Less than six months ago Samuel "Samux" Fernandez was disputing in Madrid the Final Cup of the Spanish league. Last Sunday he was in Hamburg fighting for the title in the final of the European branch of the League of Legends Championship Series. The leap that Samux has made is impressive and is one of the most drastic that is remembered in the Spanish scene.

Unicorns of Love, his team, started the spring split with few experts having high expectations on them after the departure of Kim "Veritas" Kyoung-min just days before the closure of the exchange market. Samux himself, who was chosen to replace the Korean marksman, acknowledges to diario As that when the unicorns made the offer, he "didn't know how good they were and didn't expect much." "I thought we were going to be a middle of the pack team, but everything went very well and we have reached the final."

It is not the first adventure of the Spanish player in the LCS, since in the spring split of 2013 he occupied the top lane of Giants Gaming. Regarding the differences he has found in the competition since that period, he points out that "everything has improved in the LCS. It used to be a small ESL studio that didn't even belong to Riot. And now they have their own studio, they do everything. " "Everything is better," he says.

“I am good enough to be among the top five marksmans in Europe”

Samux has been one of the biggest surprises of the competition. His good performance with champions like Jhin or Varus — who have dominated the drafting phase during these months — has helped Unicorns of Love, a team with two rookies, to sneak into the final of the LCS. He undoubtedly states that he is "good enough to be among the top five ADs in Europe".

From a statistical point of view, it is striking that, although he is one of the marksmans with less creeps per minute, he manages to be the second player in the league in terms of cs lead over his rival at the first ten minutes. Asking about this topic, he claims that he and Zdravets "Hylissang" Galabov work well together in lane, but when the game progresses and "it gets much more crazy", they decide to "push the mid lane and to not farm the side lanes".

The Unicorns of Love team is, along with Fnatic and Splyce, one of only three of the LCS that hasn't got Korean players in its roster. The team's manager Romain Bigeard opened the Pandora's box few months ago by declaring his conviction that Koreans are not the way to match the level of the region that has dominated League of Legends for years.

“What happens with the Koreans is that they are signed just for being Korean and not for being good”

Samux, in the same line, points out that "what happens with Koreans players is that they are signed just for being Korean and not for being good." "Yes, I think they are better than us, but if you are going to sign one, he has to speak English or be well selected," he adds. "This team prefers to sign European players because it involves less communication problems."

The day to day of an LCS player is not easy, since they need to spend a large number of hours training. About his own lifestyle, he claims that he gets up in the middle of the morning to play a bit of solo queue before training with the team. Subsequently, between 3 pm and 10 pm, they do two scriming sessions with a break of one hour to eat in between. Finally, before going to bed, they play solo queue again and go to sleep. "If you are not performing in the league and you lose, it can be very frustrating and very hard, but if you are winning you see the fruit of your work and it can be satisfactory," he says.

Asking about whether training continuously against the same teams of the LCS suppresses the surprise factor, Samux shows his skepticism because "the scrims are very different from the official games." "You play very aggressive and many times you don't respect some things. But in the stage you respect everything and you play much more passively. The scrims are to train the macro and the skill, but it does not affect much how you are going to leave the stage," he explains.

Michal Konkol (Riot Games)

Something that the LCS teams have also used to improve the individual level of each player is the practice tool — also known as sandbox. Although when it was released there were many critical voices against the impossibility of using it as a team, the Spaniard tells us that players of the highest category of the European League of Legends do use it to learn "combos like Gragas' or Graves'."

About the marksman role

The health of the marksman role has been questioned on countless occasions since the beginning of the season. However, over the past few weeks, we have been able to see how it gained weight in competitive matches.

For Samux, one of the factors that have influenced the most has been the buff to the Blade of the Ruined King, which has allowed many more champions to be viable now. "You can play almost everything like Martin "Rekkles" Larsson does, for example". However, he points out that most players still prefer safer ones like "Caitlyn or Varus". He summarizes the state of the role in the following sentence: "There is a lot of variety and you can carry the game from this position".

“You can play almost everything like Martin "Rekkles" Larsson does, for example”

He does not believe that this evolution has been necessarily positive for him, because he was good with lethality Varus and Jhin. "But I like to play champions like Lucian, which is very good, so I do not think I has harmed me much," he insists that "right now, you can play almost everything."

One of the changes that made drastically vary the viability of many champions was the removal of the lane swaps. Samux thinks that "it harmed the marksman role because, when you make lane swaps, the top lane gets very behind. If you have an enemy that is far behind, which is also the frontline of the team, you will do much more damage and have more impact on the game."