In a Cinderella story reverse-sweep against CLG on Sunday, team captain Hai “Hai” Liam solidified his place in North American LoL history as an unrivaled leader and shotcaller. However, that wasn’t the only thing historic about the 3-2 quarter final victory, it also makes FlyQuest the first team in North America since LMQ in the Summer of 2014 to place in the top 4 after entering the league from the promotion tournament.

The amount of European teams to achieve that within the same time frame? Five.

What causes this separation in skill level between the region’s challenger to LCS success? At first glance, dating back to Summer 2014, an obvious answer for the differing success doesn’t reveal itself. NA produced teams we historically know as bottom or middle table teams like Coast, TDK and the journeymen that played on Curse Academy/Gravity, Apex and now Dignitas. Meanwhile, Europe produced teams that have become household names since their induction into the league: H2k, Unicorns of Love, G2, Splyce and now Misfits after their quarter-final win against Splyce.

If you begin to examine the timeline from Summer 2014 to Spring 2017, a causal factor for this difference in challenger team success between the regions begins to show itself quickly: the amount of money in each region, which affects their roster building and import culture. The timeline for this gap between NA and EU to develop starts when LMQ becomes the main argument — among other impending import rosters — for Riot to implement the Interregional Movement Policy at the end of 2014. The start of venture capital investments flowing into NA LCS can be marked by the first buyout, where GV Samurai purchased Curse.Academy and re-branded it to Gravity after the Sale of Sponsorship rule change in the Spring of 2015. From there, the economic differences between the regions being to manifest impact the respective challenger scenes in a few different ways. Native talent is distributed differently, import slots are approached with an entirely different methodology and the challenger teams are built differently because of this. Native Talent Distribution The financial differences can be displayed by a simple stat — the amount of young European talent on the five recently qualified teams: eighteen players between five teams. For North America, the amount of challenger series players that either qualified for LCS or were signed to LCS teams since 2014: fifteen players distributed between eight teams. Young talent being spread thinly across a majority of teams in North America versus young European talent being condensed into five teams creates the perfect frame to view how challenger teams operate in the respective regions.

Europe’s tightly-knit group of young talent is weaved as such because they all earned their keeps together — or replaced other EU members that were on the team when they qualified —  through the challenger series. Upon qualifying, three members of H2K, G2, MSF, four members of Splyce and all five member of UOL were young native players who hadn’t played in the LCS. The roster slots, though some players cycled out — Hybrid (G2) Hjarnan (H2K) Vardagras (UOL) to name a few — have remained the same brand of and ratio of young European players.

Because of the lack of money, especially before late 2016 into 2017, where football companies like S04 began to invest, Europe’s young talent was forced to gain their rite of passage into the league together. 

There was more risk than reward for an established organization in the EU LCS when signing a young, untested talent. Before Febiven could have his breakout rookie year, he had to qualify with H2K in the promotion tournament. The lack of funds caused young players to gravitate towards each other for one day having a chance at dominating the league, whereas in NA, the over-saturation of funds created an opposite effect. The start of 2015 brought major investments into LCS spots; in 2016, Immortals became the first official venture capital team, and from there, the funds ballooned into 2017 where the average NA LCS salary is reportedly around six-figures. The influx of money brought blockbuster imports to the region, which increased the stock of young native talent. As a result, rather than have that budding talent be raised as a challenger squad, they were raised to take the spotlight and make their way to the NA LCS.

Breakout players like Dardoch, Biofrost, Stixxay and Inori never qualified for the NA LCS; they were seen as too valuable to pass up and upgraded to LCS rosters immediately. With native talent being ushered into the LCS before even getting their rite of passage through the challenger series, the NACS began to produce teams of old school NA vets (FlyQuest) or rag-tag import rosters (TDK/NV) with hopes of steam-rolling to the big show. These are two juxtaposed approaches to building a roster and they both lead to the overall failure of NACS teams: import culture. 

Import Culture A region's import culture is defined by two factors, which have an inversely proportional relationship: the amount of money in the region and the quality/efficiency of scouting. If you follow the money trail, the relationship becomes clear with European teams finding diamonds in the rough and NA teams flopping with blockbuster signings. We can observe this in cases like Huni and Reignover exploding onto the scene in 2015, or an ex-world champion like Piglet coming to TL and eventually fighting for his life relegations this split. Fnatic’s diligent scouting of unknown — or underrated in the case of Reignover who’d played a brief time with Incredible Miracle in OGN — serves as the model for all importing in Europe. Conserving your cash was important in Europe, so as a result, meticulously scouting the right player to import within budget was crucial to having a top table roster. G2’s Trick and now recently, Expect, are perfect examples of players who were scouted beautifully by the organizations, grabbing imports that weren’t big names but ended up being on par with veteran import signings.

With limited funds, your organization lives and dies by the sword when it comes to imports, if you don’t go about it properly ,you’ll drive yourself into the ground like Origen and Giants. Luckily, there are European teams like Unicorns of Love and Spylce that realize you don’t have to take that risk,  choosing to find perennial success with a full roster of resident players.

