larssen (1.8 vs 1.6). Nukeduck against Perkz reminds me of Crown vs Faker. No, no, the second time. 2017. The one where Crown played Malzahar three games in a row and just stopped Faker ever really doing anything. Nukeduck can sit in lane, keep Perzk honest, and just nullify that entire section of the map. Is it any surprise that his most played champion this split is Corki?

While Nukeduck is locking down the middle of the map, bottom lane is where things can really get explosive. Last time these two teams met, that was certainly the case. Carzzy’s Vayne got a dream start, only to have next-to-no impact on the rest of the game, while Patrik ended up with a season-best 11/3/5 scoreline.

My main concern with Patrik is that he hasn’t looked great when he can’t get Aphelios or Jinx. He only has one win on a different champion all split. Admittedly, it was against Vitality with aerie Xayah, but the overall trend isn’t great. A lot went wrong in the recent G2 game, but Patrik’s Varus fell particularly flat. His best champions could easily become casualties of the “series meta” mentioned earlier, so I hope he’s been practicing AP Kaisa.

Either way, with Mikyx continuing to be the strong point everyone hoped and expected him to be, bottom lane is the part of the map I can see Markoon looking to attack. Just, please, don’t let him play Tahm Kench. Partly this is because he’s 0/2 and looked underwhelming on the champion in both previous games, but mostly because, Jesus Christ, that champion is boring to watch. I’d take an XL win over an exciting game, sure, but why cant’ we have both? Dream big, folks.

Eating The Cake, too

Can we have both? Honestly, yeah. Why the fuck not? Everyone keeps talking about how Vitality will come good with time, but I’m not convinced. “They always figure it out” type runs always come to an end at some point, and I honestly thought Perkz’ might have been finished last year before C9 had such a good showing at Worlds.

Even if Vitality do turn into the superteam they always called themselves, though, who’s to say it isn’t in summer? After all, a team like Vitality is aiming to go to Worlds. Anything less is a failure. Where that benefits XL is that while Vitality are staring off into the distance, planning on what could be, XL is looking at something much closer to hand. Youngbuck and co can put everything into here and now –  into play-offs; into round one of play-offs – and think about the future in the future.

As I mentioned back in the first blog of this series , I’m a filthy neutral. It’s always felt a bit weird to refer to a team as “we” (which was exacerbated recently, when I watched England women beat Germany in the Arnold Clark Cup). I’m not employed by Excel (yet) so I guess I’m left with “they did it!”

We They did it!

Better yet, they did it by finishing not just in a play-off spot, but in fifth place! That’s two places better than their previous best ever. Truly, I chose a good time to nail my colours to their mast. Nail their colorus to my mast? Whatever.

Or, to be more precise, Excel chose a good time to put a world finalist support at the helm. You have to feel bad for Advienne, but Mikyx has been a revelation and I doubt XL’s management are looking back with much remose. He’s been the glue that tied everything else together, the support that the star of the show, Patrik, needed.

In fact, it’s telling – in a good way – that Patrik isn’t the diamond in the rough he had been previously. He’s still the highest contributor in terms of damage and gold, but by nowhere near as much as he once was. Finn is less than 5% behind in damage and he and Nukeduck are both less than 2% behind in gold.

Finn is Good, Actually

Mikyx and Patrik have been great, then, but we would’ve been surprised if they weren’t. One might argue that Finn has been more of a pleasant surprise, after a torrid year on CLG last year. Personally, I’ve always thought he was underrated, but I’d be stupid if I couldn’t understand why his jaunt across the pond made people think maybe he wasn’t good. Hell, that team basically ended the career of a former world finalist. His champion pool is huge, bigger even than the notoriously pic ‘n’ mix approach of Nukeduck, but he has been willing to take Malphite where needed. What really impresses about Finn is his ability to be in the right place at the right time. His recent Kled game, in which he owned the side lanes after solo killing Armut makes a perfect example, especially when mirrored with his earlier performance as Malphite into Alphari’s Jayce. Two very different types of performance, both played with aplomb.

Markoon has impressed me, too, after a mediocre start. Just please don’t put him on Jarvan. Yes, four games is a small sample size, but he looks like a 0-4 player on that champion. His Xin Zhao – admittedly the bread and butter of any jungler nowadays – has looked vastly superior. He just looks more comfortable, more decisive and more capable on Xin than any other champion. Although, I will admit he has had some excellent Lee Sin games.

Nukeduck, to my mind, has been the weakest link. Not that he’s been a weak link, just… maybe not quite as strong as the other four. Certainly less consistent. Could it be that his greatest strength – the champion ocean – is also his greatest weakness? I find it difficult to know what his best champions are. Historically, Ryze and Corki are where the “most played” vs “most wins” Venn diagram overlaps, but he is at 50% on both of them in 2022. Again, a small sample size, but when he plays so many champions it’s hard to get a larger one.

Play-offs Bound

In an interview with Esports News UK seemed quietly confident. However, “[Excel] need to use the next two to three weeks to reinvent ourselves a little bit.” He claims that the team has been relying too much on scaling, which, in fairness, seems to be the way of the world right now. It’s certainly a topic on every podcaster’s lips, and the fact that Jinx and Aphelios continue to be ubiquitous seems to back this up.

