This roster is the big unknown, there’s lots of mystery about how this team might perform to those outside of the inner workings of the OPL. Two new imports from Europe’s challenger scene and 2 players serving a 2 week ban makes it difficult to put your finger on the pulse for this team.

Christian “Sleeping” Tiensuu comes in similarly to Flaresz/Dhokla where no-one is sure what to expect. While Sleeping will be pivotal to the Bombers success, can he be dominant enough to steam roll over the likes of big Swips and Chippys? Sleeping has had a small amount of competitive experience, his most well known accolade to date will be reaching his highest rank of 11 on the EUW server, his solo queue history tells us that we can expect Sleeping to be a carry orientated top laner, with Jayce/Riven/Jax/Fiora being 4 of his top 5 champions played in season 7.

However Sleeping may be looking to round out his overall play and become a more meta resistant top laner. This preseason he has expanded his champion pool by adding Rumble and Gnar to his arsenal. If his solo queue champion pool is anything to go by, Sleeping will be the lane the Bombers will be looking to unlock to bring success.

Sebastian “Seb” De Cegile is the mainstay of this team and has been in every Abyss roster since joining the OPL, yet he’s somewhat fortunate to be on this roster. You wonder how someone like Seb would perform in a better environment with coaching and better laning on offer, but coming off a very ordinary 2017 he will need to prove himself in 2018. It is also important to note that Seb has been juggling the OPL with his studies, apparently even during the 2017 in-house season so the Bombers will be hoping that going full-time will be the key to unlocking the best of Seb.

Carlo “Looch” La Civita is the bad boy of the OPL – another competitive ruling and yet he managed to avoid a harsher penalty than his colleagues despite being a repeat offender. Looch has had a big fall from grace since his Rookie of the Split honour in 2016 Split 2, a massive feat considering he beat both Lost and Raid for this award. Looch really does have the potential to put this team on his back, but the Rookie split of Looch seems so long ago after a painful 2017.

Alan “Tiger” Roger and Andrew “Rosey” Rose has the ability to really shake up the landscape of the OCE bottom lanes, forming a real chemistry that the Bombers haven’t seen since Scott Lucas and Matthew Lloyd. Rosey has been a laning partner to OPL ADC royalty with Raydere and Lost and his most recent bottom lane partner Raid earned a promotion to Legacy. Rosey definitely has the experience but what seems to be a red flag is that his teams seem to slide with his performance. The prospect of seeing if this bottom lane can stay toe-to-toe with the heavy hitters of Raes/Destiny, King/Cupcake and FBI/Rogue is an exciting one. Should Tiger and Rosey be able to find their stride OPL bottom lanes will be an absolute joy to watch this split, aspiring pros take notes!

What is also an interesting addition to this roster is their coach changing, I was far from impressed with Drak in 2017 and bringing in Scott “Windowsmonkey” Farmer could be a great start, he was around with the team in Split 2 2016 when they narrowly lost a playoffs birth in tiebreakers. This will be Windowsmonkeys first attempt at full time coaching, giving him the opportunity to grow into his role and he has quite a large job on his plate in making sure this team can gel and play to its potential. I was able to get a comment from Windowsmonkey about how he hopes to unlock this team, He believes that “the facilities that the Essendon Football Club has provided will be the driving factor to allow him to develop the squad”.

Potential will be the buzzword for the Bombers, as this roster has a very high ceiling with a number of questions on how they may perform. If all goes well, they could end up in play-offs threatening to end a team’s run. However if the imports flunk, Looch can’t dominate his lane with 10CS/Min and the Bombers find themselves falling into the 2017 Abyss ways, they’ll be warming themselves up to a disappointing 6th place with ambitions of a split 1 top 3 finish up in flames.

I personally found this to be huge news for the region, not only has another club followed in the footsteps of the Adelaide Football Club, they’ve had the courage to adapt their own style.

The key difference between the two clubs is that Adelaide had decided to keep the Legacy brand but to also continue have the LoL team be run from Sydney. Essendon have picked up the name “Bombers” and have the team train at Tullamarine.

I was fortunate enough to be able to ask a few questions to Abyss’ General Manager, Nathan Matthews about how and why, along with what this means for his organisation.

