Martin “Rekkles” Larsson isn’t a good laner.

At least, that’s what history tells us.

Since the second half of 2014, when opening the map and roaming supports became paramount, Rekkles has de-emphasized laning phase in his play. At the turn of 2014, he had several options before him: one where he demanded more lane pressure and continued to try to improve in the 2v2 facet, or one where he became reliable and let solo laners Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez and Paul “sOAZ” Boyer emphasize 1-3-1 play. He chose the latter.

Some will look back at Rekkles’ play in 2014 with rose-colored glasses and consider it the best he’s ever performed. Near-deathless splits, high kill counts, and Miley Cyrus photoshops celebrated his LCS debut once he turned 17. Riot Games had deprived us of him, and he lived up to the hype.

Revisiting those games, however, reinforces the narrative that Rekkles isn’t a good laner. A closer look at his contribution to team damage from that time shows that he underperformed compared to AD carries like Oh My God Guo “San” Junliang on a team with a similar solo lane focus.

The image of Rekkles hunched over and glaring intently at his screen in a match against LMQ following an infuriating loss to Oh My God at the 2014 World Championship stands out. He ravaged North America’s third seed with Lucian, but at the time Lucian was really the only champion with which he could produce such a showing. Lucian gave Fnatic their only wins in the Group Stage before they dropped from the tournament.

In 2015, Rekkles continued to develop his “safe” playstyle, dropping games on Alliance and only returning to the top of the league when he rejoined Fnatic and Bora “YellOwStaR” Kim. Heo “Huni” Seunghoon pulled the majority of early map pressure, and Rekkles focused on simply staying even.

As long as Rekkles remained on a solo lane focused team, he would be the best at what he did in Europe. No other AD carry could play the utility role, flex Iceborn Gauntlet Ezreal, and push out mid lane better.

But 2016 marked a daunting and terrifying change for Fnatic. Huni left, and Fnatic lacked an aggressive mid laner or top laner to pull pressure in the early game. Rekkles assumed the leadership position, and eyes drifted to him for a solution.

For much of 2016, Fnatic could only find wins through lane swapping. Without the ability to get a tempo advantage in turret trades, Fnatic would fall behind too far to close out a game. Almost no one on the team, including jungler Lee “Spirit” Dayoon, dared to create momentum for the team to close out before teamfights. When the patch changed to enforce standard lanes, Fnatic abruptly dropped out of both the playoffs and Regional World Championship qualifier.

Suddenly, “safe” seemed like a wrong decision. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and two years of development couldn’t be undone. At the conclusion of the 2016 EU LCS Summer split, I published a “Rekkles defense” that championed his role on the team, but acknowledged the limits of his playstyle, almost accepted as a given.

Ultimately, however, Rekkles wouldn’t be typecast.

Almost no one would dare to predict that Fnatic will take the series from H2K-Gaming, but they defeated the Group B favorites in a devastating 3-0 with an average game time of 35.6 minutes. In these games, Rekkles took the early lead, averaging 571 gold over his opponent AD carry, Sin “Nuclear” Jeonghyeon, at 10 minutes.

In Fnatic’s opening draft, they selected Elise jungle and Camille support, usually a deadly top lane camping combination. These picks accompanied Rekkles’ Twitch in the bottom lane, enabling him to amass an advantage. In Game 2, Vayne became an opportunistic pick against a Tahm Kench support. The bot lane snowball comps continued in Game 3 with Aurelion Sol in the mid lane, Shen, and Camille. It was telegraphed, but H2K still couldn’t prevent it.

In the 2017 Spring regular season, Rekkles averaged 3.8 CS over his opponent at 10 minutes, an experience difference at 10 minutes of 68, and 164 total gold over his opponent at 10 minutes. I don’t think these statistics represent a complete measure of laning phase, so I wouldn’t even bring it up if his play didn’t come with intelligent trades in the 2v2 setting, strong management of minions, and proper coordination with Fnatic’s new jungler, Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen.

Story continues