What better time for a change of approach than your first ever play-offs, then? Especially coming into it off the back of a less than stellar 1-2 super week. Maybe some Markoon Master Yi, given his ridiculousness on the new patch? Not likely, but with Xin Zhao getting some downward tweaks, Markoon is most likely to be affected by 12.5.

It will take some deliberate, team-specific decision-making for anything really drastic to change by the time play-offs roll round. Despite a 2-0 record against Vitality, I’m nervous that XL might need something unusual to sway the balance in their favour. Everyone keeps expecting Vitality to become the super team they were touted as, and although it hasn’t happened yet, best-of-five series’ are exactly where one might expect the experience of Perkz and Alphari to make a difference.

We’re really, nearly there. I saw on reddit that after this weekend’s results, Excel only fails to make play-offs in something like 3% of scenarios. Surely even Caedrel re-joining, now as a “content creator” can’t jinx it now. Right? Right?!

MAD Kittens

I said last week that XL’s destiny was in the team’s hands, and they stepped up with a decent 1-1 weekend. Beating MAD Lions might not be as impressive as it was last year, but a win is a win, and  the team does still contain quality players.

Excel dominated, frankly, and Finn was particularly impressive. His Kled picked up first blood, solo killing Amut’s Aatrox and making the top half of the map a no-go area for MAD. He had a 300 gold bounty by 11 minutes, based on a 3/0/1 stat line and multiple tower plates.

The rest of the map wasn’t doing badly, either. Patrik got a solo kill, and what I really like about XL this year is how they press these advantages into better macro map play. They were ahead in every single metric and ended the game in 25 minutes with a 9k gold lead. They traded up on numerous occasions, despite MAD Lions’ attempts at trading objectives. Turns out Elyoya sneaking a second drake doesn’t really matter when you’ve just given up three kills and a baron.

Rekt by Rogue

If XL dominated the MAD game, they definitely switched things up for Rogue. It was all Rogue from from start to finish – a big return to form for the league leaders. XL really never got a look-in, in a way that would have been worrying if XL needed to win more games. Indeed, even with play-offs almost wrapped-up, it was a bad look.

XL never got going, in a way that is hard to write about. They got hammered, Rogue did almost everything right. Not a ton else to say within the scope of a blog like this.

Elden Ring, soz

After the dizzying highs of last week’s 2-0 weekend, Excel were back to business as usual this time out.

Hit and Misfits Form

At the beginning of the split, two losses to Misfits might have sounded like a death sentence for XL’s play-off chances. MSF were expected to be one of the mid-table teams fighting for scraps alongside XL. But as Vitality and MAD Lions continue to disappoint, they find themselves in third place. View through that lens, XL’s loss doesn’t seem so bad.

The game was fairly close, too. XL had the better of the early exchanges but were unable to convert any of their kills into a significant advantage. They kept the kill score close throughout, and even maintained dragon parity, but a five-for-one baron fight (plus the baron buff) blew the game wide open for Misfits 32 minutes in. Using their gold and tempo advantage to take over the river and baron pit, they baited XL in perfectly and were finally able to make their lead count.

Even then, XL remained scrappy. Seeing them continue to try and make plays, rather than rolling over in their base, was an encouraging sign, even if it didn’t pan out this time around.

Astralis are Quite bad

Coming off that defeat and into an Astralis team that had upset Fnatic the previous day, I was a little nervous. When Finn’s Gwen got three-man dived for first blood, I was a little more nervous. But when Markoon and Nukeduck teamed up to catch Zanzarrah going for a greedy scuttle crab, and Mikyx followed it up by turning an Astralis gank into a kill for Patrik, my nerves subsided.

The game remained close, and Astralis even led, briefly, when they turned another successful dive into first tower gold. But XL looked more in-sync than I’ve often seen them, and Markoon continues to look so much more confident off Jarvan, teaming up nicely with Nukeduck’s Veigar time and time again this game. Similarly, Mikyx looked like a different player on Thresh compared to the previous day’s turbo-feeding Tahm Kench. Indeed, it was his flash-hook on Dejor’s Ryze (slowed by Patrik’s Zap) that led to baron for XL and the first major gold lead of the game. From there, the result was a formality.

Down the Stretch

What I found particularly reassuring about the Astralis win is that XL can win when Patrik doesn’t carry. He barely got a look-in, looking worryingly poor with Aphelios taken from him, to be blunt. But Mikyx was excellent on Thresh and the top half of the map was near flawless – between them, Nukeduck, Markoon and Finn gave up just one solitary death. Nukeduck’s showing, in particular, made me feel good about XL’s play-off hopes. He’s the only member of the team that I’d been unconvinced by so far, but he really stepped up this weekend, even managing to look impressive in defeat against Misfits.

So with just five games to go, XL are the masters of their own destiny. There is a real chance they go 2-0 this coming weekend and wrap-up a spot with a week to spare. SK are coming off a trio or wins in a row, but already lost to XL this season and have looked pretty poor for the majority of the split. MAD Lions, meanwhile, have been battling Vitality for biggest disappointment of the LEC – eminently beatable.

Vitali-two-zero

After Excel’s second win over Vitality this past weekend, I had this whole spiel lined up about how I’d rather have Finn on my team than Alphari. I even had a pun about the year of the Dolfinn or something like that.