Why sell Abyss – was this something you were actively looking to do or was it right place right time for the dons?

The sale of the Abyss actually took place just before Split 2 in 2017. I wasn’t actively looking to sell at the time but after a lot of talks with ESE Esports, we finally reached an arrangement that convinced me to sell. It was very tough giving up something that I have put a lot of time and effort into but it was the right decision and I know that the ownership group at ESE Esports and Essendon will be able to grow the club into something much larger than I would have been able to accomplish on my own. That was the exact reason I decided to sell, the new owners have a lot more business, marketing and commercial experience than me and and if I want my dreams of being apart of a top tier organisations to become true, I need the help that the new ownership provides.

Are you an essendon fan? (Be honest!)

Haha I am a born and bred Hawthorn supporter, so this has actually been a very conflicting period of time for me. For those that follow AFL, they will know that traditionally Hawthorn and Essendon have had a very long rivalry, I actually had to buy some extra Hawthorn merchandise over the last few days to please my family members. I have been involved with multiple sporting clubs over the years at all levels and the biggest thing you realise is that it’s the people that make the club. Clubs are much bigger than anyone person or player and I know the people behind the Essendon Football Club are very driven and committed to their club, so I have absolutely no issues working with them in Esports.

What does this investment mean for the OPL/Abyss?

This investment does bring the end of the Abyss franchise as all our teams will be rebranded in early 2018. All of our members and fans will learn about our new brand in the coming weeks. Partnering with an AFL club, especially one as big as Essendon was a complete no-brainer. They have resources and pre-existing infrastructure that we can tap into to help grow our Esports teams. All of our players are extremely excited about this partnership since it also gives our players and management new career opportunities once they move on from their playing career. There are a heap of projects that we are working on at the moment which you will learn about in the coming weeks/months and everyone will quickly realise why we made the decision to partner with Essendon

Scott (Scott “Windowsmonkey” Farmer – Abyss’ new Head Coach) is back with the organisation, what’s prompted this?

Scott has always played a very important role in the growth of the Abyss organisation but unfortunately he was unable to continue with the team in 2017 due to the changes in format and more specifically the move into a gaming house. Without going into his personal life too much, Scott lives in New Zealand but is not a citizen. He has been in the process of becoming a citizen for some time but extended trips outside of New Zealand can put this in jeopardy. Thankfully we were eventually able to get this move approved and Scott will finally make his coaching return to the OPL.

What are your goals with Essendon in 2018, Abyss never made playoffs is that the benchmark?

We have a lot of goals as a club but the biggest one is that will be striving to finish top 3 in Split 1 and win the League in Split 2. This will no doubt be a challenging task but the players have a lot of confidence in the new line up and we are going to field one of our most competitive rosters to date. We have huge plans in between Split 1 and 2 which should really strengthen our roster and bond as a team, I can’t comment on it too much at this stage but we are really excited about the prospect.

Why the relocation to Melbourne? Why do you/Essendon believe this makes sense over the preferred option of Sydney?

One of the biggest complaints the players have across the league is that they live in the same place as they train. It’s really hard from a management side to define the boundary between work and play when it comes to gaming. With the teams move to Melbourne, we will still have a Gaming House where the team will live as a group but we will be travelling to Essendon’s facilities every day to scrim and review vods. This is going to have a massive advantage and it’s the same thing the Direwolves are doing with the Sydney Cricket Ground. I don’t believe Sydney is that much of a preferred option for many teams, it’s a rather expensive city to live in but due to the Studio being in Sydney, many teams don’t have a choice. With more investment and AFL clubs looking to join, I think we will see more clubs move out of NSW and into their preferred state.

Make sure to keep up to date with all that’s happening in the OPL on our twitter page

Be sure to follow Abyss’s journey on Facebook and Twitter

And a big thank you to Nathan for his contribution where you can Follow him on twitter @Euphoraz

Here is what we have so far!

Follow @snowballesports on twitter to follow further movements or tweet us your initial roster thoughts!

Abyss: What a big week it has been for these guys, after announcing they had investment from the Essendon Bombers, the roster is close to being finalised with 3 players being retained and two new imports. I expect this roster to be competitive but I’m really struggling to place where it’ll finish without knowing much about the two imports. This rosters story will be great to follow as the season goes on.