The only team to embrace this methodology coming out of challenger in NA? FlyQuest. The truth is, when you have the amount of capital most NA LCS organizations have, you can shop for imports who already have a pedigree within their respective regions. Because players like Froggen, Ryu, Piglet, and Ssumday have a proven skillset and legacy, there isn’t much scouting to be done. You know the player you want, it’s about having the money to sign them. These are all successful signings in their own right, but in some cases don’t fit right into their rosters because of the leisurely scouting involved with signing a blockbuster free agent. Subsequently, otherwise powerhouse rosters can flop because of dysfunction within the team’s playstyle and hindered bilingual communication. When you shop for players and not playstyles, then you immediately place an obstacle your organization’s roster must overcome to have elite teamwork. With that in mind, it becomes much less surprising FlyQuest’s roster of native players built around the best in-game leader in NA LCS history is the only recently successful challenger to LCS team. Teamwork Trumps Talent

At the start of the season, it seemed avoiding relegation would be a successful split for FlyQuest, but a playoff berth into an upset quarter-final victory? That’s what a player like Hai “Hai” Liam can do for a team, as long as he has players around him who’ll have unwavering trust in their General and follow his strategy.

Hai will set the tone and identity for a team, just as any great in-game leader does if the players surrounding that leader buy into his philosophy. Historically, teams that overachieve have a player of this caliber on their roster and will quickly identify what areas of the game they excel at as a team. 

When Unicorns of Love first joined the league, they had a gimmicky playstyle that would seemingly never succeed, but Vizicsacsi lead them to a 2nd place playoff finish despite being the 5th seed. When FNATIC rebuilt in 2015 and YellowStar was the only returning player the roster was expected to make playoffs, but Bora molded the aggression of the young roster into a championship team that split. These types of players are a keystone to any successful roster, but having teammates around them that are willing to cooperate is just as important. Signing talented imports with a preconceived notion of how they find success within a team can create barriers that are impossible to break down when in-game leaders and coaching staffs attempt to find a new roster’s identity. Would FlyQuest have a more individually talented roster if they signed a pair of oppressive imports? Yes, but if you look at a team who did exactly that this split, you’d see why they wouldn’t be a more successful team with two imports. With highly mechanical imports, these teams will have moments they crush teams and others where they lose with almost no resistance, which makes it easy to see that the lack of identity and consistent communication can weigh your team down rather than lift it up.

Meanwhile, FlyQuest had a near fairytale run from the beginning of the split, finding wins on Mordekaiser ADC and unorthodox stealth team compositions that team’s couldn’t play around. In their wins they excelled as a team — not as individuals — and as a result were able to work on their playstyle, adapt it to the meta and grind to upset as the 6th seed. 

When you have import players who aren’t willing to change their playstyle, adapt and communicate properly, you can’t progress forward as a team. If Altec hadn’t been willing to play off-meta Mordekaiser ADC, then they might not have picked up those two cheesey wins that helped secured them the 6th seed. Given his track record, it’s hard to see a player like Piglet falling on his sword and playing Mordekaiser ADC for the betterment of the team. There comes a point where a player who is willing to do anything for him and his teammates to be the best they can be, out-values a player who is only willing to do anything to make him the best he can be.  

Rise Together

At the end of the day, truly great teamwork comes from a group of players who all want to reach the summit together — not individually — even if they may part ways on the way down. When you look at previous NA CS to LCS teams cross-referenced with EU LCS teams, it’s easy to see which rosters more closely fit that description. Though Viziscsacsi is the only player left of the original UOL roster, they reached the summit together and descended apart on the way down. Whereas teams like Gravity saw Hauntzer and BunnyFuFu leave to higher caliber teams within a year, leading to the complete marry-go-round of imports in NA CS.   The overall goal of many EU CS rosters was to rise to the top of EU LCS as a team and pay their dues before moving onto legacy organizations. The end-game for most NA CS rosters post-buyout era was to get the spot and maintain it waiting for an investor or move up to a better roster on their own. This leads to two very different concrete visions for the teams and players, though I think all the players on NA CS to LCS rosters wanted to be the best, it wasn’t as urgent for them. The passion to overcome the harsh environment in Europe compared to North America is what I believe molded such strong EU challenger teams. When you can move up to an LCS roster so quickly in NA, there’s no reason to face the plight of the challenger scene, so there’s no incentive to endure it as a roster. A roster like Phoenix1 could’ve easily emerged out of NA CS, but they were able to be moved up to LCS without having to qualify because of the funds the team had. Zig, Inori and Stunt have all never qualified from NA challenger and the two imports Ryu and Arrow could both be on said challenger roster. But it’s not worth the risk; just put them in the LCS and let them succeed — there’s no argument against that. However, the grit built when a roster must brave the harsh conditions presented by challenger and assert themselves to qualify for the LCS, a stronger bond is created. A more poetic storyline is built by the roster which has to climb from the base to summit together; a team comradery is established through that strife. Teams like FlyQuest and Misfits who broke down those barriers this split are opportunities we miss when players are upgraded to stronger rosters in NA and when organizations are afraid of the risk that comes with climbing through the challenger series.

If you enjoyed this piece, follow the author on Twitter at @lolTJae. Sources: lolesports flickr, esportswiki