But, man, Patrik just had to ruin it by outshining everybody, didn’t he? In back-to-back Aphelios games, the Czech had combined stats of 19/6//9 and those numbers were well-deserved. Admittedly, the champion is in a pretty good spot but Patrik’s four wins from five games is a large contributor to that 72% LEC win rate.

In the totally predictable, run-of-the-mill victory over Vitality, Patrik and Mikyx were particularly impressive in coming from behind after a disastrous early game. Carzzy’s Vayne was a bold pick which needed to get ahead, but it did get ahead and things were looking grim for XL. Vayne was 2-0 within two minutes, but over-aggression from Labrov kept XL’s bottom lane in the game, with a follow-up 3v2 dive actually putting Patrik significantly ahead.

But it wasn’t all the Patrik and Miky show. Markoon always seemed to be where he needed to, and XL kept up with Vitality’s macro map pressure. They continued to grab pick off after pick off with help form an easy-to-execute team fighting composition. Malphite might not be the most skill intensive champion but Finn played it perfectly, once again having far greater impact on the map than Alphari’s Jayce, despite a 70 CS difference.

Vitality, being the strong collection of individuals that they are, went down fighting, but re-watching the highlights as I write this, I’m surprised by how unlikely a comeback looked. XL looked in control from the moment they took the gold lead to to the moment the nexus went down. It was an upset, but it didn’t look like one.

Putting the D in BDS(M)

The other reason I couldn’t focus on Finn this weekend is because he was BDS’ whipping boy in the second game of the weekend. He gave up two solo kills as Irelia vs Jayce, and Excel was looking at another comeback if they wanted to complete the perfect weekend. It didn’t look likely for some time, with BDS picking up a 5-2 kill lead. And yet, the gold lead never got bigger than a few hundred. BDS failed to turn the kills into much more, and it was XL who started stacking drakes while matching towers.

The mid-game was a real back-and-forth mess, with neither team able to carve out a significant lead. It was that drake stacking that proved to be the difference. A triple kill for Patrik led to Infernal Soul for XL and the first big advantage of the game. Excel couldn’t quite end, but after resetting and picking up a free baron, BDS simply couldn’t hold on any longer.

Can Excel Win Worlds?

With Excel now in the unfamiliar, dizzying heights of 5th place, breaking their play-offs duck has never been more do-able. A win over Misfits – also very do-able – would go a long way to securing it, but even a loss isn’t the end of the world if they pick up an expected victory over Astralis. In fact, my only real concern is if Vitality and MAD Lions get their shit together before the split ends. Even then, though, having two Vitality games behind them means XL don’t have to worry so much about the so-called super team.

Rogue Remain Undefeated

Well then. It’s not every weekend you go from losing the fastest game of the split to dominating your region’s second most historically successful team, but that’s Excel for you.

I said in last week’s blog that XL were looking down the barrel of a 0-2 week, and that’s honestly how it looked after the Rogue game. Nukeduck insipid Sona seemed indicative of the game as a whole, doing a good job of showing RIOT that support solo laners aren’t broken after all. Corki, on the other hand… Larssen showed exactly why The Daring Bombadier needed nerfs.

Miky, too, had his first mediocre showing, In fairness, though, it’s hard to put up good numbers on a losing team when you’re playing an engage support. Markoon continues to look excellent on Lee Sin, but he couldn’t carry a lost game by himself.

Unlucky 13 for Fnatic

All told, the manner of Rogue’s victory was disappointing, but it was the expected result. Beating Fnatic the following day was anything but.

And yet, watching the game, XL looked every bit the better team. They picked up first blood against what Caedrel called “the best bot lane we have in the LEC.” Although Mikyx then comically got sniped by a Jhin W a moment later, it was perhaps a sign of the Mikyx the team needs: constantly playing on the edge.

Speaking of playing on the edge, what really impressed me about the Fnatic game was how XL were unwilling to be bullied. The first real team fight was a long, drawn-out skirmish in XL’s red jungle. There were numerous occasions where a less confident team might have backed off and either cut their losses or accepted a trade, but XL didn’t back down and ended up even in gold after three kills were traded to each team.

If Mikyx had been underwhelming on Friday, he more than made up for it on Saturday. His hexflash engage onto Humanoid at the dragon fight opened up the game almost single-handedly. Excel crushed the fight and parleyed into baron buff and an unassailable lead.

In the end, it was a difficult macro decision that led to Fnatic giving up their first ever loss to Excel at the 13th time of asking.  While Wunder and Razork took down their third dragon, Humanoid and Upset were forced to use their ultimates to try and clear out minions and defend the base. It didn’t work, and without Shockwave, the base defence was impossible.

A Six-Pointer

While the win over Fnatic was nice, realistically, XL has to be looking at the upcoming BDS game as an important target. If they want to finally make it to the promised land of play-offs, middle-of-the-pack teams like BDS are the ones XL have to beat.

Last time the two teams met, XL put in what I consider their worst performance of the split so far – and they still kept the game close for long periods. If they can maintain the level they showed against Fnatic, or even somewhere near that, they should take revenge for their earlier defeat.

MAD Lions

Taking on the defending champions, MAD Lions was never likely to provide much in the way of results. You don’t expect a team that has never made play-offs to take down Worlds quarter-finalists.

That was essentially what played out on Friday evening, but it wasn’t all plain sailing for the Lions. It started poorly, when a nasty delayed invasion of Markoon’s jungle put Elyoya’s Lee Sin into a lead he would never give up. Despite handing a shutdown to Nukeduck’s Veigar soon after, MAD maintained a healthy lead while never really giving Excel a look-in.

