FNC YellOwStaR
Before joining TSM, the guy had a pretty stellar track record.
Legacy in Trophies
Member at every single LCS Final.
Member of every single World Championship.
Two-time Semi-Finalist at the World Championships.
Transition to Support
Bora “YellOwStaR” Kim had transitioned into Fnatic’s support over the course of the Season 3 Summer LCS split where he replaced former support, nRated. Going into playoffs, the team took second during the regular split, falling under their competition of Lemondogs. While both teams were seeded straight into the semi-finals of the playoffs and dominated their opponents, Evil Geniuses for Fnatic, and, Gambit Gaming for Lemondogs, once they faced each other in the finals of the playoffs, Fnatic prevailed while dropping only one game.
At Worlds, Fnatic landed in a group with relatively easy competition, they had the SEA team of Mineski, the third place NA team in Vulcan, fellow EU representative Gambit, and an underperforming Samsung Galaxy Ozone. Mineski was heavily outclassed by every other team in their group, suffering a crushing defeat in every single game they played in the groups stage. Vulcan, however, held their power in their synergy with star mid laner mancloud and Xmithie their jungler along with rising NA support power BloodWater. They held their own against Fnatic in the first game of Group B but fell to them in their second match. Fellow EU team Gambit and the Korean Samsung Galaxy team, however, defeated Vulcan in both matches. Gambit Gaming success laid with their mid laner Alex Ich, a premier EU mid laner, and the innovative jungler of Diamondprox. These strengths are what allowed for Gambit to break through in the Group B tie-breaker against Samsung Galaxy Ozone, as their biggest weakness laid in the mid lane as Dade underperformed to an almost impressive degree. Fnatic took first within their group with their only loss being that first game against Vulcan.
Fnatic enters the bracket stage poised against NA’s hope in Cloud 9. C9 Hai’s shot calling has carried his team with the help of Meteos farm heavy style. C9’s bottom lane matched up against Fnatic’s in the sense that neither were the primary focus for their team, however, Sneaky and LemonNation, C9’s ADC and support respectively, provided the team fight utility with picks like Varus, Ashe, and Zyra. In the final game, Fnatic brings the series to a crushing close with 26 kills for Fnatic, only giving up 2 to Cloud 9. While Fnatic closes this series out in dominant fashion, they only swipe one game from the finalist, Royal Club. Fnatic’s World’s run ends here despite the sudden transition of Puszu to ADC and YellOwStaR to support.
Entering into League of Legend’s Season 4, Fnatic was coming off of this semi-finalist result at the Season 3 World Championship. Their team was poised to once again to take the throne of EU LCS Champions with their golden child, Rekkles, coming of age to compete in the LCS. With the core of their roster in xPeke, sOAZ, Cyanide, and YellOwStaR remaining the same, they replaced their end of year ADC, Puszu, for Rekkles.
The Golden Child — Rekkles
Season 4 ushered in Rekkles, the ultra-safe cleanup carry that Fnatic needed to supplement their carries in sOAZ and xPeke. As an obvious upgrade in just terms of mechanical skill over Puszu, YellOwStaR and Rekkles worked as a supportive bot lane under their solo carries. In the first week of the Spring EU LCS, he was the weekly MVP boasting a massive 19.3 KDA. But Rekkles still had his failings. Because of his young age and this being his breakout season, he was prone to frustration that showed visually as he buried his head in his hands after a failed tower dive against SK Gaming in the Spring Split playoff finals. After their honeymoon phase, this Fnatic team slumped facing 3 consecutive weeks of being defeated 0–2 by their opponents. Despite this, they quickly assumed form again as they begun collecting their victories over the last few weeks of the split. Rekkles’ Lucian, Caitlyn, and Jinx were key to bringing out the consistent team fight damage that would secure Fnatic their victories against ROCCAT, Gambit Gaming, and Copenhagen Wolves. Unfortunately, they only took a tied 2–2 record against Alliance, a team fronted by Froggen and the former Lemondogs ADC, Tabzz. The winners of the Season 3 Spring EU LCS regular season of SK Gaming, who with their stronger macro play fronted by the brains of former Fnatic support nRated, took an advantage over Fnatic at a 3–1 record.
Season 4 All-Stars
The All-Stars event was not exactly a shining moment for this lineup. Coming out of the Groups Stage, they won only a single game, and that was against the GPL team, Taipei Assassins. They did not win a game.
