After falling to Cloud9 last summer, Echo Fox failed to qualify for the playoffs for the fourth split in a row. Despite those two whole seasons of consistent failure, the organization was still accepted into the newly-franchised NA LCS.
Out of the 10 teams accepted into the new league, Echo Fox was one of the most controversial. Sure, they’re owned and backed by venture capitalist and three-time NBA Finals champion Rick Fox, which meant their financial future most likely wasn’t in jeopardy. But they had lost, and they had lost a lot.
Echo Fox needed a fresh start if they were going to push forward into the new NA LCS, so the entire roster was replaced. The team brought in five new players and a new coach, including former SK Telecom T1 top laner Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon. The new roster is the only one to not drop a single game so far in the Spring Split.
For once, it doesn’t look like Echo Fox are winning only because they’re messing up the least. The mindset of the team seems totally different than that of the last two years. In games where they start losing, they back off, play patiently, and wait for the opportunity to stage a comeback. They have weaknesses, but they’ve improved with each game. Where one player falters, another one steps up, like when mid laner Kim “Fenix” Jae-hun and jungler Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett pressured the mid lane against TSM to give Huni breathing room to crawl back into the match.
It’s clear that this new and improved Echo Fox knows how to play as a team, something that both the 2016 and 2017 rosters struggled with immensely.
Most analysts, including ourselves, assumed that if Echo Fox could win anything, it would be on sheer mechanical talent alone. But Dardoch, Huni, and Fenix have proved those doubts wrong as they’ve worked very well together so far.
Huni was one of the best top laners in North America during his time on Immortals in 2016, and it looks like he’s returning to form this year. Similarly, Dardoch is one of the best mechanical junglers in the region, usually playing high-damage carries like Rengar and Lee Sin to piggyback his team to victory. This season, though, he’s played nothing but support-style tanks to set Huni up to carry, and that top-jungle relationship has won them a couple of games already.
The beauty of this plan, however, comes from Fenix. Huni struggled to find a solo lead during week two, and that’s when Fenix stepped up to prove that he can carry as well, giving Huni the time he needed to catch back up. Dardoch seemed just as comfortable helping Fenix, like he did with Huni in every other game. Given Dardoch’s history, he is certainly used to playing the role of carry himself, too. That means Echo Fox has three strong areas of power to rely on in a pinch. When one falters, another one can step up. As long as egos stay in check, that’s a plan that could work in the long run.
That’s not to say that Johnny “Altec” Ru and Adrian Ma aren’t helping from the bot lane, because without them, this three-man plan might not work out nearly as well.
Throughout all of this, a team that almost no one expected to mesh together well ended up doing the exact opposite. We might not know for sure how this team performs under pressure until we see them drop a game or two, but if their near loss to TSM was any indication, they should do just fine.
If they can keep their heads up while staying focused and constructive in the face of defeat, this team could easily be an NA LCS Finals contender at the end of the split.
Echo Fox’s next games are against CLG and OpTic Gaming this weekend, two teams that have been underperforming so far. This could be a good opportunity for them to solidify their undefeated streak against the rest of the league.
It’s definitely rare to see a team like TSM struggle, considering their decorated past and seemingly stacked roster. But apparently, when it rains, it pours for TSM.
This week, they’re facing off against 100 Thieves, a veteran-loaded roster full of comeback kids such as William “Meteos” Hartman, Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black, and Yoo “Ryu” Sang-wook. Other players on the roster, namely Cody Sun and Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho, had fairly successful seasons with Worlds and NA LCS semifinals appearances respectively.
This roster, despite concerns that Ryu, Meteos, and Aphromoo haven’t succeeded over the past couple of years despite very impressive highs throughout their careers, has been crushing the league. They’ve only given up one game to Cloud9, who they’re tied with for second place.
All that considered, TSM doesn’t stand a great chance at walking away with their second victory. Nonetheless, they need this win against one of the top-three teams if they’re going to grab hold of their identity as a North American powerhouse once again.
The featured matchup of the game is definitely the jungle duel between Meteos and Mike Yeung. Both junglers played for Phoenix1 last year at some point, and then both of them joined bigger and better teams for the 2018 season after Phoenix1 disbanded. The only difference is that Meteos has been playing better than he did in 2017, while Mike Yeung seems to have regressed.
When TSM picked him up this offseason, the team was automatically predicted to be one of the top-two teams in the region under the assumption that Mike Yeung would perform even better on a successful team with more resources. Unfortunately for him, it’s been the opposite, and although he hasn’t been the weak link every game, he certainly isn’t helping.
After joining P1 during the 2017 Spring Split, one split before Mike Yeung joined, he was one of the only consistently strong players on the team—but he was still only a shadow of his former self. Eventually, he was replaced on the roster, and remained as a substitute player for the remainder of the season.
This year, it appears his dominance has returned in full force. He plays extremely aggressive, but he isn’t reckless, and he knows when to back out of the enemy jungle and out of tower dives to avoid defeat. More impressively, he knows how to rotate and command fights to close out a game, something that Mike Yeung has yet to show he can do at all.
It isn’t likely that Mike Yeung improves enough to go toe-to-toe with Meteos this weekend, but his team can give him some extra attention to make sure he isn’t pushed out of the game.
Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg has been in the NA LCS since the league’s inception in 2013, and he’s become very well-known for being the flashiest hypercarry mid laner in the region since then. As the last season progressed, fans started to realize that Bjergsen’s shine as an exceptional player was fading away, especially at Worlds, and that realization birthed the “KDA player” meme.The real problem, however, isn’t that Bjergsen plays to protect his KDA, and it isn’t that he’s suddenly become a worse player—it only seems that way. His slowing performance and lesser impact on every game aren’t the problems, however, they’re the symptoms of a larger issue, which is the game itself.