And yet, XL weren’t truly out of the game till some later. The lead hovered around 1-2k until XL tried to sneak a baron while MAD did drake. You know where this is going. Elyoya stole it, got out, and suddenly the game was broken wide open. MAD got hextech soul soon after that and opened up a 6k lead with the kills leading up to and following that drake take.

Comically, it was then MAD who gifted XL a baron – or, more accurately, the baron gifted itself to XL. MAD had started it up in a 3v3, but Elyoya had to ward-jump out of the pit. When he tried to Q back in, the baron’s tentacle knocked him up, leaving Markoon to take an easy smite.

The gold gap closed somewhat, but yet another disjointed team fight around the elder drake was the final nail in XL’s coffin. Finn looked for a deep flank, first by simply walking round the back of the pit, then via a hextech gate. The problem was that he had lost two team mates before he could even dash over the blue buff wall. All but one member of MAD was on red health, but with everyone on XL looking at a grey screen the game was over.

Astralis

If MAD Lions was an expected loss, Astralis had to be an expected win. The worst team in the league had yet to win a game, and this was the type of fixture that play-off hopefuls need to be winning.

And win is exactly what they did. It started well, with a touch-and-go dive of Whiteknight’s Gwen giving Markoon first blood. Simultaneously, Kobbe made an ill-fated attempt to dive a support-less Patrik and although Astralis tied the kills up within a few minutes, XL’s farm leads and first blood bonus kept them ahead.

It was great to see Excel playing the map better than their opponents and cruising through the mid-game. They were 3-0 up in towers before 20 minutes and it cost them nothing but a single drake. Markoon was key to this, of course, and continues to impress on Lee Sin.

It wouldn’t be an XL game without a baron flip, though, would it? 26 minutes in, they lost another one, and it was nearly enough to let Astralis back in the game. Not quite, though: Astralis were too far behind for the baron buff to make a  big difference and they actually lost a tower and a drake while the buff was up.

To give Astralis their dues, they continued to look for picks and odd-numbered fights, but it never quite panned out for them. XL were always able to survive long enough to even up the fights, and Markoon kicking Zanzarah back into his team meant the second baron was free. XL were then able to levy soul point into two inhibitors, allowing Astralis to take only their second drake of the game. It was another sign of XL’s improving ability to play a macro-centred game, and it paid off in spades. One reset later and the game was over, with XL’s wallets being just too heavy for Astralis to fend off. Mikyx and The Future

Alright, so, the games went as expected, but what do we make of the Mikyx situation? Patrick was fairly candid in an interview with esports.com,  stating that “[the squad] were all quite disappointed.” Still, Mikyx is a big name to pass up on, and as much as Advienne’s dismissal might have looked poorly handled from the outside, I think this is a good move for a team that wants to break its play-offs duck. It’s a gamble, adding yet another new ingredient to a team that has yet to fully work out its chemistry, but one that I think should pay off.

It’s early to say anything too concrete about it yet, though. After two games, his stats were poor in the one that the team lost and fantastic in the one that they won. Not much to go on. It’s also quite hard to really shine on Lulu, but the champion worked well in the composition and he did have one impressive moment – a great escape from what looked like certain death in the enemy jungle.

Straight into it this week with another nearly-game and an impressively professional performance...  mostly.

Misfits

Saturday’s nearly-game against Misfits looked like a familiar story, based on the previous week. Excel got out to a pretty decent start, with Markoon looking far more decisive on Xin Zhao. He was heavily involved in a drawn-out first blood around the Rift Herald, and things were looking good with Patrik securing the kill that led to XL getting the herald.

Excel added to their lead with a couple of drakes and first tower gold. It was a slow game in terms of kills (2-0 at the 20 minute mark), but that looked to suit XL nicely. They even secured soul-point at the cost of a couple of summoner spells and had a small but significant lead.

And then it all came tumbling down. Just like in last week’s loss to BDS, the game flipped on a drake fight. This time, XL had drafted a difficult-to-execute team comp that didn’t really excel (ha!) in team fights. With no real frontline to stop Team Arcane, Vetheo’s Viktor and Neon’s Jinx had a field day cleaning up the fight once Hirit’s Gwen had annihilated most of XL’s life bars. Baron was next in Misftits’ sights, and suddenly a tiny gold lead for XL had turned into a huge deficit.

If XL’s team comp was difficult to utilize in an even game state, it was nigh impossible from behind. An attempted teleport flank by Nukeduck – whose Vex looked thoroughly underwhelming – was the fairly amusing nail in XL’s coffin. He was spotted on a ward, had to flash away from Viktor, and still died anyway.  Misfits picked up a second baron soon after that and ended the game with the purple aura still active.

SK Gaming

The second game of XL’s weekend felt like a culmination of lessons learned in the previous four games. They drafted a solo queue special, with tons of crowd control and tons of engage. Friendship with tricky skirmish champs like Graves and Vex was ended, Malphite and Leona were new best friends.