In: Sleeping, Tiger, 
Out: Pabu, Raid

Avant Garde: The organisation has done very well in stemming the bleeding, with the higher teams having players leaving it is natural to look at AV’s talent as a target. Having lost their top half of the map they have really done well to secure Pabu who would have been among the more sought-after options in the top lane.

In: Pabu, Only, Frae
Out: Ceres, Sybol, Triple

Chiefs: This season could mark an end of an era for the chiefs, EGym has confirmed he’s leaving the organisation to seek out a casting position with Riot. There hasn’t been any confirmation from the organisation on the 2018 roster, I personally would not be surprised if there is a shake up in the organisation after an agonising 2017. Chiefs so far haven’t shown any penchant for importing, so retaining one of the three good tops in the region in Swip3rr was an important start. We have our eye on putting this power roster of laners in the hands of OPL rookie and Tim Wendel understudy in Babip, what an opportunity for the youngster!

In: Destiny, Ryoma, Babip
Out: EGym, Swiffer, Spookz

Dire Wolves: Very strong roster – whilst there are still plenty of unconfirmed rosters, this is a championship contending playing group. Both Phantiks and Destiny will be missed sorely but they’ve done well with picking up Triple and Cupcake as replacements.

In: Triple, Cupcake
Out: Phantiks, Destiny

Legacy: I said to watch this roster closely – boy has it delivered. Sybol might be one of the best replacements Legacy could have hoped for without importing. Along with obtaining a Korean import for the top lane should hopefully minimise the hole Tally will no doubt leave. Considering the casualties, Legacy have done well to recover. I’ve got questions on how this bot lane might perform against the more dominant bot lanes but definitely a competitive roster that everyone will be watching closely. Ceres has been signed, either as a sub or possible VISA coverage for Mimic.

In: Mimic, Sybol, Raid, Decoy, Ceres
Out: Tally, Carbon, Lost, Cupcake, Babip

Order: This roster is a monster. Check out our news piece here for more.

In: Tally, Spookz, Swiffer, FBI, Rogue, 
Out: ZZZ, Yaelay, Siuman, Chenyboy, Chenxuan

Sin Gaming: This roster has been gutted. They’ve elected to rebuild through Praedyth and Bdoink in the solo lanes and added veteran presence in the bottom lane to ease the leadership burden on Juves but it is hard to project them anywhere other than relegations. Last year’s Regicide coach Vicarius leads this squad and acquitted himself well as a developer of the young Regicide talent so they’re not without hope, however faint.

In: Praedyth, Bdoink, PVA, Cuden
Out: Dhokla, Ryoma, FBI, Rogue

Tectonic: Tectonic retained their New Zealanders and turned over the rest of their roster. Their botlane is about as talented as it was last split and they turn one promising young top laner into another. As TM Gaming in split 2 their young roster was not appreciably better when they left the split that they were coming into it so putting a young roster back into Saiclone’s hands is a decision to keep an eye on.

In: Papryze, Swathe, tilting
Out: Only, tgun, Praedyth

This time we look at the action from Week 1 of the Oceanic Pro League Split 2, 2017 in what turns out to be a very mid-and-ADC focused edition!

Trending up: Claire, Mid, Legacy

Claire had, in my opinion, a borderline disastrous split 1 saved only by some incredible team-fighting on Viktor in an iconic victory over The Chiefs. But the Claire we saw against Sin last weekend looked a far sight better than the Claire who tied Seb for most first blood deaths given up during the regular season (in six fewer games, no less).

After game 1 Sin might have had fair cry to say that they had been cheesed. But execution matters and the mid-lane Fiora that Claire produced gleefully accepted an early lead by punishing a clumsy Sin collapse, then used it to draw pressure around and away from objectives like few things other than a fed Fiora can. Game two saw a bit of a return the “oopsie” Claire that we’d seen in the beginning of the year, but game three was the important game. He started with an importantly quiet first 15 minutes, staying even with Ry0ma’s Syndra and more importantly keeping him in lane and not letting the one-shot machine roam around the map and pick up gold on unsuspecting (or suspecting and helpless) bot-laners. So while Carbon and Tally accelerated the early game, Claire picked up contribution after contribution and ended up one of four unkilled Legacy players with a 72% kill participation on the final game.

