By Jorge “Caldo” Calderon – @coL_Caldo
The NA LCS Summer Split has come to an end. The coL.LoL squad has come far and improved a tremendous amount. They went from being the underdogs who everyone believed had the 0-28 dream, to the underdogs who were known as the mighty blue shell! The blue shell had been conquering the top teams in the NA Summer Split. They managed to bring down Cloud 9, the number one team during the regular season, and have improved on vital team communication. They managed to conquer other in-game problems, such as vision and objective control, even becoming the team to most often take the first Dragon.
Now that we are here at the end of the Summer Split, with the playoffs behind us, it is time for promotions and one more thing. It is relegation time; compLexity Gaming ended up being the 8th place team in the 2014 NA LCS Summer Split. Even though they are in last place, they are not the same team that they were at the beginning of the Summer Split; they have evolved and grown significantly stronger. The three Challenger teams that made it to the 2015 Spring Promotion Tournament are Team 8, Curse Academy, and Team Coast. The coL.LoL squad will have to face one of these 3 teams, so lets break them down and see what we might go up against.
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Let’s start with the 3rd placed team, Team Coast.
Team Coast was formerly an LCS Team and were relegated out by the coL.LoL squad in the 2014 Summer Promotion Tournament. There are some notable players on the current roster, including DontMashme, who played for coL.LoL last year for about two months, and then moved on to Good Game University, which would later become Team Coast. In addition, former coL.Red player, Goldenglue, is a strong mid laner. He replaced Scarra after a retirement earlier this year. Sheep was on XDG as their support before they ended up being relegated out of the LCS. Santorin is not a particularly known player, but he was a sub for Cloud 9 Eclipse. Now he is the jungler for Team Coast. Lastly, There is Rhux, who has played on Curse and Curse Academy in the past and is now the top laner. Team Coast were the favorites, but ended up getting third place even though they were expected to be the strongest NACS team. It is now reported that two Korean challengers will be added to the Coast roster, just in time for relegation/promotions, likely replacing GoldenGlue and Rhux.
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Moving forward is the 2nd place team, Curse Academy.
Curse Academy is made up of some pretty strong players. First off we have Saintvicious, who was the jungler for Curse and also a player for CLG back in the day. He has been playing exceptionally well in the NACS and is definitely someone to look out for. Next, we have Bunny FuFuu, he was also part of Curse as a support, but later on replaced. He is now the Support player for Curse Academy and definitely one of the best supports in NA. People believe that he is underrated and in fact an extremely strong support. Moving forward, we have Cris, who is the top laner and was previously on vVv Gaming, and Velocity eSports. He has LCS experience with Velocity eSports, where he was the top laner. Impactful is another former coLRed player and is now the AD Carry for Curse Academy. Lastly is Keane, the mid laner and sub for Curse. He was the mid laner for Team Curse OCE previously. Overall, the team is strong and I believe they will give anyone they face a rough time.
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Lastly we have Team 8, the team that placed 1st at the NACS Playoffs!
Team 8 is a squad that seemingly came out of nowhere over the past year. They started dominating the NACS scene and people realized that they are indeed a really strong team. The best known player on Team 8 is frommaplestreet, who was the AD Carry for Velocity eSports before they were relegated. He is also TheOddone’s brother, for those who did not know. Next we have CaliforniaTrlolz, the Top laner for Team 8! He is a really strong top laner, often picking up non-meta champions and succeeding! Moving forward, PorpoisePops is the jungler and was previously on vVv Gaming and vVv Gaming Red. The last two members of Team 8 don’t have a ton of prior experience with top level competitive teams. Dodo8 is the support and he came out of nowhere, this is his first team and he is doing well! Slooshi isn’t that known either, but he was on Absolute Legends along with ROBERTxLEE, the current AD-Carry for the coL.LoL squad.
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Overall, I feel like coL.LoL will have a good matchup against Team Coast because of the two roster changes that are currently going on. The team doesn’t seem to have practiced too much with this new roster. Goldenglue and Rhux have been moved down as subs for Team Coast, shortly after qualifying for the promotion tournament. I feel like the team will be on tilt in a way, or just not well coordinated because of lack of practice with the new roster. The hardest matchup for coL.LoL will be Curse Academy in my opinion. The reason for this is because of the LCS experience within the team. Saintvicious, Cris, and Bunny FuFuu are great players that have LCS experience, they can perform well in stressful situations. In addition, Impactful and Keane are two strong players that should not be underestimated.
In any case, coL.LoL will have to fight for their NA LCS position against one of these three teams. We will soon find out which, and bring you the thoughts of the coL.LoL squad as they head into one of the most important matches of their career, on September 11th.