Full disclaimer, I am first and foremost a play-by-play monkey. I talk about all the things that happen when they happen. If you asked me how or why my first instinct would be to shout ‘Spawn! This guy has a question for smart people.’ (Never EGym though, that guy feeds in every solo Q game I get.) Since joining the LPL team, I have not been able to keep up with every game played in the OPL. But I have been able to watch quite a few matches before the LPL broadcasts.

Top: Brandon “Swip3rr” Holland
I had the pleasure of working with Big Swips during the League of Legends: State of Origin tournament. Well known for his tank play, the Armoured Titan has been able to show that he can play carry oriented champions too. With Gangplank nerfs and the resurgence of tanks like Sion in the top lane, Big Swips will be a force to be reckoned with in the Top Lane.

The man has an incredible work ethic. He is always looking to see how he can improve himself, on and off the rift.

Honourable Mention: Jackson “Pabu” Pavone
The young gun who was hyped up for a long time as a mechanical genius now has one full professional split under his belt. This will be an important split to track Pabu’s performance to see how much of the hype he had leading up to his professional career follows through.

Jungle: Brandon “Juves” Defina
While casting the OPL, Juves and Carbon stuck out as the ultimate ‘leaders’ for a team. Constantly looking to mentor younger players and constantly allowing them to grow. They always made sure to provide the emotional backbone, leadership and support their teams needed.

Carbon’s ‘old man hands’ as he likes to call them means we now see him sitting down on the couch – more talking about the OPL than actually playing. (I am upset that there is no VB in his hands when doing so.) This leaves Juves as the last of the two major leaders in the League.

His ability to mentor talent has a proven track record as the likes of FBI & Rogue started with SIN Gaming. Ryoma had a great split with the team before moving back to the Chiefs, where he came from as a substitute for Swiffer.

Split 1 2018 has been rough for SIN, especially in comparison to the multiple “Sinderella” Runs and Rift Rivals performance that we saw from the squad last year. All eyes will be on the veteran Juves to turn things around.

Honourable Mention: Leo “Babip” Romer
Every Legacy game last split, I would wonder “Is this the week we will see Babip step in for Carbon and start his professional career with Legacy?” Babip was mentored by Carbon and a star player for their OCS team. Now starting for the Chiefs rebuilt roster, it will be interesting to watch how much of an impact Babip provides in The Chiefs climb back to the top.

Mid: Stephen “Triple” Li and Tommy “Ryoma” Le
There is no honourable mention here; these are my players to watch in the Mid lane. They were the underdogs in 2017, in the shadows of the likes of Phantiks, Swiffer and Claire. Now it’s their time in the spotlight. Both have helped their team to the top of the table halfway through split one.

Triple has made his way to the Dire Wolves and had big shoes to fill. Phantiks finished 2017 as the best player in the OPL. So far, Triple has adapted to the Dire Wolves well and the pack has yet to drop a set in the OPL. One of the mean reasons Triple did not make an appearance at Origin was due to Ryoma being able to provide synergy with FBI.

Ryoma had a large impact in the performance that Sin had during 2017 as well as the 2nd place finish for NSW in Origin last year. He is quiet in comparison to other Mids in the league, often providing only crucial information to the team, but is attentive and listens to calls. He is flanked by the vocal Destiny and Swip3rR this split which will allow him to do what he does best, listen to the team, focus on the mid lane and destroy his opponents.

Bottom Lane: Victor “FBI” Huang & Jake “Rogue” Sharwood
Last split, I was very vocal in thinking that this was hands down the best bottom lane in the league. Which was a bold statement to make when the likes of Lost & Cupcake, Raes & EGym, Blinky & Jayke and King & Destiny were around in 2017. Their synergy is unmatched, both FBI and Rogue are incredibly skilled when it comes to mechanics and have been working together for a few splits now.

Although FBI made a few critical errors last split, he seems to have honed in on his decision making for 2018. Rogue just gets better and better with each split. It was a tough choice to not pick him up for Origin 2017, instead going for EGym for the synergy with Coach Jish and Swip3rR. (Big mistake, EGym’s Tahm Kench cost me 20 Elo. Should have benched him and let Tgun play.)

Order now sit top of the Table and have only dropped a single set. Impressive for an organisation’s first split in the OPL. A lot of their power comes from this bottom lane duo and I believe that will continue.

Honourable Mention: Myles “Blinky” Irvine & Jayke “Jayke” Paulsen
The Bash Bros are still at it and are the only other bottom lane pairing left from 2017. They started 2017 strong but didn’t end the year well. They have had a decent showing so far in 2018. Tracking their performance to see if they can reverse the trend from last year will definitely impact Avant’s performance.

These are the people I think will be interesting to watch in 2018. Why Snowball trusted a washed up dyslexic play-by-play shoutcaster from the LPL to write this? I don’t know. But at least I don’t feed in Solo Q.  Which EGym is great at.

