All aboard the #faith train: CLG has started out the Summer Split 2-0, and look as rejuvenated as they did at the start of Spring. Trading in Link for Pobelter and Huhi, and bringing in a former NCAA coach to take the reins, Counter Logic Gaming will now try once again to bring themselves – and their fans – the glory that's eluded them for years. Now, Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black and his bottom lane partner are the only players still on CLG from this time one year ago. In spite of all the turmoil, their famed “Rush Hour” duo remains one of the most popular brands in League of Legends. I got a chance to catch up with Aphromoo last week at LCS after their first game, and asked him about their struggles last split, the new team, the new coach's...unconvential...methods, and the state of the League.

First off, congratulations on getting your first win. How do you feel?

Honestly, after every game I feel whatever. It's not like I'm happy or sad. Well, I'm sad when we lose of course. *serious face* Angry. Frustrated. But if we win...uh...I don't really feel happy. I guess, satisfied that we pulled out the win, but it's really important to me that I don't get complacent. Especially since I'm one of our shot callers right now. It's really important that I keep a straight focus on the goal.

That's interesting, because when I talked to Doublelift at the end of last split he said that one of your guys' biggest problems was that you felt really good about beating a lot of the teams that you should beat, and maybe got a little complacent. Is that something that you're all still working on, or that you've personally always been pretty good at?

Well, I don't wanna sound selfish, but I guess I'm pretty good at that. But League of Legends is a team game, so everyone's emotions will affect it for a greater cause. If everyone's tilting, obviously I'll start feeling tilted as well and start playing worse so it's really important that the team environment is up to par and even: not too happy, not too sad, so that we can be calm and collected going into each and every game.

Last split you started out really strong, started to have some struggles toward the end of the split, and didn't ultimately finish as well as you'd hoped to do. Everybody that I've talked to has had a little bit of a different interpretation of what went wrong for you guys. Looking back, what do you think was the big factor for you guys that led to the results?

To be honest, I think it was distrust. We stopped trusting each other after our first game vs TSM, for the pink hair challenge. People started losing trust in each other. Back line wasn't together: Link and Peter were at odds. They didn't trust each other, so the back line played really weird. Front line wise, we didn't really have much initiation with the current meta from top lane or jungle since they didn't initiate a lot and I was the one doing it at the beginning of the season so we were getting over that hurdle as well, while being at odds with the backline. We didn't have proper teamfighting because they'd both get caught at the same time or split up in team fights so we'd miss damage and stuff like that. I thought that was the main thing that caused us to fall, and we didn't really overcome that properly or try to take it head on. We just tried to beat around the bush and go “let's do this this way, we'll stop doing what we're good at and take this approach instead.” Since, yknow, “We'll never be able to play this meta!” That's basically what happened.

You've been playing League of Legends for a long time: how does a team handle that, once the distrust starts to develop, in order to get back to trusting each other?

Honestly, it's through trial and error and definitely having a firm coaching staff that can cut shit out when someone has too much ego and doesn't want to play how the team wants himt o play, and just tries to be selfish in and outside of the game and not participate in team activities, going out, and stuff like that. This split, thank goodness, we have Chris, our new coach, who actually yells at us all the time. He makes us do stuff together, and if we don't do it we get punished pretty bad. Good news there.

Your new head coach is a former college sports coach, correct?

Yes.

What kind of practice regimen does he institute, and how's the environment different from having a former League of Legends player as the coach which most other teams have?

For him, I think he's still learning what he can apply since it's not exactly the same – sports coaches have a lot of physical activity. We wake up, we do stretches for like 20 minutes or so, and then we go out and do a passing drill with the basketball or do communications exercises in a circle and pass it around. Sometimes we do 3v3 scrimmages with basketball as well. Sometimes we run outside. I've never done this before, this is the first split I've ever had this much physical activity right before scrims. “Wake up, get the hell up, get out there! What are you guys doing?!” That's pretty much all he does. I'm sure there's going to be more stuff in the upcoming season that we're going to do. I'm kinda scared, but it's all good.

Do you feel like these unconventional exercises are having a positive effect on your team environment?

There's more conversation between teammates. It promotes more conversation, more interacting with each other, which is really helping with the team. A lot of people make jokes and that's moreso than what we had last season or previous seasons as well.

You actually have two new mid laners, but you've been playing with Pobelter mostly so far since Huhi's had visa trouble. How has Pobelter fit into the team, taking the place of someone who was one of your primary shotcallers before?

Actually, I think he's doing really well. He's definitely a solid mechanical player, as well as awareness-wise of what he's doing, so it's really helpful for us as a team. We've found a good style and we showed that in our first game today. We can rely on him to go even in lane, do well – most of the time he always wins his lane – and he'll always be relevant throughout the game. That's really good on his part. Solid player. Good comms. He'll always be the team player that we need.



And for Huhi – visa issues and stuff like that. Only played with him once in scrims, and that was his one tryout. Now we're just waiting for him to come back.

How has the ingame leadership burden shifted since Link left the team?

Instead of Link being the shotcaller, it's now...okay, well, back when we were doing really well it was Link and I being the shotcallers. Towards the end of the split we started moving towards one shotcaller since people thought that was a good fix, but it was only a temporary fix and didn't solve our problems. So now Darshan is the shotcaller, as well as me. We control the game flow and what we should do.

Obviously it's pretty early, but with this roster that you've been playing with so far, how does the fit feel and how strong do you think you really are right now?

Well, I always think that we are really strong, it's just we have problems moving past our...problems...and addressing them in the correct way. The player point of view is going to be biased, right? We played the game, blah blah blah, and not really have a firm outside perspective: “No, this is how it's going to play out, yknow, objectively I can see this, and that.” Now that we have everything structurally in place, it feels really good, and I also feel like we're still as good as we were at the beginning of the season last season, but we're able to overcome the problems that we're gonna face.

Since I have to wrap this up, I always like to ask each player about the meta and the game itself. I see you're holding a Meep plushie with you – how do you feel about support right now? Do you think Bard is top tier, and what are the other top picks: especially with the new utility changes?

Well, Alistar is pretty OP. And then there goes Thresh, he's pretty good as well, and then for me I really like Bard but that's just me, since I play him a lot. I really like Bard because of his playmaking ability, versatility, especially with comms and stuff within your team. I think he's really good. That's pretty much the top three supports that I like, and everything else is just niche picks for other players.

Do you think the utility mastery changes change a lot?

Yeah. I wish I had more points to put in there to be honest, so it's gonna be hard to figure out what's good and not good.

Just to finish things off, do you have any shoutouts? Open floor for anything you'd like to say.

Oh yeah. Shoutout to our sponsors, NZXT, Twitch, Cellucor, HyperX Cloud, and iBUYPOWER.

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