And yet, it was SK who made the first move, diving Finn with three players. Pre-six, Malphite had to take his medicine, but was able to return to lane without missing too much farm. Then things got a bit weird. A minute before herald spawned, Markoon (Lee Sin) and Advienne invaded SK’s gromp. At the same time, SK’s support and jungler hid in a top lane brush, waiting for Finn to give them an opportunity. Re-approaching his lane from the river, he was cut off from the minions by Jayce, but also seemed to smell something was up. He flirted with face-checking the brush, baiting SK while his nearby teammates made their way over. SK bit but couldn’t kill the tanky rock monster before back-up arrived and with CC from Leona/Malphite, Markoon’s Lee Sin was able to pick up a double kill.

Excel had a 1k gold lead, and would only grow for the rest of the game. Excel’s impressive early game stats were highlighted on the broadcast, and I have to admit, I was as nervous as the casters about whether or not XL could build on them. Mistakes were made, and cohesion continues to be an issue at times, but overall it was a solid performance. The team earned a big enough lead that a couple of whoopsies didn’t turn out to be fatal.

Markoon, in particular, deserves praise. I was harsh on him after a poor opening weekend, but his Lee Sin was miles apart from his Jarvan. His numbers (finishing on 9/0/6) really did tell the story of an exceptional performance. He looked much more confident, much more decisive, and just generally more comfortable on the champion.

Still, Excel did show some wobbles on their way to the finish line, and looked like they might be heading down struggle street (via Neutral Objective Boulevard again), but they had too much of a lead and too easy of a team composition to let it slip.

Indeed, the ending was like something out of a G2 game – you know, back when G2 were good. Excel took a second baron, but gave up three kills for it. They then seemed to have lost a fight for dragon soul, with Advienne getting caught in a nasty CC chain. Luckily, it was only SK’s fourth and even more luckily, Gilius and Jezu decided to stick around in the river, donating two kills to XL. From there, and for once, XL were on the same page, pushing down the middle lane with a couple of baron buffs, and a numbers advantage. With a little extra help from Stopwatches and Guardian Angels, the game was over before SK ever managed to get five players back on the rift.

Boring self-indulgent twaddle ahead. Skip to paragraph four. So, here’s a thing. Being a long-term British esports fan, I’ve been largely team-neutral by default. Since 4K left CS to go play Source, I’ve never really had a favourite team in any game. I always wanted European teams to win Worlds, but beyond that it usually came down to a case-by-case basis. Oh, UOL picked Twisted Fate jungle? Lets go!

This changed slightly, very slightly, when RIOT released the ill-fated Team pass. Small aside here: it’s a crying shame that more wasn’t done to make this successful. Anyway, I wanted to buy the pass to support esports, but had to pick a team. Excel were brand new back then and even had British players, so as a filthy hipster/contrarian, they were the obvious choice over obvious choices like Fnatic and G2.

Fast forward to 2022 and I’m still an esports fan, still using my Excel ward in-game and still considering myself an on-again, off-again esports writer. I guess this is my roundabout way of saying we’re at the “on again” part and I’m going to write about Excel, okay? Okay. All season.

Alright. It was quite the roller-coaster of an opening weekend for Excel, wasn’t it? Well, kind of. Or, well, I guess it was more like a straight track with a bit of a dip in the middle, peaking with Sunday’s victory over Vitality.

What a victory, though. Nobody saw that coming, even after pushing G2 to the wire in Friday’s opening match. If you told me Excel were going to win a game on the opening weekend, I’d have chosen BDS without a doubt. More on that later, but frankly, I’d pick Excel to beat BDS regardless of the rest of the schedule.

The thing is, though, Excel earned their victory against Vitality. There was nothing odd or cheesy about it – Excel were simply the better team on the day. Vitality’s draft wasn’t particularly bad, though there is a case to be made that they played it badly. Excel simply took the lead early on and, unlike in the G2 game, they held onto it.

Finn was the biggest individual winner of the weekend for Excel, and possibly for the entire LEC. After a very rough year across the pond, he made a statement on opening weekend, but especially in the Vitality game. He was down in lane early as Jayce into Wukong – never a good place to be. But he made so much more impact on the rest of the map, while dodging Alphari’s attempts to single him out. Even in the defeat to G2, he was the only Excel player to end the game with more kills than deaths. He output more damage than anyone on his team, and only Broken Blade’s Corki output more damage than him, full stop. Knowing the strength of Corki in the meta game right now, coming second to him is none too shabby.

The only real weak point for Excel looked to be in the jungle position. Markoon gave up a lot of deaths over the weekend and looked particularly lost in the BDS game. A lot of people questioned his build – Guardian Angel second simply meant Syndra had to cast another Q after one-shotting him with her ultimate – but his decision-making was lacking, too. There were several occasions when he should have engaged but didn’t, and several where he shouldn’t have engaged but did.

Still, it’s early days, and with the rest of the map looking fairly solid, there is time for Markoon to find his comfort zone. Despite ending the week 1-2, Excel probably come out of super week happier than most teams. They got two of their toughest games out of the way early and have some obvious things to fix. What’s more, those things aren’t especially difficult to sort out, in theory. Put Markoon on a more comfortable champion, get better at closing out games, and have a coherent plan.

That seemed to be the underlying issue in the BDS game. The G2 result was disappointing, but you don’t expect Excel to beat G2. Against BDS, though, Excel seemed to be drifting through the game without direction. Markoon didn’t seem to know when or even how to fight on Jarvan and despite some decent engagements from Finn’s Ornn, the rest of the team didn’t seem to be in-sync.