Trending down: Blinky, ADC, Avant

This might feel a bit harsh to a member of the only team sporting three shiny points but I really expected more out of the AV botlane and specifically Blinky this go-around. It’s not just the abnormally large number of “High, wide, and not very handsome” Ashe arrows including a couple of truly baffling misses at all-but-point-blank range, though that is significant at this level. It’s not just the damage discrepancies, which though i’ll give a Varus-pass for game 2, there was a mere 900 damage to champions advantage for Blinky in game 1, though that was also significant. My disappointment with Blinky this past week was the early deficits he faced in lane. They were small, collectively only around 300 gold at the 10-12 minute mark. But when you have a split’s worth of experience in the league, including playoffs and you’ve just returned from spending several weeks in Korean solo queue, you don’t expect narrow leads and break-evens in the first 15 minutes against lowskillplayer on his debut. You expect more. I expected more.

Trending up: Triple, Mid, Avant

On the bright side of Avant’s 2-0 over TM is Triple. Triple is really good at League of Legends, news at 11. Clearly the best-performing player on his team and a really good shout for the best performing player of the week. Triple really brought it all this week – good laning, pressure right round the map, good farming (nearly finished on a flame horizon in game one) and impressive basic statistics. Triple’s gold lead over Shok really jumps off the page in game one in which he’d built up a 1000 gold lead at just eight minutes and the direct comparison had ballooned to 2.4k gold immediately before the disastrous baron call that turned the game on its ear.  A less spectacular but more workmanlike game 2 saw him bring home a just under 78% kill participation and honestly it is this ability that you really crave on your mid laner. We’ve all seen Triple pop off. What I loved about his game 2 was his ability that despite Ceres being the one to be the flashy playmaker on his Renekton-with-a-side-of-Lee Sin, it was Triple who dealt the most damage and Triple bringing the highest kill participation. Triple showed us both sides of being a carry – the spectacular, and the subdued. Though subdued almost feels disrespectful to the great showing he put on.

Trending up: Raid, ADC, Abyss

After this last week of games I have this vision of Looch in my head that is less of him as a great mid lane player than it is him as a literal security blanket that Raid wraps himself in so that the bad monsters don’t hurt his ADC gameplay because we haven’t seen Raid like this all year. This was a real return to split 2 form where he was arguably robbed of the Rookie of the Split by the aforementioned Looch. Abyss’s ADC was absolutely phenomenal against a surprisingly strong Regicide lineup. He put out comfortably over 700 damage to champions per minute across the whole series and just shy of 1000 per minute in the final game. These are super-giant-doggy-sized damage numbers. He added to this a huge flame horizon on Chenyboy in a losing effort in game two and only 7 deaths in the series, the fewest in his team. Although his damage numbers are admittedly a little augmented by three Varus games, this is itself encouraging in a different way as he spent almost the entirety of last split on Ezreal and Jhin and it’s nice to see something new from him. Looch himself was impressive so if these two can put forward this kind of showing consistently, Abyss will not just compete, but threaten, every time they hit the rift.

5) Dr Only or Only Hyde?

By all accounts Tainted Minds jungler Only had the breakout performances his widely touted potential had promised during League of Origin. This is fantastic news for him and encouraging news for a Tainted Minds roster looking to emerge from the mire they found themselves in during split one.

A stable presence in the jungle will be just the starting point that TM fans would like to see, as some torrid early games hindered their efforts as split one progressed. Only turned in what were at-times putrid performances, including getting thoroughly manhandled in one game by his lightning-rod of a rookie jungler counterpart from Exile 5 in Guts before rallying to take that set. He’ll want to leave his Split 1 performance behind him and carry his Origin performance into the split. To that end, it’s good that he was able to work closely with tgun while on NSW duties and the two will look to form a strong pairing to accompany rising top lane star Praedyth.