He’s tried picking up supportive mid laners like Galio and Malzahar to keep up with the changes and to support his team around objectives, but he simply doesn’t play that style as well as he plays the role of hypercarry. And yet, that’s what it takes to win.
And so we see him standing by his tower, sitting back behind fights, and having extremely uneventful KDAs game after game. He isn’t doing it to protect his stats, he’s doing it because he doesn’t play mid as a supportive playmaker as comfortably as his old style. If you look across the ocean in the LCK, you’ll notice Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok doing the same thing on his wavering SKT Telecom T1. He can’t carry his team with his sheer mechanical talent, because the game doesn’t allow him to do that anymore, and SKT continue to struggle.
This week, he goes up against Ryu, and although Ryu has fallen far from his days of being considered one of the best mid laners in the entire world, he’s still playing better than he has in a long time. If Bjergsen wants to truly carry his team to victory, he needs to learn to dedicate more of his time and resources to Mike Yeung and to his bot lane. He needs to be proactive and willing to sacrifice himself to get the rest of his team situated in a better position, because that’s what a supportive, playmaking mid laner does in the current meta.
After two weeks of play in the NA LCS, Echo Fox and CLG could not have been on more opposite sides of the spectrum.
Echo Fox assembled a risky roster, but the pieces fit perfectly as they stormed to a 4-0 record, including wins over Cloud9 and TSM. On the other side, CLG had cratered to 1-3 and were quite possibly the most disappointing team in the league.
In the end, CLG prevailed. Using a strategy that we called for in our preview, they went back to basics and relied on top laner Darshan Upadhyaya. Darshan seemed like a mechanical mismatch against Echo Fox top laner Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon, who is playing like one of the best top laners in the West.
But CLG gave Darshan a leg up in a strong early matchup, having him take Gnar into Gangplank. His goal was to splitpush all the way to the Echo Fox base, and for the most part, he accomplished that goal. Their goal was to punish Echo Fox’s blind Gangplank before he could scale into an unstoppable damage dealer.
Echo Fox responded by diverting resources into letting Huni scale. The balance between the two teams’ objectives could be seen around a late Baron fight in which Echo Fox dove in as a team while Darshan chose to stay in the bot lane and knock down an inhibitor turret.
A clean ace around the Elder Dragon pit, combined with the waves that Darshan had been pushing all game, turned into a CLG victory.
It’s only week three, but this felt like a season-saving victory for CLG. Not only did they find a winning playstyle, but they adapted well and took late fights when it mattered. Stixxay had one of his best games, and so did jungler Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin, playing the totally broken Nunu. They need to keep playing like this to get back into playoff contention.
For Echo Fox, the loss isn’t that worrying. A couple mechanical fumbles and some questionable macro can be fixed. They’re still a top team—the question is whether they respond like one. People have been questioning their mentality since the roster was announced, and this bit of adversity is a good test for them.
The third jungler mentioned in Riot’s post has been rather strong since well before the preseason, but she was nerfed a little too hard in Patch 8.2 and needs some follow-up work. As much as it will pain squishy supports and ADCs to hear, it’s Evelynn, and Riot is hoping to give her power back “in a straightforward way,” which likely means a damage buff to one of her primary abilities or base stats.
Patch 8.4, along with all of these changes, is expected to ship in a little under three weeks, which means all of this should be on the PBE for testing next week.
Patch 8.3 arrives next week, but Riot is already dishing out their preparations for the update to follow—Patch 8.4. Among the big changes in that patch, including Rengar’s partial rework, the balance team will be taking aim at the jungle to buff up its weakest champions and items, according to Riot’s post on the official game forums yesterday.The jungle certainly benefited from the new rune system introduced over the preseason. Tons of junglers that were previously too weak to play, like Udyr and Kindred, were made viable. But there are some junglers that were so weak that not even the new runes could bring them back from the brink. Two of those junglers are Fiddlesticks and Volibear, and that’s why Riot wants to crank them up a notch in 8.4.
Volibear’s change will be a little on the heavy side—possibly a mechanical change to his knock-up, as well as a secondary buff to his movement speed boost. Fiddlesticks’ will probably be more straightforward, so expect a direct buff to damage, cooldowns, or crowd control.
After stints in Boston and other notable locations across the United States, the NA LCS is heading to Miami for the upcoming Spring Split finals, according to a report by ESPN.The finals will take place from April 7 to 8, with the first place and third place matches being played live in front of a huge audience at the Jackie Gleason Theater.
This is the second time that a theater will host a Riot-themed event—The Chicago Theatre was used for the 2016 League of Legends World Championship quarterfinals.
MORE ON RICK FOX
Ulrich Alexander “Rick” Fox (born July 24, 1969) is a Canadian-Bahamian, film and television actor, businessman, retired basketball player, and esports franchise owner. He played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers, and played college basketball for the North Carolina Tar Heels. Fox is currently a Partner at Vision Venture Partners, spearheading the private equity firm’s move into professional esports and providing strategic guidance, creative direction and business development support to each of VVP’s portfolio companies. He is also the owner of premier esports franchise Echo Fox.
Rick is renowned as a three time NBA Champion and former team captain for the LA Lakers. He began his professional basketball career with the Boston Celtics as a first-round draft pick in 1991, and retired from the Lakers in 2004. He is also a respected TV and film actor, as well as producer and analyst for NBA TV. Over the last 17 years, he has worked for virtually every major television network.
Vision Venture Partners is a private equity firm formed by Rick Fox, Amit Raizada and Stratton Sclavos. We bring together decades of business success and value creation from the high tech, video game, professional sport and lifestyle industries.
