Champions Summer 2015 continues on into Week 3 of the first round robin with one match on the card for the night, Longzhu Incredible Miracle taking on Najin e-mFire. Two middle of the pack, talent rich rosters will be facing off against each other. Incredible Miracle finished in 7th place in the previous Spring split, continuing the organizations lack of success in the League of Legends scene. Coming into this split the organization has had a total face lift, gaining a sponsor in the big name Chinese streaming company Longzhu, along with retooling their roster for what appears to be the better. Replacing Incredible Miracle and Korean scene legend Lilac, moving former support Tusin to the jungle, and bringing in a handful of bright talents that are sure to light the stage up shows that Incredible Miracle is not just in League to be a farm team, they are here to compete. Najin e-mFire, on the other hand, has appeared to stagnate with some of their veteran talents in lieu of brighter, up and coming players. Finishing in a very disappointing 6th place in Spring, Najin made no roster moves in the offseason, confident that their talent will come around and guide them to a Worlds spot for the fourth consecutive year.

Incredible Miracle enters this match sitting at 1-1 on the split, with a rough 0-2 set loss to the Jin Air Greenwings and a close 2-1 set win to the upstart rookies Anarchy. Najin e-mFire enters this match with a 1-2 record, dropping sets to Anarchy and SK Telecom while taking a set win against the KOO Tigers.

Longzhu Incredible Miracle

Apple, Jeong Cheol-Woo (정철우)

Lilac, Jeon Ho-jin (전호진)

Tusin, Bak Jong-ik (박종익)

Frozen, Kim Tae-il (김태일)

Roar, Oh Jang-won (오장원)

Sonstar, Son Seung-ik (손승익)

Stitch, Lee Seung-ju (이승주)

Ignar, Lee Dong-Guen (이동근)

Incredible Miracle is a team that I view as on the upswing. Raw talent wise, the roster appears to be quite rich. Frozen has been with the team since Summer 2014 and has been the lone bright spot on very unsuccessful teams the past two splits. He has finally gained some players around him that I think may be able to give him the help he needs. Joining the IM roster, Apple, formerly of Quantic Gaming and MiG Blitz, is the chosen successor to long time IM player Lilac in the top lane. Roar, formerly a sub of Jin Air and CJ Entus, has moved into the ADC role. Lastly, Ignar is one of the more interesting pick ups from this past offseason. A heralded solo queue support, he is fresh off contract with former NA LCS team Winterfox and ready to show the Korean competitive scene what everyone has hyped him for.

Apple, a veteran of the Korean scene, has had his fair share of ups and downs. Notable for being carry oriented, he’s a very aggressive top laner with diverse champ selection. Thus far in the season he has performed well despite the uneven 2-3 game record. Despite Lilac’s legend status, Apple’s ability to not die five times in the first 20 minutes is a god send to IM as Frozen finally has another lane that he can rely upon. He’s played four different champs in the five games he’s played, among them a top lane Kassadin which was one of the few success in the Jin Air set. While Lilac remains on the roster, I am doubting we’ll see his presence again.

Tusin is a very interesting player overall, one of the most coveted pick ups Incredible Miracle has made in their history. Like his teammate Ignar, Tusin was an incredibly hyped solo queue support player. Entering the competitive scene with IM, he displayed an extremely roam heavy style that paired quite well with now-Koo Tigers jungler Wisdom. During the first round robin in Spring, prior to Wisdom’s injury and leaving of the team, IM showed a good deal of success for their organization, going 3-4 in sets and 7-9 in overall matches, mostly through success of Tusin’s play making with Wisdom. He’s had a bumpy entrance to competitive jungling, meeting off against arguably the best jungler in Korea at the moment in Chaser during his first set. He was thoroughly outclassed to say the least.

Frozen stands as probably the best player on this roster overall and a player that kind of falls under the radar when talking about great, current Korean mid laners. He’s stood toe to toe with some of the best mids in the world and has shown off quite a large champ pool in the process. His coming out party to the world was a Lux game that he played against Samsung Blue and performed exceptionally well en route to a massive upset. Sporting some of the strongest Cassiopeia play in the world, this meta is where Frozen is at home and this is the best team he’s ever had. I have been a huge fan of this guy for the longest time and I would love to see him succeed.

The weakest point on this team for me, Roar has been fairly unimpressive during his short time with IM. It appears the IM management agrees with me as they still have Sonstar on the roster along with picking up solo queue ADC Stitch. I haven’t seen too much of him to form any real opinion on the guy, but outside of some decent Corki play I’ve been thoroughly unimpressed in his short time with IM. Will be interesting to see him develop with Ignar, if IM management proceeds to go that route.

Sitting at Support is the prodigy, Ignar. Hastily signing with Winterfox this past Winter, he decided on leaving the team prior to the NA LCS season starting. This left him latched to a team in NA, unavailable to join any team elsewhere. With Winterfox’s recent relegation, he’s been let go of his contract and IM are his first suitors. Despite his bot lane partners’ inadequacies, Ignar has been quite bright thus far with some good Thresh and Alistar gameplay. Very early in his career, he’s a player to watch.

