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Team Dignitas, the perennial mid-to-bottom of the standings North American League of Legends Championship Series team, lost its spot in the NA LCS after suffering a rather embarrassing 3-0 defeat at the hands of Team Dragon Knights during the North American Summer Promotion Tournament. As a result, Dignitas got a free spot into the Challenger Series, but they apparently did not want it, as they started looking for buyers and have now found one in the shape of Apex Gaming.
Sources close to both organizations told ESPN that Apex would buy Dignitas’ CS spot. Apex would then be the proud owner of both an LCS team and a Challenger Series team, building something of a farming team to bring up players to the major league. They could even potentially look to replicate Team Liquid’s system.
They also had, and still do have, an LCS team and a Challenger Series team. Having two squads and 10 players to pick from for their LCS roster, with the rest playing in the Challenger Series, gave them impressive tools to build the best possible roster. They utilized that rotating roster to great effect, fostering and bringing up a bunch of rookies, notably Sam “Lourlo” Jackson who went to the top lane following Diego “Quas” Ruiz’ retirement at the end of the 2015 Summer Split.
Other graduates included Andy “Smoothie” Ta who rounded out the starting lineup at support for the beginning of the split, but only played a single game before swapping back to the Challenger squad, and another rookie, Matt “Matt” Elento, replaced him to the very end of the season, including playoffs. Lastly, rookie of the split Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett replaced Christian “IWillDominate” Rivera, also after a single game at the beginning of the split.
All those additions to the main roster meant that Team Liquid was probably not looking for a quick fix, even though they did far better than many would have expected with their fourth place finish, but instead wanted to peak at the end of the Summer Split and eventually run the gauntlet to qualify for Worlds.
Courtesy of Riot Esports Flickr
Apex Gaming might be looking for the same rotating roster that Liquid put in place. One big difference though, is that Apex is starting their journey in the Summer Split. With the contenders firmly in place, who knows where Apex is going to end up when Worlds comes around. They barely got through the Promotion Tournament, losing to the LCS squad before beating their Challenger Series counterparts, albeit quite convincingly, and it will be up to them to show up on the big stage and make the necessary adjustments to thrive.
Alex “Xpecial” Chu’s huge wealth of experience will be a big boon for rookie junglers Byeong-hoon “Shrimp” Lee and Jun-cheol “Eve” Seo. Apex’ other members already know how competitive play works, with Cristian “Cris” Rosales playing on multiple Challenger and LCS teams, Lae-young “Keane” Jang having the entire last year’s experience on Gravity and Hyeong-gi “Police” Park winning the League of Legends KeSPA Cup last December with South Korean team Challenger team Ever to qualify for IEM Season X in Cologne.
The final roster for the Apex Challenger team has yet to be released, but two players could potentially play on it depending on their performance: junglers Eve and Shrimp. They have very different champion pools and playstyles which could allow Apex to tailor their squad to their opponents quite effectively, seeing as the NA LCS is switching to a Best-of-3 format for the Summer Split. That is most likely the Apex plan and the one they used for the Spring Challenger Series, but should the meta shift in favor of one of these two junglers’ champion pool, it could allow the other to make a return to the Challenger Series.
Apex Gaming is not the only team looking to reap the benefits of having two teams. With long time LCS teams Cloud 9 and Fnatic building challenger teams, we could be on the brink of an evolution in western professional play. If this system yields impressive results and gives an unfair advantage to those that use it, Riot Games might feel the need to step in, as they have done before, when Korean sister teams were abolished after both Samsung White and Blue rampaged through the League of Legends Champions Korea in 2014, proving the incredible power of the system.
For now though, Apex Gaming is still looking to build their Challenger roster, while the main LCS roster seems locked down. Don’t forget to tune in to the North American Challenger Series Summer to watch Apex Gaming debut its new roster!
