My Fantasy LCS Picks AKA Rambling no One Else Gets or Cares About

As most of the people that read this blog know, I am pretty big into esports, particularly the League of Legends scene, and one of the things I really enjoy is the Fantasy LCS. It is essentially like Fantasy Football, but for the League of Legends Championship Series. (LCS) Players enter into a league and at the beginning of the season/split draft a team and compete with each other on a week to week basis. Each team consists of six players (one for each position in a team and an additional "Flex" pick) and one team on a starting roster and there are three sub positions available for players to draft in additional players to shore up potential weaknesses in their team. Participants in the fantasy league are also limited to picking only two players for each position since certain positions are worth more points. It would be like trying to draft a team in fantasy football made entirely of quarterbacks. It just doesn't make sense. Now that you have a general idea of what Fantasy LCS is you are ready to have my overwhelmingly intelligent picks explained to you. I'll start from the top (lol wordplay) and go down the list giving brief (hopefully) explanations of why I choose them for my team. The full team list can be found here if you want to put faces to the names I'm throwing out.

For my Top lane pick (get the wordplay thing now?) I've chosen Quas of Team Liquid. Quas is a versatile top laner who is capable of fitting into whatever role his team needs him to play. Quas can play team fight oriented mages like Lissandra, Rumble or Lulu that rack up the kills or beefy tanks such as Gnar, Renekton, and Sion that distract the opponents while his Korean carries clean up the fight. He has intelligent teleport play, but with Piglet's tendency to split push himself it shouldn't be seen as a surprise if Quas is often found grouped up with his team ready to get into the mix. I expect that for the most part Quas will be providing a healthy stream of assists to keep his fantasy score high.

Moving into the jungle I've got myself Jankos of team Roccat, who just might be the best jungler in all of Europe with Svenskernen of SK gaming being his only real competition. (Shook is simply not consistent enough to be the best.) Pair that talent with with one of the rising stars of Europe in Nukeduck and you have one of the strongest mid/jungle pairings in Europe. I expect early kills with smart snowballing from the Polish jungler.

Whether you want to admit it or not TSM fans, your team lives or dies based almost entirely on the performance of the Danish superstar Bjergsen. While this might be considered a weakness by some, I wouldn't worry to much about it yet since Bjergsen is one of, if not the best players in North America currently, and there is actually an argument to be made that he is just THE best in NA right now. The Dane is famed for his incredibly strong laning that has netted him many solo kills on his opponents and his ability to almost always get ahead of the enemy allows him to make plenty of big plays which mean plenty of fantasy points for me. Bjergsen is so good I planned my entire fantasy draft around him and Forg1ven who I will touch on next.

Forg1ven (yes it's spelt with a 1 and not an i, just pronounce it Forgiven) as I mentioned just now was a pick I planned my entire draft around. A couple of people in the draft with me suggested that this was my "Sleeper" pick. I don't really understand how anyone can really think he is a sleeper though, Forg1ven was the shining light on an otherwise dismal looking Copenhagen Wolves last year, and this year he's been put into a much better team with SK gaming. Forg1ven has just as much talent for League as Rekkles who is very often stated as being the best AD carry in all of Europe, but Forg1ven has something that Rekkles simply does not. An aggressive playstyle, and to top it all off he is now paired with one of the best minds in the game in nRated. These two together have both the brawn AND the brains to back it up. Forg1ven is going to lead the charge for both SK and myself all the way to the top of the standings.

Last year I refused to pick any players from Team Solo Mid (TSM) on the simple reason that I didn't like the team. Now that I've moved on from that childish mentality I've gone ahead and picked two players from their roster. Really that's all I have to say about Lustboy though, I picked him up pretty late into my draft, but he is a very good support player playing for what I think will be a very successful team. What could go wrong?

The sixth slot is designated for fantasy players to have a "Flex" pick where they can but a player from any position in allowing a fantasy team to play two tops, two mids etc etc. However since Mid laners and AD carries get the lions share of points almost everyone just picks one of those two to double up on. For myself this is where I've taken a bit more of a risk by picking up Keane of Gravity. Keane is a risk not because I don't know how good he is, I know that Keane is a very good player. What I don't know is if Gravity is all that good as a team and with the way fantasy points are earned you need players to be on winning teams if you want to succeed. Keane is my riskiest pick-up and even then I'm not that worried. Gravity can't fail completely can they?

The seventh and final starting spot on a fantasy roster belongs to a team and I've picked up the boys in blue, Team Liquid. This team has an insane amount of hype around them right now, and I won't lie, I've bought right into it. Liquid looks incredibly solid with nearly every player on their roster having been a proven player in some aspect or another. The only unproven player is Fenix, their mid laner. While Fenix doesn't have too much experience on the bigger stages of play nearly every other pro in the scene has spoken highly of his skill so I wouldn't consider it anything to be worried about. Everything points to Liquid having a very successful season, and to top it all off their playstyle is very methodical taking every objective possible as to not allow an opponent they've gained an advantage over the chance to get back into the game. This play style will convert into lots of fantasy points for me. WHOOO!

This is already an incredibly long post so I'll try and get through the subs part of the team quickly. My subs are picked with the intention of being solid players that I can put in if some of my starters are facing difficult teams that particular week. Wickd of team Elements is ready to sub in for Quas and Helios of Winterfox can replace Jankos if needed. I also have team Fnatic on my bench just in case they actually turn out to be as good as they played in the first week.

I think it should go without saying that I think I've drafted a good fantasy team, and more importantly that my team is better than my opponents. My picks should show my superior knowledge of the League of Legends pro scene and I hope I win this Fantasy league convincingly. If you actually made it to the end of all this rambling let it be known that I love you and hope you had a great day today. Peace buds.