During this Groups Stage, the eventual winners of SK Telecom T1 outclassed every member of the lineup. They played without respect for FNC, whom they knew they outclassed, by playing with the skins they were awarded for winning World’s the year prior. The champions they played were not within the meta, they just looked flashy because it was SKT playing with SKT skins! and the mid laner actually intentionally used a skin (this is one of the only times this has ever happened, and it was only done to stunt on FNC).
They were beaten by their NA counterpart Cloud 9, who had to fill their mid laner, Hai, with CLG’s LiNk. While this game was close, Cloud 9 edged out Fnatic in team fights. Because Fnatic looked to split push, most fights they participated in were 4 on 5’s. Despite only needing to stall time out for their split pushing Shyvana, played by sOAZ, they repeatedly pushed too far in a fight, allowing them to get caught by crowd control from nearly every member on Cloud 9. Similarly, the Chinese team OMG defeated FNC through their support player, Allen, who on Thresh caught FNC several times as they pushed past safe territory everywhere he went. This game actually started out in favor of FNC, but through their lack of communication and poor team play, xPeke got caught several times, as did YellOwStaR. Through these picks, OMG began building a lead that FNC was not able to surpass.
Through their losses, however, they did make it to the bracket stages. Unfortunately, as they seeded last, only beating out TPA, they were seeded against SKT1… The team who had just dominated them the day before. Needless to say, Fnatic quickly went home after losing two consecutive games in a BO3.
Season 4 Worlds
Going into Worlds, the West was never going to win the whole tournament. With the current state of the powerhouse Samsung teams, it would take a miracle for them to find a semi-finalist placing, let alone actually making it to the finals. Just to make it to Worlds, FNC had to go through the Summer EU LCS Playoffs where initially, they faced SHC in the quarterfinals. in this series, they went 3 to 1. Not entirely dominating, but then again, SHC wasn’t exactly a great team. Then, in a long, sloppy best of 5 against Team ROCCAT they won out in their 5th game. Then came Alliance, and the FNC that always came around in the playoffs, failed. This is the only time they’ve failed to not finish in 1st place during playoffs even through 2015.
And so they boot-camped as nearly every team did before this Worlds. They went to Korea, as nearly every team did before this worlds. The players climbed the Solo-Queue Ladder, steadily climbing among their peers. And then, Groups Stages began.
Fnatic starts off the group with 1 win and 1 loss. Their first game, they lost to NA team LMQ (full of Chinese players), but took a game off of eventual tournament semifinalist, Samsung Blue. They didn’t clumsly win this game through a poor call from Heart, but rather
The game starts off with YellOwStaR burning his ignite onto Heart before 2 minutes. Leveling his Death Sentence, he potentially had the crowd control to kill off Heart, but with a quick sidestep, the hook is rendered useless. FNC moves around the map, taking dragon first, followed by an attempted early gank onto Dade. Dade however turns the experience deficit of xPeke from FNC’s roaming by immediately aggressing onto xPeke, despite not having the items he’d prefer to in an all-in. xPeke is quick though, and charms him as soon as possible, losing only half of his health in the trade. 8 minutes in and the game begins detonating across the map with a trade kill in a 1v1 between the mid laners, and top lane teleports into the bot lane. sOAZ teleports after Acorn, but the trade results in a 1 for 1 in kills. Later, a counter gank from SSB turns in SSB’s favor with YellOwStaR falling. But Fnatic is not passively getting run over, they’re fighting. They are making the aggressive calls. They still feel like they’re in the driver’s seat, but this was the last game in the tournament where they were, and as such, they fell out of the tournament playing disjointed and sloppy.
YellOwStaR’s Fnatic — Season 5
In the off-season, the team lost its stars: sOAZ and xPeke. Rekkles joined Froggen’s team, Alliance. Cyanide retired. This left only YellOwStaR. Fnatic entrusted the team to him.
To anyone looking on, Fnatic lost this off-season by a mile. YellOwStaR and his new coach Luis “Deilor Sevilla had to build up a brand new Fnatic. They brought in Koreans: Huni, an unproven Korean top laner, and Reignover, a subpar jungler for Incredible Miracle. They pulled Febiven, his namesake pulled from him once being a Riven one-trick pony, from the Challenger Series. For the ADC, they pulled in Steelback, another Challenger Series veteran. Honestly, Steelback is about as lackluster of an ADC as it gets.
But the stars aligned, and this Fnatic squad went 13 to 5 over the regular Spring Split. They finished second only to SK Gaming who had the best ADC in the West, FORG1VEN. But these games were only BO1’s, and the rookies had yet to endure a proper series. Because of their placement in the regular season, their playoff run began in the semi-finals against the strategic powerhouse, H2K.
