Draft two of three pushing lanes. Ensure you secure the strong jungle matchup. These common mantras have dotted commentary since the enforcement of standard lanes at the start of the EU LCS playoffs in 2016 Summer, but on many occasions, Splyce defied them.

“This series, I kind of realized there’s no point in playing to their strength,” Splyce mid laner Chres “Sencux” Larssen said after the five game series against Unicorns of Love that qualified Splyce for the World Championship. “So I wanted to stall out the early game and get to mid game by playing Malzahar. And that’s also why I kind of wanted to stall out the third game from a huge deficit. I don’t think their late game is that good. Our mid-late game was better than theirs, so that’s why we decided to do that.”

When other teams began putting increased emphasis on choosing counterpicks in 1v1s and 2v2s without the security of lane swaps, Splyce still found instances where they defaulted to the comfort of the scaling choice. This buffered their typically struggling early game so they could create comeback scenarios from dazzling deficits by pinching the map in 1-3-1s or flanks in the jungle. Despite a second place finish in EU LCS playoffs, Splyce averaged the third largest deficit (-1531) and the second largest deficit of any team at the World Championship (-2155) at 15 minutes.

What worked well for Splyce in Europe, securing them second place, failed abroad. Challenged by oppressive lanes, Splyce couldn’t find as many windows to come back and fell out of group stage with a 1-5 record. In the 2017 season, strong laning phase will be cultivated, and being able to secure the push to strangle out less frequently spawning jungle camps may have an even greater impact.

Unless Splyce improve their stuttering early game, it will be much more difficult for them to remain at the top. Much of the onus for the change — and Splyce’s style in general — will fall to Jonas “Trashy” Andersen.

Prior to the World Championship, I spoke with Trashy about the role of the jungler when his team falls behind early.

“I know it’s a thing a lot of people talk about like ‘oh, they’re not doing anything in the early game, it’s the jungler just afk farming’ or something like this,” Trashy said, “but there’s a lot more to it than not being proactive.

“I think it’s a lot about drafts and a lot about understanding what you want to do in game,” he elaborated. “So obviously there will be situations where it’s the jungler’s fault, but in most cases it comes down to, at the highest level, maybe the enemy just have a better early game jungler and a strong matchup that you can’t really challenge, so you have to do something else on the map.”

Draft certainly played a role in Splyce falling behind. In their climb through playoffs and regionals, for example, Splyce saved their support for last pick on red side, leaving solo lanes more open to counterpick. By Sencux’s admission, Splyce also chose matchups that would perform poorly early.

Trashy frequently chose champions like Graves, Olaf, or Gragas that did better after farming to Level 6 in terms of exhibiting lane pressure. This coincided with their struggles in standard lanes, as Trashy often would choose to counter jungle on the opposite side of the map in response to his opponent exerting pressure with a stronger pick. It’s hard to safely invade the enemy jungle if you have a weaker jungle match and your laners aren’t able to push out enough to prevent the opposition from collapsing upon you.

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Matchups weren’t the only problems for Splyce’s early game. Even with lane dominant picks like Karma or Aurelion Sol at the team’s disposal, Splyce’s Sencux and Kasper “Kobbe” Kobberup averaged CS deficits of more than 7 at 10 minutes in the World Championship group stage. Perhaps this is partly why, in Week 2, Splyce’s draft emphasis swung wildly to Elise, selecting the champion first or in the first rotation on red side in all three of their games.

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