The game-turning fight around BDS’ third drake was the most damning evidence here. Nukeduck tries to  poke with Corki rockets, gets too close to the enemy team and has to waste package on escaping. Finn gets a two man Ornn ultimate onto Soraka and Syndra, but is totally isolated from his team by an Irelia ultimate. He lives for quite a while with Lulu shield and ultimate, but still goes down. Markoon manages to smite the drake away, but Patrick goes down in the escape and Excel lose multiple flashes on their way out.

Again, though, it’s worthwhile noting that these are fixable teething problems. Few teams are totally on the same page in week one, especially after such a tumultuous transfer window. Losing to fellow table-footers-in-waiting isn’t a great look on the surface, but scratch just a little deeper and you’ll find chemistry issues that can be solved over time. Imagine that same team fight from before where Nukeduck gets to use his package more aggressively; where Ornn isn’t cut-off totally from his team. Excel were in a gold lead at the time and with just a little more cohesion, they could have been the ones pushing BDS away and comfortably claiming the drake.

Week two is an interesting one for Excel. I’ll say one thing about following a team that narrowly misses play-offs every split: you can argue that every weekend is interesting, because your team are capable of things like… oh, I don’t know, beating the expected league leaders and losing to expected wooden-spooners in the sake weekend.

I can see both games going either way. SK had a very difficult opening weekend and managed to upset Mad Lions in what may well be the longest game of the split. Still, I find SK very hard to get excited about this season, and they will likely be fighting for one of the bottom play-off spots with Excel, making this a very important game so early in the season.

I haven’t written about Magic in ages, so what better way could there be to get back into the habit that a stream of consciousness spiel about the 2022 announcement?

Strap in, folks, because this is going to be long and poorly edited.

Actually, it’s not that long, about 1500 words. It might feel longer, though.

Neo-Tokyo or something idk

As one of the five people on r/magictcg that didn’t want to return to Kamigawa in standard set, I have to admit this one looks surprisingly awesome. The couple of pieces of art Wizard shared looked fantastic, as usual, and I’m a sucker for that blue/pink colour scheme. I’m not a huge fan of time travel as a story telling device but since the Magic story has always served the card game, using tropes I don’t enjoy is far from a deal-breaker. Yeah – I’m cautiously optimistic about this one.

Someone Made Elspeth an Offer she Couldn’t Refuse

Obviously, we know much less about this set. Still, it sounds right up my alley. I’m curious how Wizards is going to make Magic meets The Godfather work, but the good kind of curious. On top of that, I’d really like to have some more shard-based commanders on Arena for Brawl, and I assume we’re the “three-colour demon crime families” isn’t referring to clans (triome?) again after leaving Ikoria behind. Also, come on, how can you not love the sound of demon crime families?

Glory, Glory, Dom United!

There is a part of me that gets nervous about nebulous concepts like design space whenever we go back to an old plane again. All these crossovers (more on those later) take on a different appearance when viewed through an “are they running out of ideas” lens. Still, Dominaria was fantastic, by far the best “return to” set – though I’m hoping Innistrad claims that throne in a few weeks. With that in mind, I’m expecting Wizards to knock it out of the park with DU, just like they did with Dominaria.

The Nostalgia Wars

I might scoff somewhat at Magic’s storyline sometimes, but I’ve read the stuff that people think is good. I own both collections of the Artifacts Cycle. They all pale in comparison to good fantasy, but they’re not bad, and they hold a special place in my heart from when I was more invested in stuff like lore and story. The point of that ramble? 2022, more than ever, is Wizards’ mining the seemingly neverending mineral that is nerd nostalgia. It further adds to my “are they running out of ideas” worry, but I can’t say the nostalgia hit/psychological manipulation isn’t working on me. Hell, Return to Return to Innistrad has me more excited than any set for a couple of years now so I guess I’m part of the problem.

Uncaring

The phrase “not for you” is thrown around distrubingly often in Magic circles nowadays. Unfinity, however, is decidedly not for me. And that’s fine.

Dungeons And Dragons Battle for Baldur’s Gate Commander Legends I Think That’s The Whole Title But Maybe I Missed a bit I’m not Sure

Yikes, what a mouthful. I hate the title, both its length and unwieldiness. I don’t really have much interest in the set either. Commander Legends was a neat idea with a lot of flaws. Adding crossover flavour from another IP I have little-to-no interest in isn’t helping matters, though I appreciate that Adventures in the Forgotten Realms was super popular. For me, AFR was pretty much just a core set without any of the usual references to sets I do know and care about. Another “not for me” release.

Double Trouble

Hmm. I’m torn here. As a primarily limited-focused player, Masters sets have been some of my favourites ever. Original Modern Masters is still one of my in my top five sets of all time, and I have fond memories of almost all of the others, too.

Original Double Masters, though, was a victim of apathy brought on by the never-ending deluge of Magic product being released nowadays. I have never even seen a booster of this product, much less opened one. Without looking it up, I can’t even tell you if it was hurt by the pandemic or not, because there’s just way too much fucking stuff nowadays. I don’t know what else to say.

Oh, hang on. Was this the set with a $100 VIP Booster? Hahaha, fuck off.

