Leading ORDER, Simon “Swiffer” Papamarkos joins from long-time home at Chiefs Esports Club, where he forged his reputation as the “best player Oceania has ever produced”.

 Little needs to be said about the accolades he has received over the years – Winning 4 OPL titles; representing Australia on the global stage…he even solo killed Ambition at WCG 2013. A mainstay of Oceanic League of Legends, the value Swiffer can bring to a team can be highlighted by the difficulties the Chiefs had faced while Swiffer was overseas, with Cheese filling his position until return. The Split 1 ’16 Chiefs struggled to a 5-3 record, a major deal for the near unbeatable team of the past, Swiffer returning to lead Chiefs to the OPL title, spawning the now omnipresent phrase “No Swiffer, No Clue”. Coming into the OPL in 2018 Swiffer will be against fierce competition from his opponents if he is to hold onto his position as the best mid laner in Oceania.

Also joining from the Chiefs is long-time partner in the jungle, Samuel “Spookz” Broadley to unite with his mid laner once again. Having been together since 2013 under Exile 5, being able to bring these two players under the same banner is invaluable. Spookz like many junglers in the OPL comes in off the back of an inconsistent 2017. During the season Spookz made uncharacteristic mistakes and had been targeted as a hole in an otherwise strong Chiefs line up which had seen them not only break their streak of OPL titles at 4, but saw them not win a single OPL title in 2017. Spookz will no doubt be seeking to prove his doubters wrong moving in to 2018. Spookz is an emotional leader and when he on-song he leads from the front and rallies his whole team to his call when he gets vocal. With a match up against Dire Wolves being a juicy proposition as Spookz seeks to reclaim his throne as not only the best jungler in the region but as a 2018 OPL Split 1 champion. Along with Swiffer forming a strong base to build around, it is certainly a possibility.

Joining the long-time allies is one of their long-time rivals. Former Legacy sidelane specialist James “Tally” Shute fills the top lane position off the back of a lacklustre 2017. The former OPL MVP spent last season expanding on his craft, often being made to fill a tank position for the team. As a strong mechanical player, without a doubt Tally would’ve liked to have had a flashier 2017 and in 2018 one can only hope that he returns to filling a carry position on occasion that saw his now teammates tremble at PAX 2014. With the way the meta appears to be shaping Tally will be right at home, being able to fill a flexible position playing tanks and carries with equal ease, will look to regain some lost ground to re-establish himself as the strongest top in the region.

A relative newcomer, at least compared to his teammates is AD Carry Victor “FBI” Huang, who joins from SIN Gaming. After a successful debut year, FBI has solidified himself as one of the brightest talents in Oceania bringing himself into contention for the best ADC player in the region in his rookie year. Leaving what was an on-the-rise SIN Gaming, it is of little doubt that FBI joins looking to increase his chances of securing an OPL title. As with the other players on this roster, FBI defines flexibility, while being at home on supportive champions he can play carries to just as deadly of a level. While Oceania has many strong carry players in the position, FBI is by far the most versatile; being able to play supportive champions such as Ashe in particular to a level that far exceeds his peers. It is this fact that makes me certain that FBI will not only build upon his performance in 2017 but look to create a gap between himself and his opposing numbers.

Sticking with both his 2017 bot lane partner and arguably best buddy-cop-duo of 2017 is Jake “Rogue” Sharwood who also joins from the ranks of SIN Gaming. With the departure of EGym Ali God from the competition, Rogue is a perfect position to claim the support throne. The best play making support in the region, Rogue is a deadly and decisive when it comes to engaging. In 2018, it will be interesting to see how far Rogue diversifies from this status as on SIN Gaming he often found himself as the primary source of engage, and an ever versatile ORDER roster may be filling a defensive role from time to time. An interesting point of note is that Rogue also exceeds his peers when it comes to pushing a vision line forward, a job that many a team in the OPL struggled to fulfil. However, this is not without fault as this tendency to push vision could be punished upon resetting, leaving gaps in vision that force a more defensive style upon said reset. That being said, without a doubt Rogue will come into 2018 looking to solidify his position as the top support in the region, and alongside FBI, the best bot lane.

ORDER has without a doubt, been able to build one of the best rosters that the Oceanic region has ever seen. Building a roster from scratch can be a difficult task and with the securing of familiar pairings of Swiffer and Spookz, and FBI and Rogue has led to foundations having previously been built before the rift has even been taken.

Importantly for the organisation, they have retained the services of head coach Luchio “Soulstrikes” Park. Soulstrikes adds supreme gameplay knowledge, an eye to innovate without torpedoing his squad with off-meta picks, and OPL experience as a coach which is a rare combination among coaches. He’s added international experience with his appearance at Rift Rivals with Legacy. My take on Soulstrikes is that he is naturally a collaborator and this approach is perfect to build a young squad from the ground up.

2017 was a Jekyll-and-Hyde year for Brandon “Claire” Nguyen. Had he spent split 1 in an org that had Legacy’s expectations but was perhaps not as dedicated to player development as Legacy is known for, he may very well have not made it to split 2. Claire paid off Legacy’s faith in him with a significantly better latter half of the season. Retaining Claire gives the Legacy some much-needed organisational continuity as they rebuild the rest of the roster. Ask anyone with any background in high-elo Oceanic league of legends and they will tell you about the monster Claire, the scrim god that haunts the mid lane. He also has his signature series to his credit which came out of Split 1, a masterful Viktor that was some of the most sumptuous teamfighting you’ll ever see out of a control mage.  This is the Claire that Legacy are banking on seeing. Claire is now the local centrepiece that they intend to build around, and the starting point for the dominant solo lane play of days gone by for the green and black legion.