Deilor seemed to be about one of the only professionally experienced members of the team, and he was a coach. Having previously coached for poker and a 1st Division Spanish team, he actually had shown to have some qualifications as a coach for Fnatic. Along with this his dedication to learning the game was actually outstanding, having stated that he spent a whole year solely dedicated to learning the game.
Game 1. With a poor pick and ban phase from Fnatic, that put Huni on Lee Sin top lane, and Reignover on a fallback pick of Olaf, Fnatic seemed doomed before the game even started, and they were. From the start, H2K dominates FNC by picking off YellOwStaR in the top lane, leaving Febiven’s Cho’ Gath to get zoned by the bot lane of H2K. About 3 minutes later, YellOwStaR tries to engage onto H2K by lanterning in Reignover, but instead of getting anything of worth, Reignover is burst by the support Annie of Kasing and ADC Caitlyn in the hands of Hjarnan. FNC eventually attempts to fight back, picking off an over-extended Hjarnan at their bottom tier 1 tower, getting out H2K’s global ult from Odoamne’s Shen. Despite this, Fnatic hesitates in committing to calls to take the dragon. They position awkwardly on top of each other frequently, allowing Kasing to stun and finish off multiple squishy members of FNC. This hesitation and indecisiveness eventually cost FNC the game as H2K slowly pick apart at FNC’s base.
Game 5. 3 more games have been played, and the BO5 is at the breaking point. The jitters of indecisiveness and poor draft phase are nowhere in site. Fnatic starts off the game steam-rolling H2K across the map with Reignover even killing Loulex solo. Huni and Reignover’s synergy is elevated on a crisp, shining display as the series has pushed on and on. They dive top lane against Ryu and Loulex to success, only losing Huni in a 1 for 2. Kasing is picked off across the map by the bot lane. Every piece that FNC needs to push towards the LCS Finals is falling into place, and H2K can’t seem to collect themselves enough to stop it. H2K scrambles for footholds into the game, but lose out in some way every single time: a turret is taken, a kill is only traded, too many summoners were committed, dragon is taken, vision has been placed even deeper inside H2K’s territory. Every single time H2K tries anything, they’re instantly punished in response. Kasing is never in the right spot to save his team, Ryu and Odoamne don’t have the damage to properly punish the mobile champions that FNC had drafted, Loulex is irrelevant. And with that, Fnatic storms into their finals match.
As finals roll around, Team Unicorns of Love (UOL) find themselves face down against the gun barrel of Fnatic. The next 5 games that were to follow were indicative of nothing that would include the terms: clean, organized, crisp, or high-quality. UOL and FNC ran face first into each other game after game in blood bath after blood bath. UOL played with such a sloppy style that they had the term chaos style coined after their brash and direct style of gameplay. Yet Fnatic struggles. They let it reach the 5th game in a BO5. This was anything but promising for the European, MSI-bound team.
The Mid-Season Invitational and Summer Split
Heading into MSI, any reasonable analyst and/or spectator could deduce that EU was looking like the weakest region coming into the tournament. TSM was looking incredibly strong for the West, and they looked more cohesive as a team than Fnatic did during their finals performances. TSM’s coach, Choi “Locodoco” Yoon-sub even said in regards to Fnatic that “EU will crash and burn.”
Then TSM fell apart and the stars began aligning for this FNC roster again. Well, they didn’t align right away, but it was enough to allow FNC to get past the Round Robin Stage.
I think the Top-Jungle synergy in NA is way lower, so they were not prepared for the MSI meta. -Fnatic Coach, Luis “Deilor” Sevilla
In their game against TSM, Huni pulled out Cassiopeia top, and TSM was not prepared for it.
SKT was their next opponent in the tournament. A BO5 against a former world champion. A team that stomped the second best team in their region with just their subs.
Game 1. SKT takes this game though their superior team fighting. But they don’t outright stomp and outclass them. Faker is forced to give respect to Febiven. MaRin and Huni rely on the junglers and their team to decide the match rather than attempting the 1v1 on each other. But SKT is in sync with teleports coming in right as engagements begin, and MaRin’s decision-making continuously puts FNC on the backfoot of every fight. SKT wins 20 to 10.
