When Snake’s roster was announced for the LPL 2017 Spring Split, there was a high anticipation felt from the writer: they had managed to acquire both former Najin and NRG ADC ohq, and IG’s youth veteran mid and toplaner, Zzitai. Surely 2017 would be Snake’s year, I thought.

Even despite the seeming lack of a concrete strategy surrounding this line-up, there were hopes that Snake would finally get their act together and challenge for a top spot in the LPL given the overall weaker status of the teams this split, thanks in part to several Korean players returning to Korea.  

Make no mistake, however -- these acquisitions were more shrewd purchases than carefully curated. Zzitai leaving IG was only natural, since Rookie would be the shoe-in for the mid position despite Zzitai being no slouch himself. Meanwhile, ohq has been known as a mechanical monster since debut, but has never been on a legitimate winning side either. Snake were not exactly lacking in either the mid or ADC positions, though it’s clear that both ohq and Zzitai were obvious upgrades.

It was hence a tremendous surprise when Snake came into their first LPL series against IG fielding neither ohq nor Zzitai – instead, TANK, who was the starter during, and Mint, a rookie ADC player, featured over the far more obvious choices.

While a decent result was achieved, Snake eventually triumphing 2-1, both ohq and Zzitai had to be subbed in for the third game; after the series, Snake management tried to play off the odd first two game line-up by claiming they picked the players based on their strengths against the teams they’d be facing.

After a few weeks, however, that approach did not appear to be reaping the dividends that the management intended (provided they were telling the truth). Snake suffered 2-0 losses to RNG and LGD, with ohq and Zzitai nowhere to be seen in all four games. It is difficult to imagine what could have happened for them to be benched when they were suffering such abysmal results, with SofM being chiefly culpable for their losses.

The Vietnamese King of the Jungle had seemingly lost his form, giving up more kills than ever over greed or inability to play any other way than aggressively – a problem which has plagued him over his career due to his general confidence in taking on opponents.

Perhaps someone on the team had complained about rookie support Mo’s performances, because an exasperating roster swap was made during Week 4: SofM would take up the support role, while Mint, who had been the starting ADC for most games, would move into the jungle. SofM had a history of role-swapping even back in GPL, although no one could deny that he will always be most comfortable in the jungler.

Even though Zzitai and ohq had finally returned to the starting line-up, this bewildering swap did not work out against World Elite. Neither Mint nor SofM looked particularly well-fitting despite being decent at their respective roles, and everyone else were not playing at optimal standards either.

Even despite the poor result against WE, Snake seemed to be lacking confidence in SofM’s jungling ability, and both Mint and SofM remained in the jungle and support roles respectively in Week 5.

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This time, previously-benched ADC Kryst4l was brought back on in place of ohq, but there appeared to be no reason for this other than a vain attempt at throwing whatever might work and hoping it’ll stick. After a by-now characteristically weak performance, the management finally brought on the line-up that everyone had been waiting for since the roster was announced – albeit with a slight twist.

Top: Flandre

Jungle: SofM

Mid: Zzitai

ADC: Ohq

Support: Kryst4l

And it only took five weeks for them to realise that this was the roster combination which was best-placed to succeed.

Better late than never, however, as they raced to an early-game lead via SofM’s creatively aggressive clears. Game 2 was where the downsides of this burgeoningly talented yet youthful line-up showed: they play primarily on instinct and like so many non-Korean teams, do not appear to have a proper game plan after the early-game. However, it was still the best shot they had due to the immense level of talent on show.

Despite a botched Baron attempt leading to a Swift Baron steal, losing them 10 minutes, Zzitai stepped up to drag the team to a win via split-pushing as Ekko, while SofM took on a more peripheral role. For the first time this split, it felt like SofM did not have to 1v5 the enemy team to win, as he has so often tried to do and failed in the past. Ohq and Zzitai were having scintillating performances, never putting a wrong foot down during the entire game. 

Bad calls or good calls – despite a startling lack of mid- and late-game preparation, Snake managed to win Game 2 largely through situational, reactionary calls; this was not the Snake of old, where long and drawn-out games were the norm. The Snake had shed its old skin, and was now driven by pure aggression.

If Game 2 was an indication of a possible pitfall with this line-up, Game 3 showed the massive upside: almost everyone is known for their mechanical abilities and being more than competent in the early-game. With every lane won, SofM was allowed to dictate the game tempo, comprehensively keeping the entire Newbee team down – Swift had no answer since his lanes were already losing, and could not be blamed for his team’s loss. Snake were simply on fire in Game 3, and claimed victory in less than 30 minutes - their best performance the entire split.

Now that Snake has finally found what may be the final starting line-up for the rest of the split, here are a few possible reasons for not fielding it earlier:

Inability to sort communication issues out during scrims: It seems plausible given the mix of nationalities on the roster; it would be nigh-impossible to improve communications between players from three different countries, none of whom speak English well enough to have common ground in-game. There has been much rhetoric about the importance of communication between teammates in League of Legends, and one could argue that it is needed now more than ever as macro decisions become even more integral to winning games, especially against Korean teams who boast of five members who can communicate with no linguistic complications. No longer can teams get away with communicating solely through smart pings, as Royal Club in S4 reached the semi-finals of Worlds doing so.

Foreigner limits: This isn’t exactly a problem given their best imports are SofM and ohq, and on a good day the native Zzitai would surely be picked over the Korean TANK. Zzitai’s more eclectic champion pool and propensity to create something out of nothing would also be more valued than TANK’s champion pool, which mainly defers to the flavours of the month.

Loss of trust in Mo: That Mo lost his spot after Week 3 despite being the only registered support player seemed to indicate a loss of confidence in his play. After all, it would make no logical sense to field someone like SofM or even Kryst4l there.

Kryst4l: Kryst4l has always been a player willing to do what he thinks is right for the team; he famously stepped down to allow Martin to play last split, as he thought he was not good enough. That he has moved into the support role is hence not surprising given his history. He appeared to strike up a good partnership with ohq despite being caught out more than once in the mid-game during the Newbee-Snake set, and the team overall looked much better than it had done in recent weeks.

Flandre: Flandre has been rarely discussed in this article, but he has assimilated to the 2017 meta relatively well, finding his niche on tank champions. His role may be less pivotal in the current line-up, but as a mainstay of the Snake roster since 2014, he found himself the only non-dropped player so far. One could argue that his performances have not warranted a drop, but under the same admission, he has not been able to lead the team during the turbulent weeks either. 

Whether Snake's success against Newbee is solely down to Kryst4l’s inclusion remains to be seen, but it would not be unwise to continue with this role-swap for the rest of the split, for there is much early-game prowess in store, as well as a good mix of experience and youth. Other featured line-ups appeared too inexperienced or haphazard; the inclusion of Zzitai and ohq alone would not have solved Snake's problems unless SofM also found his form. The hopes have returned, but unlike 2016 where SofM would decide many games on his own, there are others around him to step up in the mid- and late-game now. 

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