Najin e-mFire

Duke, Lee Ho-seong (이호성)

Watch, Cho Jae-geol (조재걸)

Peanut, Yoon Wang-ho (윤왕호)

Ggoong, Yu Byeong-jun (유병준)

Tank, Park Dan-won (박단원)

Ohq, Oh Gyu-min (오규민)

Zefa, Lee Jae-min (이재민)

Pure, Kim Jin-sun (김진선)

Cain, Jang Nu-ri (장누리)

Najin e-mFire. There’s so many disparaging comments I could say about this team and its highly questionable decision making regarding the roster, but I will attempt to refrain so as to not ruin this article. They have two of the absolute best players in the world on their roster in Duke and Ohq. Those two form arguably the best duo carry system in Korea, both showing with fair consistency, the ability to absolutely crush lane and snowball hard to victory. This ability to do so leads to almost every Najin victory. Pure appears like a solid partner for Ohq, showing good individual success. The mid and jungle positions largely remain a massive question mark. They have two young, promising players, Peanut and Tank, that appear like they’d be in line to replace Watch and Ggoong. However, those two haven’t played a single match this split in their three total sets. Watch and Ggoong have had large struggles this split, and the last, that have led Najin to their disappointing results, so it’s a wonder to me why Peanut and Tank aren’t seeing more play.

While many in the world may only know him as Leopard based on his IEM Katowice 2014 performance on KT Rolster Bullets, Duke is now a king. Despite Najin’s massive struggles in Spring, he racked up 1000 MVP points in the regular season, claiming the regular season title. Najin only won 14 total games and he was the MVP in 10 of those. Truly one of the most exceptional talents in the world, this guy has what seems like a limitless ceiling and is one of the most well rounded top laners in the world. Regularly solo killing his lane, he’s performed incredibly on a vast pool of champions. Through his career showing mastery of Shyvana, Renekton, Gragas, Sion, Jax, Gnar, Rumble, Maokai, Mundo, and many others he is just absolutely phenomenal.

The first of the positional question marks is the Najin jungle. Currently it appears Watch is the starter and Peanut is left, well, watching. While Najin went only 4-7 with Peanut back in Spring, individually Peanut showed a lot of promise. He’s young and needs experience to grow. He had some rough games, but it should be expected from a rookie jungler. This season Najin has gone 13-17 overall with Watch starting and his individual play just looks sluggish. He’s extremely passive in his play, resorting to constantly farming, yet he’s inefficient at that role. Often times, he does absolutely nothing at all, as was the case in the SK Telecom set. And this is in a meta where looking bad in the jungle is pretty hard to do on the top three meta champs: Sejuani, Gragas, and Rek’Sai. The future is not there with Watch and with him currently in the starting roster they won’t see the success needed to even make Worlds, let alone compete at Worlds.

The second of the positional question marks is the Najin mid lane. As I’ve answered more in depth elsewhere, the gist of the reasoning why I believe Tank should be playing in place of Ggoong is that Ggoong cannot properly fill the role that a team with a carry top and a carry ADC needs. His supportive style is extremely poor. Tank, on the other hand, showed in his limited time with Najin that he could fit that style where he played more passive, supportive, secondary carry champs such as Xerath, Lulu, Lissandra, Karthus, and Twisted Fate that helped allow Duke and Ohq to succeed rather than hinder their performance by playing a more selfish, hard carry mid. Much like the situation in the jungle, the future is not there with Ggoong and with him currently in the starting roster they won’t see the success needed to even make Worlds, let alone compete at Worlds.

At ADC, we see a player that appears like he’s just on the cusp of absolute greatness, and then he does something stupid to remind you why he’s just not quite there yet. One of the most lane dominant marksmen in the world, Ohq’s bot lanes have been similar to Duke: regularly killing their enemies in the laning phase and snowballing off it. This split he’s individually played phenomenally in almost every game despite the disappointing results overall and he sports one of the scariest Kalista’s in the world. Recently breaking out his Vayne, he’s secured all three Najin wins this split on the champ, having a combined KDA of 22-7-24 in four games. Combined with Pure’s Alistar and Watch’s Gragas, Najin created an excellent comp that played perfectly to Ohq and Vayne’s strengths that were instrumental in their wins.

Rounding out the players at support is Pure, first ever seeing play back in 2014 Masters with his first split ever being last Spring. Successor to Najin legend Cain, Najin surprisingly almost has a winning record with him this season, going 11-11 in both Spring and Summer. He’s paired well with Ohq displaying well rounded gameplay with a devastating Alistar and Thresh alongside strong Janna play. I would expect to see both Thresh and Alistar being high priority between Ignar and Pure, both preferring those two champs and performing extremely well on both.

Prediction

This is a much tougher set to call than the SK Telecom vs KOO Tigers set, and truth be told I think it could go either way. Najin just might start playing the players I suggest and flat out 2-0 IM. Ggoong and Watch could also play exactly how they did against SK Telecom and Najin might drop this 2-0. I’ll say 2-1, in favor of Najin. A lot of it is depending on the jungle match up. Tusin’s poor performance has kept IM out of games they may otherwise win this split, so seeing where he’s progressed thus far will be nice. Players to watch will be Tusin, Frozen, Ohq, and Pure. As touched on, Tusin’s progression will be key to IM moving forward in a positive direction. The mid lane match up is interesting to me as Ggoong recently got absolutely dumpstered by Faker in the SK Telecom set and Frozen has the potential to produce similar results. The bot lane is heavily in Najin favor. I would be very surprised to see standard laning if Ohq gets anything but Vayne just due to how he can take a small lead and carry a game at the tip of a hat. Roar has been a weak point and Ignar is still very green, if they hold their own I’ll be very surprised.