Golden Guardians avenged their spring playoff loss to FlyQuest in dominant fashion, securing themselves an undefeated first week in the Summer Split. In both games the team played a much more solo-lane focused style and was proactive at all stages, a far cry from their scaling team compositions from spring.





We spoke with top laner Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell after the team’s day one victory over Echo Fox about what’s changed for the team, how he thinks they match up against the best in the region, and Korean solo queue.





Talk to me a little about today’s game. Since Echo Fox was also a playoff team last split, did you expect today’s game to go the way it did?





Hauntzer: Going into the match, I didn’t want to take them lightly, especially because it was the first match of the split and I feel like they’re not the worst team around. There are definitely worse teams in LCS, so I wanted to try my hardest going into the game. It turned out pretty well.





So we talked to [TL top laner Jung "Impact" Eon-yeong] earlier and he was saying how he doesn’t think NA top laners know how to macro well. What do you think about that?





That’s a pretty bold statement. I feel like it’s definitely not the strength of NA top laners, but I feel like the top tier ones definitely know how to play the map. For me personally, I feel like I have a really good grasp on how you should shift, how you should play macro, stuff like that. It’s not the same. It depends on the style of the region. If you’re going to skirmish a lot, there’s obviously not as much macro, but NA is kind of a mix-and-match. Sometimes there’s a clown fiesta, sometimes you just group mid. Earlier today OpTic versus Clutch, they just had an ARAM. You could tell both top laners don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They’re just sitting mid like, “Okay, teamfighting guys!”





It seems like a lot of teams are focusing toward a carry top or a carry jungle, but teams like OpTic have tank top laner. There have also been teams running the likes of Sejuani and other tank junglers, so what’s your read on the meta?





I feel the meta is very good for carry champs in all top side roles, so top, jungle, and mid. I don’t feel like tanks are very strong right now. It feels like solo laners have a lot of impact if they have either winning matchups or just the ability to do a lot of damage. There are a lot of OP solo lane champs, like Aatrox, Sylas, Irelia, Rzye, and Akali, so you want to make sure you can get those ahead and they can solo carry a game pretty much. I feel like teams who prefer tank tops or tank jungles probably don’t have enough confidence to play the carries, or they have a skewed meta.





So last split you guys didn’t play that kind of style and played more toward scaling. Did you guys gain the confidence over the offseason to play more picks like Sylas, like Irelia?





I think, back then, our read on how to play as a team was not as good as it is now, and also we had a lot of success in scrims with those kinds of comps so we just thought it would work out on stage, but game five against FlyQuest it didn’t work out.





Right now I feel [mid laner Henrik “Froggen” Hansen] and I are the most vocal on the team, so if we can get a lead it’ll help the team snowball and play the map better. I also think we had a pretty skewed read on the meta as well back then. I feel Ornn was okay, but it wasn’t like the best pick.





How do have guys been improving your read on the meta then?





I think we’re just being more open-minded now. Especially after watching MSI, it’s like you have to be able to play these champs if you want to have success. Honestly I feel every team should be the same, where if you can’t play all different champions or if your champ pool is limited, then it’s really going to hinder your team in draft and then the game as well. We try to make sure that kind of weakness doesn’t show up and we want our weaknesses to be really easily fixed, or something that’s very hard for opponents to take advantage of. We just try to have good fundamentals, good champion pools.





We heard from [GGS support Kim "Olleh" Joo-sung] at Asset Day that one of the big problems last split was communication, and now that you guys have gotten a lot closer, that’s been improved a lot. Was that a big problem for you, and how do you think that’s changed over the offseason?





I think communication was definitely a problem last split. It was basically just fundamentals. How you play the game normally, you call people are missing, if they can roam, TP advantage, stuff like that. All the basic stuff that we didn’t do well last split, we’re doing really well now.





Ever since we came back from practice, everyone’s been pretty stressed, but we had a few days where people let out their feelings, kind of tried to understand each other more, and see how people are playing from different perspectives. We all understand each other more now, like what we need and we’re just talking a lot more.

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You guys were one of the few teams going into summer who didn’t switch up your roster. Do you think that increase in communication is enough for you to make a deep run this split?