4) Abyss have almost run out of excuses

After picking up a major sponsor and the recent announcement of their ownership investment, this roster, like TM, then secured a young promising top laner and stable veteran support to solidify their squad. The pieces are all there to finally succeed after sixth (after tiebreakers, don’t give me that tied-for-4th PISH when you 0-2 the tiebreaker games) and seventh-place finishes in their first two OPL splits. Looch and Pabu are encouraging solo lane talent, and Rosey is for my money one of the two or three best choices they could have made to unlock the Split 2 2016 edition of Raid. The only remaining question mark was Seb, who was unquestionably one of the 2-3 worst performing players in the entire league last split. If Seb can have a bounce-back performance, then the team is all but set. With that said, though, I remain to be convinced by Looch’s return and I’m far from encouraged by Seb, who is best described as erratic. I would love to be wrong about this, so I’m excited to see them show it on the rift but if they don’t end up getting it together they may have scant few excuses left to account for why.

3) Don’t sleep on the big two top laners

Somewhat lost in the shuffle of the oceanic top lane this split were the historical big two top laners of Swip3rr and Tally. While neither had the breakout split or got to take home the trophy as Chippys did, both veterans brought a deceptively high level of play. Tally seemed to undergo a transformative period in he produced more and more assured tank play. His engages sometimes left a little to be desired but beyond that Tally really began to reach a new level where competency became proficiency. This move to evolve his level on a multitude of play styles indicated an acknowledgement of one of the real strengths of Swip3rr that Tally would benefit from adding to his game.

For his part, Swip3rr continued to display his usual level of play that I feel has become underappreciated. For my money, Swip3rr is still the most meta-resistant top laner in the region and has a deep understanding of how to carry his team when he is not actively carrying the game. Looking back at the gauntlet and comparing how he and Ceres each handled a Fizz with an early lead really shows the stark difference between Swip3rr and OPL top laners not named Swip3rr, Tally, or Chippys. Swip3rr’s big advantage is that he puts up respectable numbers while earning a comparative pittance of gold. The big two Oceanic stars may have a new challenger in Chippys but as impressive as the Dire Wolf has been he’s still not yet the five-tool players in the region that Swip3rr and Tally are.

2) Gut-check time for The Chiefs

The Chiefs have lost games before. The Chiefs have lost series before. The Chiefs have lost playoff games before. Admittedly not many of each, but never before had they lost a playoff series in Oceania, as anyone who watches the OPL is keenly aware. Until Sin, that is. Sin Gaming put forward a workmanlike first two games, running a train through The Chiefs’ bottom lane before The Chiefs spectacularly regained momentum in two bruising victories to knot the series at two. But then uncharacteristically the Chiefs, like a 24-hour McDonalds, didn’t close. They were unable to counteract the mounting pressure of the Fizz elsewhere on the map and got smothered out of the game. As gutting as it would have been the series loss also presents a fantastic opportunity for The Chiefs to really show their quality and put out a display of mental resilience that they’ve not yet needed to show. History has told us that The Chiefs take losses personally and I think they’ll come into this split with a chip on their shoulder and a lot to prove.

1) Dire Wolves vs. Chiefs HYPE~!

This series is, not to put too fine a point on it, going to bloody pop off. The final standings from last split coupled with the performance of the two teams would indicate that it may not be a particularly close series. However the deeper you dig back through the split, the more exciting it gets as you realize the number of unanswered questions this series still has. The prevailing logic that would lean towards a Chief win is “Form is temporary, class is permanent” but the two teams didn’t meet each other in playoffs so even form is misleading to an extent. What jumps off the page is that the Chiefs squad that the Dire Wolves wiped the floor with in what was the fastest series win in league history by my count is not the Chiefs that they’ll meet this weekend. To this end, one notes that the Dire Wolves have not yet beaten the main roster of the Chiefs this year, having lost to them in week one. But thinking back to their Week One meeting serves as a reminder that the Chiefs have not yet beaten this iteration of Dire Wolves either, as Shernfire was serving his two-week suspension. In fact due to the same suspension issue with Korean accounts we have not yet seen Chippys-Shernfire-Phantiks-k1ng-Destiny face off against Swip3rr-Spookz-Swiffer-Raes-EGym and that makes this series truly exciting.

That’s the OPL Take 5 for this week. Hit us up with what you’re excited to see for this week of games!