Game 2. Right at 3:30 into the game, Steelback secures First Blood for his team following an early gank from Reignover and a flash stun from YellOwStar. Despite having lost the first game, they didn’t seem to be shaken. Again, action in the bot lane sends Steelback down to a gank from Bengi… But Huni responds with his teleport, and they make a 1 for 1 trade out of it, keeping Fnatic in the lead. Skirmishes all over the map keep this game fast paced and bloody. At 9 minutes, there are 8 kills on the board —5 for FNC, 3 for SKT. The last two were a testament to Huni’s ability and skill having turned around a gank, killing Faker, and setting up Febiven to clean up MaRin. The game keeps up the quick pace, forcing movement from each team across the map, and yet at 25 minutes, when FNC gets engaged on they sweep SKT with a clean ace on the backs of great counter-initiation. They turn kill after kill into objectives: barons, towers. They take more and more, and by 32 minutes, they are leading by 10k gold. SKT is uncharacteristically sloppy, and FNC is doing very well to drag SKT along at their own pace. They ace them again and pick up kill after kill until eventually the bloodiest game of the series is closed out. FNC wins 28 to 13.
Game 3. SKT starts this game off with a vengeance, taking a failed tower dive bot lane onto MaRin from FNC into a trade kill on Reignover. SKT continues playing the map as they pick off Huni in the top lane after swapping their bot lane up. And then, Febiven solo kills Faker. FNC keeps up the pace, picking off Wolf in SKT’s jungle just within the next minute. The tide has shifted out of SKT’s hands, and FNC wins a 2v2 bot lane followed by another solo kill onto Faker from Febiven. Despite taking occasional losses in skirmishes, FNC wrangles another team fight away from SKT following SKT’s second dragon. Febiven and Reignover delete Bengi, and YellOwStaR flashes over jungle walls to stun up two members of SKT as his team cleans up Wolf. But SKT is a dominant team in historically the best region in the world. They take out Huni, surprising him with 4 members top side and then pick off the wandering Reignover. They shove this lead straight down the throats of FNC with an inhibitor take at 33 minutes. Bengi takes a questionable ultimate straight into Febiven and dies for it, but Bang is a monster that Huni cannot just pick off. With superb mechanics, he outplays Huni’s ultimate and kills him alone at FNC’s red buff. This constant tug-of-war is thrown into chaos for FNC as SKT keeps picking off individual members of FNC. They rush through FNC’s base, taking advantage over the series. SKT wins 15 to 9.
Game 4. Again, this game starts off with First Blood happening down in the bot lane. This time, in a straight 2v2 (read: no jungler), Steelback and YellOwStaR take down Bang. Then 5 minutes in, Reignover secures the second kill on the game for Huni by flashing onto MaRin. SKT, in typical SKT fashion, fight back across the map though with a gank onto the bot lane of FNC. They take down an already low health Steelback. Top lane, FNC again fails a tower dive against MaRin, losing 1 for 1, despite having a numbers advantage. As per the theme of this series, skirmishes around dragon increases the body count as Bengi is lost in a fight that SKT started. Fnatic wins 25 to 9. At 9:45, Reignover ingages onto MaRin without the help of either Steelback or Huni, but kills him straight out. As though an afterthought, he finishes off MaRin with a fade-away Prey Seeker. Reignoiver has a stellar game, picking off more of SKT in SKT’s own jungle with the help of YellOwStaR. By 14 minutes, there are 13 kills with Fnatic leading 10 to 3. At this point, both teams have shown their cards already: FNC looking to skirmish their way into finals, and SKT looking to crawl back from their gold deficit with the help of dragon. By 20 minutes though, SKT cannot safely go into their jungle without either getting solo’d out by Febiven or jumped on by the rest of Fnatic, and so at 21 minutes, FNC takes baron, only losing Huni. They take all outer turrets save for bot lane. But it wouldn’t be a true Fnatic victory without 30+ kills across both teams, and so after several scattered team fights, Fnatic closes this game. FNC wins 25 to 9.
Game 5. I like to call this game, “A Eulogy for Reignover.” Bengi brought out a staple pick of his, Nunu, and dismantled Reignover. He returned one of the top EU junglers, back to his old Incredible Miracle form, killing him in his own jungle for First Blood. SKT keeps their stride, taking dragon in exchange for a death onto Bang. Top lane, Reignover is trapped against SKT’s tower with MaRin’s Gnar ultimate, then an iceblast from Bengi, and finally a knockup courtesy of Wolf. Fnatic has picked up kills on Faker and the bot lane of SKT, but aren’t able to actually transfer any of that into an objective, and so SKT holds a 8k gold lead at 23 minutes despite being 5 to 5 in kills. At 28 minutes, they’ve grabbed their second baron. SKT doesn’t stop. They don’t give up free wins in crucial matches like this. They team fight, but never take a clean ace. Reignover ends with 5 deaths, and only being part of 4 of FNC’s 8 kills. SKT wins 17 to 8. They take the series 3 to 2, but FNC left ready to take over the EU LCS Summer Split with an upgrade in the ADC position.