I think the synergy there is going to be really helpful because we didn’t change anyone. My synergy with [jungler Juan “Contractz” Arturo Garcia] is always really good, so since nothing changed we’re going to keep improving on that. If, say, other teams traded junglers or tops, they’re not going to have as strong a synergy as us. Honestly we didn’t really need any changes in the team. All we needed was a change in mindset, and I feel we’ve done that.





So how have you guys worked to change your mindset then?





Just be more open-minded, focus on winning, and make sure you practice pretty hard. Don’t slack off. We have mandatory solo queue now, so it kind of sucks for some people, but other people are like, “I do this anyways,” so it doesn’t really bother them. We just want to make sure everyone has a more positive attitude, so no one’s blaming each other too much. If some guy is taking feedback wrongly or being too offended, you can’t do that. Just understand everyone is trying to win, everyone’s trying to do their best.





Just try to create a positive atmosphere on the team, and I feel that’s what most of the top teams have over the bottom teams. It feels like bottom-tier teams right now, the team mentality is just really messed up. Everyone hates each other, no one likes playing with each other, they don’t want to play, they want to bench someone. It’s really bad. We’ve come to accept each other and our atmosphere is really nice.





How do you feel you match up against those top teams then? Do you think you have a chance to crack the top three?





I definitely think we have a chance. It probably just depends on any given day. Right now we haven’t scrimmed TL basically. We’ve scrimmed C9, TSM. Results are pretty equal. I feel individually, everyone’s pretty up there so if we have better team play or people are just popping off, then we can definitely beat them.





You were talking about atmosphere earlier. How does your atmosphere on Golden Guardians compare to when you were on TSM?





There’s two TSMs pretty much. There’s the 2018 one, and then the 2016-2017 one. I feel the 2018 one was a pretty bad atmosphere for everyone. It didn’t feel like we really enjoyed playing with each other. There were a lot of problems throughout we had to fix. There was a lot of arguing as well. It was just really stressful on everyone. In 2016 I feel like everyone was closer. We had arguments at times but it felt like we bonded more the more the pressure got to us.





Right now I feel we’re all pretty good friends. We all know we want to win, and we’re just practicing hard so it’s like no one’s trying to mess it up or be really toxic and just fuck everything up. Everyone’s trying their hardest to stay positive, to stay motivated.





So continuing with TSM, do you get more hyped to play them now that you’ve been on their team?





Yeah. I love playing TSM, like I love shit-talking [TSM mid laner Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg] after. [Bjergsen] and I are good friends, so we banter a lot. I think I’m a lot better than [TSM top laner Sergen "Broken Blade" Çelik] so I have to prove it on stage, make sure I’m better than him, make them regret their decision. They’re a top team, so when they lose, I go to Reddit, read that thread. It’s just a gold mine, so much entertainment. That’s definitely one of the highlights.





I heard over offseason you and [ADC Matthew “Deftly” Chen] went to Korea to bootcamp. Was that just something you two decided you wanted to do?





It wasn’t mandatory by anyone. I just felt I wanted to go to Korea to practice, have a different environment. I was stuck here for a month basically, doing nothing, I didn’t want to play solo queue because I knew solo queue was going to be really stressful because the ping, the players are bad, and it’s just the same environment. I wanted to go somewhere new, so going to Korea was the perfect option. It kept me in form for summer, and it was just a fun experience.





How do you think Korean solo queue compares to NA solo queue?





The major differences are queue times, ping, and player skill. Queue times are like 10 times shorter in Korea -- it’s like two minute queues for Master plus. Here it’s like seven minutes, so you get a lot more games in. People tend to FF more, so if you’re losing really hard, people are just like, “Yeah, let’s leave.” You can play more games that way.





The ping’s a big difference because here we’re playing on 60 ping, but in Korea it’s 10 ping. I feel you can work a lot on your mechanics there and just learn how to play champions better or just click your mouse better. Honestly the player difference isn’t too big. There’s just a lot more players there, so there’s going to be a lot more good players. There’s also a lot of bad players, but there’s more good than bad, that we see at least.