Jump Around

The original Jumpstart was surprisingly enjoyable on Arena. I never wanted to play it more than a few times, and sometimes you got packs that relied entirely on your opponent getting mana screwed, but those few times I played it were pretty fun. I think putting stuff like obvious eternal format staples like Alosaurus Shepherd in a set like this is some extremely anti-consumer bullshit, but as a play experience it was an interesting mesh of draft and sealed. Not as much fun as either of those, but close enough that the novelty carried it into the “pretty fun, actually” camp. I expect more of the same – I’ll probably do a few runs if I have gems or gold spare.

Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40K Commander et al

Really, this is the bit about all the crossover stuff.

Another vomit inducing title and one that has left me with some introspection to do. Like many people, I find a lot of this crossover stuff distasteful, but I can’t really say why. The fact that the Street Fighter one – an IP I have some amount of investment in – seems less egregious than Warhammer of D&D makes me think that I don’t necessarily object to crossovers on principal. Does my dislike come from the fact that, so far, all of the other crossovers don’t involve properties I care about? Maybe. Even the mechanically unique line of text that pissed off so many people when the Walking Dead set came out doesn’t bother me that much, because Commander is a format I can take or leave.

The Fortnite one rubs me a different wrong way, though. Partly, it’s the sheer fucking inevitability of it all. Of course a popular part of the nerd sphere will have a crossover with Fortnite because that’s just the world in which we live. Partly it makes me feel old, uncool, and excluded, like all the other crossovers I don’t care about, sure. But there’s something more visceral about Fortnite. It’s fucking everywhere and I resent feeling like I have to have an opinion about it. Still, I don’t really have strong opinions about most of the other crossovers, so why this one? I really don’t know. Maybe this is one “this isn’t for you” too many from a game that has been part of my life for over 20 years.

I haven’t bought a single Secret Lair, but I’m generally willing to accept that they’re a bonus product that isn’t needed by anyone but is wanted by some. Hell, if they put out Secret Lair: Snapcaster Mage with good art (at last), I could probably te tempted into picking one up. It would be against my better judgement, though. Something about all these “not necessary but also don’t miss out, aren’t they cool, spend more money please” products rubs me the wrong way. Playing Magic and hating capitalism are difficult interests to reconcile. That’s it. That’s the tagline for this article.

Oh, right, it’s just a blog. Never mind.

Oh, God. The Fornite Secret Lair is going to be the Snapcaster Mage one, isn’t it?

Then there’s Lord of The Rings. My pal Kristen will be thrilled about this, was my first thought. I’m less enthusiastic (shocker, right?), but at least LOTR makes sense as a thing to crossover with. I mean, apart from the obvious business sense. It doesn’t have any guns and it isn’t an obnoxiously ubiquitous battle royale FPS, so that already puts it ahead of two of the other three crossovers. Indeed, without LOTR, you can make a reasonable case that MTG would never exist in the first place. Personally, I view LOTR in the same way I view The Beatles – they were important, and worthy of respect, but have been surpassed in every way since.

And the movies are better than the books. There I said it.

Regardless, this one is fine, actually. I still don’t particularly care for crossovers in general, especially as the setting for a standard set, but at least it makes sense this time.

Shut up Already

NOTE: I wrote this a couple of weeks ago. The exact stats may no longer be 100% accurate, but I think the points they support still stand.   Take a look at LCS player stats on a website like gol.gg and you might be surprised to find that it takes a while to find a category where Felix ‘Abbedagge’ Braun stands out. Well, if we’re not including win rate, of course, where 100 Thieves are tied with TSM for first.

For a mid laner, 3.1 kills per game is a prety low average (though it’s worth nothing he has played three games on Karma). He is tied with Xerxe for least deaths if we discount substitutes and role swaps, and the same goes for KDA, but in every other stat he’s somewhere near the middle of the pack.

So what’s the big deal? Is the Fakerdagge label just a meme?

Not exactly. See, although Faker, having stayed at T1 for so long, gets a lot of the credit for SKT’s historic success, what often gets overlooked is the fact that he was part of an exceptional team. T1 have tried rebuilding squads around him numerous times but never again found that winning recipe.

Through this lens, the comparisons make a lot of sense. Abbedagge is an important cog in a well-oiled machine, not the all-conquering European superstar some might have expected. This shouldn’t have been big news either. In Schalke’s playoff run last split, he wasn’t that much of a standout player, contributing roughly the same amount of damage as AD Carry Matúš ‘Neo’ Jakubčíkn and slightly less gold.

Looking back over his time with Schalke, what does hold true across Abbedagge’s professional career is that he is really good at not dying. In his first LEC split (Spring 2019), he averaged just 2.3 deaths per game. Granted, he only averaged 2.2 kills as well, but Schalke finished 7th that split and failed to make playoffs. He has always been a steady hand, including his final LEC split, where averaged 3.1 kills and 2.2 deaths.

What you get with Abbedagge is a promise. He is always going to do well in lane. He is always going to be a solid foundation for the rest of the team to build on. Even his champion pool bears this out, with his most played champions being Azir, Zoe and Orianna. All safe champions with few bad match-ups. He is rarely, if ever, going to be the reason 100T loses a game. He isn’t likely to be the direct reason for them winning games either, but that’s a worthwhile trade.

What is less clear is the idea that Ry0ma needed replacing. He had a rough start to his 100 Thieves career, but by the end of Summer 2021 his numbers didn’t look much worse than his replacement’s do now. The guy is clearly too good for Academy, posting multiple games with ten or more kills and a couple of deathless games.