Obligatory picture of my Team Liquid shirt to show my support!

The Casual Fan's NA LCS Power Rank!

With the North American League Championship Series booting back into high gear this weekend, I'd thought I would share some of my thoughts on how the North American teams stand up to each other with their European imports. So without further delay, we'll proceed form eight too one!

#8 - Dignitas. Let's get something straight, I am a Dig fan, I love these guys and I sincerely think that Qtpie is one of the best AD's in North America, but at this moment there isn't really a lot else going on for them. Scarra is kind of just another mid right now, Kiwikid is still new to support, Crumbz has some moments of brilliance and Cruzer just looked totally outclassed against Wickd at the Battle of the Atlantic event. I hope to see this team improve and I think they can, but right now they are in deep trouble.

#7 - Curse. Curse probably isn't actually as bad as I'm saying they are, but thats mostly because I haven't jumped on the Quas hype train. Dominate and VoyBoy seem to be meshing well together in play so they've got that over Dig at least. Cop and Zekent will almost guaranteed be one of the most average bottom lanes in North America, and with the upcoming changes in patch 4.1 almost forcing the 2v2 every game Curse's bottom lane will have to lean on their solo lanes even more if they are to start winning games.

#6 - CLG. I don't get it. I just don't. CLG has everything in the right place to be top 2 team material. They have one of the best strategic minds in League with MonteCristo coaching them, one of the two most mechanically gifted players in North America with Doublelift and Link who are both very capable of carrying games. I'm particularly fond of Doublelifts preference to playing Jinx, a champion I think can carry games infinitely better than other top picks such as Cait, Lucian or Sivir. On the other end of the bot lane, Aphromoo seems to have become very comfortable with supporting and is enjoying it, and Nien continues to evolve into a high quality top lane player. Finally, they have the super strong European jungler now in Dexter. They should have everything going for them, but things just don't seem to work out. I wouldn't be suprised in the slightest if CLG challenged for Top 2 in NA, but until something magical happens that makes this team work they'll continue to wallow in mediocrity.

#5 - Coast. Coast looked really good playing against the other challenger teams during their relegation period, but those are only the challenger teams. Coast suffers from the same problem that Curse does in my mind in that they are good players, just not great. Nothing about them really stands out, but their bot lane doesn't make me cringe with how passive they are at least so I'll rate them a fair bit higher than Curse. Someone's gotta be the middle of the pack team I suppose.

#4 - XDG. I honestly didn't know whether to put XDG or EG here, ultimately the recently renewed commitment to swapping Xmithie to AD and Zuna to jungle forced my hand though. Xmithie is a great jungler, and I really don't think he's going to fully adapt to the bottom lane until very late into the split or even the summer split. Zuna's positioning as AD was well... pretty awful, he just seems to want to go in deep all the time, so I guess Jungle will suit him better, but really this move overall is a mistake I feel. Despite this bad move within the team, I still think XDG will be a strong team that will give people a good run for their money. If they can stop throwing games I think they can beat anyone really.

#3 - EG. All hail the European rejects! Seriously though, this team has a really solid line-up. Snoopeh seems to be back on the rise getting his mechanics back together. I do thin Yellopete is way to passive, but the bot lane makes up for it with Krepo being willing to go balls deep at a moments notice and on top of that the team seems synced up with Krepo well, diving right with him. Innox seems to be a solid top laner, but I do hope to see a bit more from him over these next few months. Lastly there is Pobelter. He's super strong, I'm not going to lie, but EG cannot afford to fall into the trap they did with Froggen. They cannot rely too much on their mid, they must realize that other people on the team are totally capable of carrying the game as well. regardless, this team looks to be solid throughout the year. How ironic it would be if they made it to worlds from NA and Alliance failed to make it...

#2 - Cloud 9. The biggest debate I had with myself over these placements was the top 2. It seems pretty clear but who are the two best teams in NA right now. (I'll give you a hint, its the ones that WON Battle of the Atlantic matches.) The real question is which of these two is better than the other though? Ultimately I had to put the boys in light blue in second, but really I can see either of these two being number 1 easily. Cloud 9 absolutely dominated the last split of  the LCS with strong team fighting oriented compositions and decisive decision making. Having one of the best Junglers in the entire world acting as the spearhead certainly helps as well. Coming into this split Cloud 9 have to prove that they can still be the best consistently. I again criticize the bottom lane for being passively oriented, however Cloud 9 plays that as a strength by having Sneaky and Lemonation play utility oriented bottom lane that allows for the solo lanes to shine. I don't think its optimal, but it works pretty darn well.

#1 - TSM. Team Solo Mid has only made one change, but boy was it big. Team Owner Reginald stepped down from the starting roster to coach the team. Replacing him is star European mid laner Bjergsen. This not only makes what I thought was TSM's weakest point one of its strongest, but it also removes the massive power dynamic issues that plagued the team during Season 3. In game I feel that TSM is now actually in a position to communicate in a healthy manner. Combine that with TheOddOne's recent surge in performance and we have a scary scary TSM. Just how strong is TSM now? Strong enough that I think Dyrus is the weakest player on the team now. Yes Dyrus, the North American All-star that consistenly performs and often would be large factor in TSM's season 3 wins is now the weakest person on the team. They're like SKT K lite now, thats honestly not even a real dig at TSM. They are scary and I expect great things from them this season.

So there you have it! Some random fan's opinion on how the LCS teams are going to do in NA this split. Hopfully I get at least a couple of them right.