Looking first at what hasn’t changed, and that’s Charles Wraith returning as coach, and Myles “Blinky” Irvine along with Jayke “Jayke” Paulsen as their bottom lane. Retaining Wraith, to me, is a case of “The Devil You Know” as he has been decent enough without blowing me away with his efforts. Avant’s own AV Life production has on occasion highlighted deficiencies in his approach. That said, he does have the marquee victory over Legacy that I personally attribute a great deal to his preparation as a great feather in his cap and I know for a fact the work and effort he has gone to in order to attempt to develop as a coach. that sort of commitment to improvement can be infectious which is perfect for a young team like Avant’s.

Jayke will be entering his third OPL year and has made a name for himself as sound leader of young men. He has quietly developed as a support over the last year after spending 2016 with what I called the worst ADC in the league in each split. With the stability to continue to grow alongside Blinky for another year and what was a breakout performance at League of Origin, Jayke is a sneaky-good option to step up into the pantheon of top 3 OPL supports with the departure of EGym and the unknown status of Destiny. Jayke held a perfect pocket pick Malzahar throughout the course of 2017 but had an indifferent record on his most played champions. This will be the final piece missing from his play to take that next step.

The retention of Blinky is a move I would describe as “Okay-plus” which may be damning him with faint praise but I think Oceania’s ADCarries are probably our deepest position, talent-wise. It’s a competitive field that he is neither at the top nor bottom of. He was below 50% win rate on Varus, by far his most played champion (10 more than second and third most played), and not even in the top 5 best-performing champions, per best.gg. He also had underwhelming performances against competition that he should have done better against, as we’ve written about previously. All this being said, it was his debut year in the OPL and he did show flashes on certain champions, particularly Kalista, so with a more productive trip to Korea and a dedication to training we could see a much improved Blinky. I don’t think we’ve yet seen his final form.

Moving into the positions where we actually saw changes, adding Jackson “Pabu” Pavone to the top lane is a massive upgrade and, at the risk of calling it early, the most impactful move that will be made this offseason. For every great game Avant got out of Ceres they received at least two complete stinkers in return. Before Pabu came of age, your team either had Chippys, Swip3rr or Tally, or your top laner was irrelevant. The closest anyone came to breaking the holy triumvirate was Paradise/ZZZ. But with Pabu you have a competent top laner who has room to develop into something so much more. The only concern is that I think as the season wore on, Pabu and Abyss lost sight of what makes him a special prospect, but I’m backing Avant to correct this pretty quickly. This was going to be the best top laner on the domestic free agent market outside of the big three, and Avant have done a tidy piece of business securing his services.

Looking at the jungle we find an odd roster move to assess. The change of Sybol into Jordan “Only” Middleton I would classify as an investment in talent rather than taking the best-producing player, which may have seen Avant retain a player like Sybol. To peruse Only’s Gamepedia match history would be to paint a bleak picture of 7-29 in OPL games over the course of his 2017 season. But it is often said that one’s W/L record is not reflected of their skill at the best of times and being attached to the sinking-without-trace TM Gaming roster is far from the best of times. His gameplay throughout the year belied the mere wins and losses in that stat. He had a standout League of Origin and started freshly in split 2 before becoming “patched out” and tailing off to an extent while the TM staff were unable to set him up to transition him to success. In the immediate term this swap is a downgrade but I’m backing the Avant staff to do a much better job of shaping the talent that Only displayed at his peaks into a competitive jungler. I like the pickup, I really see it paying dividends as the season plays out.

It can’t all be sunshine and lollipops for this roster though and so with all this said we move to their midlane pickup in Leon “Frae” Lee. In fairness to the Avant leadership, they were losing one of the top 4 (top 3 with the retirement of Phantiks) mids in the region, so unless they managed to land Swiffer or Ryoma to replace Triple, they were going to downgrade. There is absolutely no shame in being worse at League of Legends than Triple. Most of us are. My area of concern is that he has been a standout player on a number of very bad teams and I have questions as to his impact on those teams. Few who have watched him doubt his mechanical prowess, but trailing after his wake are stories of a player who is less than pleasant to deal with when things turn south. It will be up to his (ample) abilities and the rest of Avant to keep this from happening and if they can’t it will be up to Frae to show that these stories were either wrong or a thing of the past. I’m extremely hesitant about this pickup from a “fit” standpoint, though it does bare mentioning that if Avant wanted the most talented free agent available to fill Triple’s void, then Frae is certainly towards the very top of that list.

Avant did good, early business to secure these players overall. I don’t have the on-paper roster cracking the top 3. So until we see these teams play some League of Legends my personal take is that they’re “the best of the rest” and are the most likely team to cause a ruckus among the top 3 of Dire Wolves, Chiefs and ORDER.

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!