And they did take over the EU LCS. They set a record of 18 wins, 0 losses. Admittedly, they shouldn’t have won every single game, but they did. With Rekkles. They readded him to the roster prior to MSI, but because of Riot’s rules and regulations, he watched his ex, now current, team at MSI. At MSI, FNC seemed to show some of the same tendencies that they did throughout this split. Notice how in the games against SKT, there were a minimum of 30 kills. They were aggressive (sometimes to a fault). Similar to the Fnatic of old, YellOwStaR ran through the EU LCS with the strength of powerful solo laners. Some things really don’t change. Fnatic landed in another EU LCS Finals, but this time against his old solo laners of xPeke and sOAZ. While playing in this series against Origen, Fnatic felt it’s only two losses since MSI, but they were neccessary in order to grow even more going into Worlds.
Worlds 2015
I can’t romanticize their run through Worlds. They were the best Western team with only Origen dragging slightly behind. Fnatic crushed their group. They took down two Chinese teams: Invictus Gaming in Groups, and Edward Gaming 3–0 in the bracket stage. They lost 0–3 to MSI rival, SKT. They cleaned themselves into the best team in EU, into the best team in the West (fuck you OG, I don’t care if you ended in the same placing).
TSM YellOwStaR
And finally, YellOwStaR joined the North American LCS for the 2016 season, in what looked to be a hell of a roster. Boasting their staple mid laner in Bjergsen, SK’s former jungler, Svenskeren, and ADC Doublelift, this roster is stacked to the brim with star power. But they couldn’t quite mesh. The egos were too big for the majority of the Spring Split, and nothing in the team really meshed. Calls were scattered. Plays were disorganized. The team did not function as a team. Because of the clown fiesta that took place in many of their games, TSM has placed in their lowest ranking during the regular split of LCS. Even with the star-studded roster. Even with the best players, on paper, the team has ever had. That said, they still made playoffs with 5th place seeding. With optimistic eyes, I will watch their results to see if the players who’ve traditionally shined under pressure will come to form as playoffs proceed.
Update: Since I’ve written most of this, they’ve beat both teams they’ve played against in playoffs dominantly. Sick.
NA LCS Spring Playoffs 2016
TSM has had two consistent domestic rivals: Cloud 9 and Counter Logic Gaming. Counter Logic Gaming and TSM’s rivalry is one of the oldest rivalries in League of Legends history dating back to the closed beta of the game. However since the beginning of the LCS era, they have failed to be a top competitor up until the 2015 Summer Split where they finally showed up to the playoffs. They took home the LCS Championship and are set to contest for it again. Cloud 9, however, are a newer rivalry. They took the NA LCS by storm when they qualified through the Challenger Series in 2013. Since then, Cloud 9 has been a member in every NA LCS finals all the way up to the Summer Split in 2015.
Having placed 5th in the regular split, TSM was set to face against Cloud 9. Cloud 9 looked strongest with their roster of An “Balls” Lee in the top lane, Lee “Rush” Yoonjae in the jungle, Nicolai “Jensen” Jensen in the mid lane, and Zachary “Sneaky” Schuderi and Hai “Hai” Lam in the bot lane. With this line-up, they held superior shot-calling from Hai, and powerful jungle-mid synergy from Rush and Jensen. They ended in 3rd place during the regular season.
TSM on the other hand, looked like a team who was trying to mesh, with bits and pieces coming together from time to time heading into playoffs.
Game 1. Throughout the first 5 minutes, TSM and C9 trade towers through a lane swap. At 5 minutes in, C9 all ins on TSM Doublelift, YellOwStaR, and Svenskeren top lane in a sloppy 5-man tower dive. They lose First Blood with Balls falling to the turret in exchange for a kill on YellOwStaR. As Bjergsen pulls up from mid toward top, C9 retreats. Again, at 10 minutes, C9 attempts to dive TSM’s ADC and Support with a 4 members of C9 appearing, Jensen even using his ultimate to do so. Despite seemingly in the clear, TSM’s Haunterz teleports directly into the 4 members of C9 causing him to fall nearly instantly upon arrival. TSM’s communication seems to be in shambles this game with both YellOwStaR and Doublelift falling nearly immediately after Haunterz’ teleport. TSM is messy throughout the whole game, and by 14 minutes, C9 is up 7 kills to TSM’s 1. TSM is scattered and discordinated the entire game, and eventually after a clean game from C9, C9 wins 18 to 5.
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