SKT Run the Table to a Second World Championship
Sadly despite watching all the SKT vs Koo games, I just never got the time to do a write up at the time. SKT were easily the better team, but a huge amount of credit goes to Koo who are the only team throughout the tournament to take even one game off the SKTelecom juggernaut. The series started out as expected with SKT jumping out to an early 2-0 lead, before Koo stole one back. It wasn’t impossible to see a reverse sweep on the cards but SKT rallied behind an outstanding effort from Faker; who put up 23 kills through the series, 9 of them coming in the final game to hand SKT the win, and the summoners cup.
Off-Season Moves
There’s been a good few moves already in the off season, far too many to list, so I’ll just run down some of the more shocking and important ones.
Given their poor showing recently, it’s no surprise that TSM have gone into full rebuild mode, releasing their coach and allowing Santorin to leave as a free agent, not to mention the retirement of Dyrus and Lustboy. All of this has left TSM as a blank slate with a list of issue to address as long as my arm, however some shrewd moves by team owner Reginald have the potential to right the ship. Picking up Hauntzer from the free agent pile to replace Dyrus, as well as the acquisition of Svensekeren after his release from SK Gaming to start in the jungle. kaSing; formerly of the EU LCS H2K joins to replace Lustboy at support.
CLG have also made a couple of moves, one of which is just mindblowing; but as they say, save the best for last. Starting mid laner Pobelter has been benched in favour of HuHi, then came the release of Chris Ehrenreich at the end of October. It took the team until November 11th to hire his replacement, Tony “Zikzlol” Gray. Now for the bombshell which not only impacts CLG but also TSM. Two days after the release of their head coach, the team decided to part ways with ADC Doublelift. Where did Doublelift end up you ask; TSM of course, where he will start in place of Wildturtle.
Team Liquid have also lost a prominent piece in Xpecial, who officially left the team as a free agent, after being demoted from the starting roster. The team brought in former Team Dragon Knights player, Smoothie shortly before Xpecial announced his venture into free agency.
On the EU side of things, fredy122 has announced his decision to leave SK Gaming, and is currently a free agent. He announced on his Twitter that he is searching for pretty much anything.
officially a free agent, looking for eu/na offers
— Simon "fredy122" Payne (@fredy122) November 3, 2015
Fan favourites Unicorns of Love have seen probably the largest turnover of the EU teams, with PowerOfEvil and H0R0 leaving the team, and following his relegation to the bench, Vardags announced his intention to leave the team and test the market as a free agent. The team has made swift moves to replace the lost parts, bringing in former Fnatic member Steeelback as ADC. Fox, formerly of SK Gaming has joined the team and will be starting in the mid lane, and finally, Gilius will be taking over in the jungle.
End of Season Reward
With the ranked season now officially over, players who ended the season in one of the ranked tiers will be granted rewards based upon the tier they were in. Anyone ranked gold or higher will be granted the Victorious Sivir skin, plus the champion if they do not already own her. A full breakdown can be found below:
Fantasy Previews
We’re not too far off the Spring split, and with a new season brings a whole new year of Fantasy LCS, so make sure you check back in closer to the season start for my pre-season team rankings as well as position by position rankings. We’ll also got our first chance to check out 4 LCS teams as they competed in the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) in San Jose. Unicorns of Love and Origen are representing the EU, while TSM and CLG will be their NA counterparts. All but one of these teams had players who were fantasy relevant leave in the off season, so this was be a good opportunity to get some pre-season scouting in, though with off season moves still a possibility none of these rosters should be considered to be set in stone.
It’s been a wickedly fun season, watching teams everyone thought would do well collapse, seeing the inevitable juggernauts emerge in Fnatic and SKT, watching the wild ride that was the NA LCS which was anyone’s title for the taking right down to the last second. Now with the new year just around the corner, I for one, say bring on the new season.