With the pre-season in full swing, a lot of teams are taking the opportunity to make roster changes. There are a lot of notable transfers, such as Huni coming back to NA or Peanut going to Longzhu. A team that has had interesting shake ups is Team Solomid, a team that was expected to top their group at the world championships, yet was eliminated before playoffs.

The roster of Team Solomid consisted of Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell, who had an exceptional world championships tournament and looked like a major factor for TSM in their wins. Nick “LS” De Cesare has criticized Hauntzer in a video with Duncan “Thorin” Shields, claiming that he thinks Hauntzer made a lot of mistakes regarding movement and macro positioning, which may certainly be the case and play part of why Doublelift and Bjergsen had such a low impact at the tournament. Regardless, it doesn’t undermine the accomplishments of Hauntzer at the tournament.

Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen, a European jungler known to be in your face and constantly invade the enemy jungle, which could’ve been used too much greater effect by the team. In recent times Svenskeren has been under a lot of criticism from the community and has been having a fairly shaky performance; which could be attributed to the way TSM uses their junglers.

Soren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, the mid laner and star player of TSM. Bjergsen has been playing incredibly well ever since his early days in Europe on Copenhagen Wolves; however, he always seems to have a lesser impact at international tournaments compared to his domestic performance. This may in part stem from the issue LS alludes to in the video with Thorin, regarding pathing from his team mates and how it anchors him down.

Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, the big name among AD players in North America, who took a break for a split before returning to the scene, albeit his performance wasn’t as good as it usually is. Historically, Doublelift has been among the few players you could call superstars and one of the few players from the early days of the scene to still remain active. His performance this year did not align with that status, however, he was still an extremely valuable player for the TSM franchise.

Lastly we have Vincent “Biofrost” Wang, who’s a support who excels at enchanters and playing towards enabling his AD and allow them to grow stronger quickly. Biofrost had his moments for sure and his tournament at the world champions was by no means bad, but he was far too inconsistent to be considered top tier among his peers.

With the results not meeting expectations for this roster two years in a row, changes had to be made. Team owner Andy “Reginald” Dinh claimed to be focusing on improving the teams communication and team work, and as such has been looking for players fit to improve the communication within the game for the team. TSM acquired Alfonso “Mithy” Aguirre Rodriguez, Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen and Mike “MikeYeung” Yeung, to supplement the two players they were keeping from their previous roster in Bjergsen and Hauntzer. completing their new five man core. Mithy and Zven is an interesting point of discussion in itself, considering the relative skill level of Zven and Doublelift, with the added benefit of Doublelift’s residency status. But a looming problem for the team is Mike and TSM’s jungle issue with has been present for a long time.

Mike is a player who excels at reflection, high aggression, control and efficiency. He likes playing a carry oriented style where he takes control over the map through vision and constant invades, which generates small advantages for him. By using his advantages efficiently, Mike can control the pace of the game and the liberties of the opposing jungler, he is also excellent at reflecting back on a game and correcting mistakes. The issue lies within the fact that he will most likely not play this type of style in TSM, which stems from the issue regarding the teams jungle philosophy.

Throughout the years, TSM has had a variety of junglers like Lucas “Santorin” Larsen, Brian “TheOddOne” Wyllie and Svenskeren, but they’ve all been pretty similar while on the roster. Each jungler has been playing around facilitating mid lane and putting heavy focus on buff contention and vision control, regardless of what their style had been before coming to TSM. A logical conclusion to draw from this is that TSM as a team want their junglers to play a certain style and instills certain values in them.

It is entirely possible that this conclusion is incorrect and that the root of this lies within another influential part of the team, such as Bjergsen, who’s been an important part of TSM since he joined. The part where it becomes an issue, lies within the fact that the style TSM wants out of a jungler is sub-optimal and incomplete, as it puts close to no focus on aggression and river contention; which allows the opposing jungler a lot of freedom or opportunities to punish the TSM jungler. This hands over early game control quite easily and we could see clearly how other teams like Misfits, utilized said control at the World Championships. Another important note is that instead of the jungle being a two-way role, where your laners also enable the jungler, TSM plays the role closer to a second support. It’s a problematic prospect, which can hinder or imprint certain habits on players which lasts for the rest of their careers, especially since the style works on a domestic level.

MikeYeung taking on the jungle role for TSM will allow them an opportunity to start changing this, but this has also been the case in the past and we’ve seen no change. Should they not pick up the presented opportunity, I don’t see this roster doing much better than previous ones in terms of international performance. It’s also worrying as to how it may affect Mike’s career going forward, however, with a player and presence like Mithy on the team, TSM could be on the right path with Mithy being the one steering them in the correct direction. It is a big responsibility however, and Mithy may not be up to the task, but only time will tell.

Realistically speaking, this TSM roster will be marginally stronger than the last one, but their overall performance won’t change much. Hopefully Mithy and Zven has a strong influence on the team and changes their playstyle habits and shakes the team up, as this may allow TSM to grow as a roster and truly become a contender on the international stage. If the previous attempt at this type of roster change was telling of anything however, fans should be worried as this may be the “Yellowstar implementation” 2.0. It looks a little more hopeful this time around however, as with all likelihood TSM as an organization and fans alike learned from the previous experience, which will contribute towards the success of this move.

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