From the outside, it seems as though Ry0ma was the scapegoat of some deeper-seated problems. After a couple of years in the wilderness, they were doing alright with his steadying influence in the mid lane. Don’t forget, in Spring this year they finished a respectable 4th place.

Something has definitely clicked with Abbedagge, though. Maybe it’s something that doesn’t show up in statistics, like camaraderie or team spirit. Whatever it is, there is no denying the fact that 100T have improved on the most important statistic of them all: friendship wins. With just one roster change, and a statistically negligible one, they are tied for first, having won their head-to-head.

Tellingly, in an interview with Travis Gafford, Closer noted that Abbedagge had improved both on and off Summoner’s Rift. He should know, having played with him together on Royal Bandits in 2017.

There is, of course, a very big Korean elephant in the room, though. While Abbedagge may have been the sole in-game change, Bok ‘Reapered’ Han-Gyu was a huge addition to the coaching staff of 100T. Known for both his success with Cloud 9 and his willingness to try out weird picks, it makes sense to see his new team playing things like Lee Sin and Vayne in the bottom lane. It also makes sense that he has them winning a lot.

I don’t play a ton of games. I spend a lot of time playing games, and probably even more time watching professionals play them, but I play a lot of different games. That also means I’ve never really written a ton about single player gaming, least of all reviews.

But when I saw The Outer Worlds on Jim Sterling’s Youtube channel, and then found out it was included in Microsofts’ PC Game Pass… and then found out that that was having a £1 for the first month trial, I had to give it a go.

And then, when I completed it (even rarer still), I had to write about it.

Here, it seemed was a smart, spiritual successor to the (in my eyes overrated, but I get why) legendary Fallout: New Vegas. I loved Fallout 4, but could never really get into the less action-packed, hideously ugly older games, but I digress.

Better yet, TOW looked like a satirical takedown of late capitalism, which is even more up my alley. TOW delivered on this front, to an extent. The critique is very frontloaded into the now infamous early quest, and it is a little on-the-nose, but this kind of political discussion is something I’d love to see more of in games. Sadly, this aspect of the game somehow manages to be both heavy-handed and easily-ignored after that. It’s there, pretty much constantly, reminding you how shitty capitalism is, but it never really adds much to the game after the first hour or so. Apart from a few notable moments, such as a town being billed for damage to company property in the wake of a worker’s suicide, the social commentary is mostly set dressing.

The game itself is fine. The story was good, the setting is interesting and relatively well fleshed-out, and I enjoyed most of what the main quest had to offer. There are issues, though. The combat, while relatively smooth and satisfying in terms of gunplay, is ruined by the game’s insistence on forcing you into playing as if it’s a sort of single player squad based shooter. So much of the actual game play is designed around having companions fight with you, but doing so felt very unsatisfying and un-interactive. You can use their special abilities once or twice a fight, but that’s it. I found that mine usually “fainted” very quickly, leaving me to clean up a bunch of lightly damaged enemies by myself.

               Maybe I was supposed to invest more in upgrading my buddies, but that’s not how I want to play game like this, and I felt punished for it. Worse, so many of the perk points push you in this direction, despite the fact that companions already have their own perk trees. Worse still, almost all of the perks, both yours and your companions’ are extremely uninteresting, and many of them are just straight up bad. I’m a fan of perks and talents in games when done right. They make each level-up feel important and exciting, much more than simply adding another point in stealth or ranged weapons does. But when they’re as dull as the ones in TOW, it makes the whole system feel like it was just put there because games like this always have them. The fact that this is all happening in a game with such a great history of delivering on this front makes it all the more disappointing.

Speaking of Obsidian’s lineage, the lack of weapon diversity was a huge problem for me. I liked the tinkering system, but it meant I basically stuck with the same four guns for most of the game’s relatively short duration. The fact that none of the science weapons (TOW’s version of legendary weapons) fit the way I wanted to play was particularly frustrating, given how Bethesda did this with Fallout 4. I ended up not using a single one of the science weapons in my first playthrough, and I have no urge to play again.

That last point is perhaps the most damning thing I can say about TOW. With Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, I’m always excited to try out new play styles, even if they don’t end up finishing the story with them. With TOW, all the decisions that make repeated play interesting in other games are stripped away. The perks are so generic, and you are pushed so hard into playing with companions, that I have zero interest in replaying the game, except maybe to try out a melee build.

One thing I haven’t even mentioned yet is the fact that the companions you are essentially forced to play with are not particularly interesting. Parvati, the first one you come across, is probably the strongest of the bunch, as she plays a big part in your first and biggest moral decision. The rest of them are pretty forgettable: there’s the drunk one, the angry one and the amoral mercenary one. I never unlocked the religious one, so hopefully he has a little more going on, but I doubt it.

In the end, I’m left with the feeling that The Outer Worlds is really more like a TellTale game with minimal shooter elements attached than it is a Fallout clone. There is an interesting, fun story here, but the actual game play is functional at best and tedious at worst. It’s a shame, because I love losing myself in this kind of game, and the Space Capitalism is Bad aspects of the game were promising, but they weren’t enough to outshine the mediocre gameplay.

Opening night for Pro League was kind of a mess. I couldn’t change the volume or the resolution, and on the HLTV embed I couldn’t even make the stream go full-screen. It then crashed my browser.