The addition of Lachlan “Sybol” Civil into the jungle is an intriguing pickup. With long-time development prospect Babip heading to eternal rivals The Chiefs it seemed that Legacy were content to let Claire and Raid to provide the leadership from the traditional carry roles. Not the easiest of tasks. Legacy’s great fortune was having veteran jungle presence Sybol fall into their lap after Avant pivoted to their youth movement. At least, it would have been incredibly fortunate 12 months ago. Sybol went through a true period of adjustment in 2017 as it started being released from the Dire Wolves for a crime no more sinister than being not as good as Shernfire, a description that arguably describes every jungler on the server. He started brightly for Avant, but as the year progressed his consistency abandoned him. With that said, he has incredibly high peaks and some frightening champions in his pool. All Sybol has known before 2017 was stability and if Legacy can provide him that I would tip his experience to lead him once more towards the top of the oceanic jungle pile that he has previously called home.

Joining Claire after an inconsistent year of his own is the former Abyss ADC Julian “Raid” Skordos. Over his career Raid has played one very ordinary Split 1 and two absolutely stellar Split 2’s. Despite taking flak for being able to only carry his team as far as the line without getting them over it, with the declining spiral of Looch’s performances he was playing with some of the heaviest Rock Lee training weights since the Chiefs tried to carry lqdcheese. Raid’s strengths are safe laning and consistent damage. He has consistently among the best numbers outside the big 4 oceanic AD Carries – (FBI, K1ng, Raes and Lost) and was arguably the “best of the rest” outside these four. To the credit of his critics, he hasn’t shown the “pop-off” tendencies that have been seen from examples such as the hero play to close out Sin in the split 1 gauntlet from his Legacy predecessor in Lost, so Legacy will need to account for this. They will have entered free agency knowing they were not going to get as complete a player as Lost, and Raid is the best player to fit the aims of their roster construction, which is built around their solo laners.

Joining Raid in the bottom lane is Daniel “Decoy” Ealam. This move increases Legacy’s Elam/Ealam counter to two. Decoy came into a Regicide outfit that was kind of spinning its wheels with a subpar Kpop and after being fed to the wolves in his first match against the Chiefs was impressive on a team that began to ramp up through the two-man support rotation between himself and Chenxuan.  His win/loss rate was quite poor, but so was Regicide’s, and his efforts in-game showed that there’s some talent that Decoy brings to the table. There’s not much more that can be said about Decoy’s young career, but given that Legacy needed to go to the Free Agent pool for a support there was probably only one or two other names that were on the same level of ability, so this addition locks up a solid if unspectacular botlane, and that’s frequently all you need when you build around your solo laners.

The last of these solo laners is Legacy’s shiny new import, Min “Mimic” Ju-seong. Mimic has a career path that has only spanned two full years but has plumbed the full range from the mighty KT Rolster all the way to the national leagues of Europe. Mimic was most recently on EU CS team Millennium where they endured a shocking time, winning only a single series and the roster disbanded before the org failed to requalify for the summer split of the Challenger Series. Mimic’s play in EUCS was best on tanks, though it is hard to pick out performances when he only won three games out of ten. He has been trying to augment this with some strong recent SoloQ play on Camille, Jax and Jayce in low KR master tier. Legacy have acknowledged in this pickup that they want to be able to control the game through solo lane play and have looked to the example set by Sin in 2017 that and concluded that importing was the best way to do it. Being able to secure even a journeyman import like Mimic is a huge boon for Legacy and the OPL as a whole and Legacy will be hoping his diverse experiences will fill the hole left by the departing Tally.

As a collection of names the players Legacy have picked up don’t fill you with the confidence that they will live up to the…institution…of success that the organisation has displayed. But what I like about this roster is that it’s been created with a plan in mind. They believe in their solo laners, and they secured a veteran jungler who prefers and looks best when he is ganking for his laners over controlling and being a teamfighting presence. Add into that a safe and solid botlane that you only want them not to overbalance the map and it’s clear to see Legacy’s path to success. All that’s left now is for Soulstrikes to get them firing and hope that talent doesn’t let them down.

Top: James “Tally” Shute
Jungle: Samuel “Spookz” Broadley
Mid: Simon “Swiffer” Papamarkos
ADCarry: Victor “FBI” Huang
Support: Jake “Rogue” Sharwood

The roster comprises a who’s-who of the remaining OPL Free Agents. Make no mistake about it, this roster is stacked with top three players at every single position and becomes an instant threat to the Dire Wolves as title contenders. If ORDER can get it together on the rift, these five players have the ability to represent the best combination of players ever assembled in Oceania. Surrender at 20 recently placed the below logo into their 2018 Esports Logos and based on where it is in that post, it would seem that it is the logo they will debut with in Split 1 2018. The ORDER roster is an exciting time for the OPL, and the top-table clashes with the Chiefs and Dire Wolves should be exceptionally exciting.

Pictured: Rumoured ORDER logo, per 11/December Surrender@20 post.

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!