It’s been a crazy year for the only EULCS team to repeat appearance at the World’s stage in 2016. From the Forg1ven scare in spring of almost having to drop out of the team to Freeze’s injuries in summer, H2K haven’t had the best of luck. Despite their issues, H2K had managed to get far in both splits, having accumulated enough circuit points to qualify for worlds as the 2nd seed.

Top - Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu

There have been many ways to describe H2K’s top laner over the course of his career. Words commonly used, but are not limited to, low econ, versatile, role player, etc. There is one word that could easily describe almost every game Odoamne has ever played, and that would be: efficient. See, Odoamne isn't a flashy player; he isn't necessarily the carry unless the situation requires him to be. He doesn't get much attention from his team and resources are usually funnelled into the other lanes, yet odoamne is always capable of doing the maximum he can regardless of the situation at hand.

Odoamne’s charm lies in how he's seldom, if ever, had a bad individual game. Even when the lane favors his opponent, the Romanian top laner has always found ways to keep himself relevant in terms of gold and exp, often reaching to the mid game equal in power against a top laner who had a laning advantage. Whether it be finding just enough CS to get a lead in a lane swap or moving to the right portion of he map at the right time, Odoamne could well be the most efficient top laner we've ever seen in the west.

Jungle - Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski

From being unable to qualify for Worlds in 2015 on ROCCAT to being one of the main reasons H2K is at Worlds this year, The aptly named “first blood king” makes his debut at worlds. As a team, H2K lives and dies by what Jankos can accomplish early game. Both in spring and summer, Jankos stands as the starting player with highest first blood participation as well as highest kill participation. It’s simple -- if Jankos does well, then H2K does well.

Jankos’ playstyle resembles that of Ambition on Samsung: very in-your-face towards enemy junglers and, more often than H2K would like to admit, has caused the Polish jungler some unnecessary deaths in the past. While it’s not really bad, it does put a burden on the rest of the team to follow up on his aggression. For the most part, H2K has been excellent at responding to Jankos’ early shenanigans, often blowing early flashes on enemy laners, forcing out the enemy jungler or even diving one of the side lanes because of the early control. The only true problem was that for a majority of the summer split, H2K and Jankos were sometimes incapable of transitioning this early game lead into a mid game lead.

Mid - Yoo “Ryu” Sang-ook

The second and last player to return to Worlds from last year’s H2K line up, Ryu has proven that despite the years he's been playing the game, he hasn't dropped off from last year's level. Ryu’s champion pool also seems to expand every split we see him. While his Azir play isn’t inspiring, he’s shown just how dangerous his Leblanc, Viktor and Cassiopeia can be. While his stats are nothing out of the ordinary for carry mid laners, how Ryu plays around Jankos and Odoamne certainly is.

As mentioned previously, Jankos’ style is akin to that of Ambition from Samsung. As such, Ryu plays as aggressively as the situation requires it. Ryu doesn’t win lanes by out CS’ing straight up in lane, Ryu takes trades in which he knows he’ll get the upper hand. Much of Ryu’s lead stems from keeping the enemy mid laner down rather than simply gaining a monetary advantage. Having a carry threat as versatile as Ryu has allowed H2K to spend more time honing their mid game capabilities and has eventually lead them to a 3rd place finish in the EU LCS summer playoffs.

AD Carry - Konstantinos “Forg1ven” Tzortziou

Well now, this wasn't the plan… Unfortunately for H2K, their to-be AD Carry Aleš “Freeze” Kn?žínek was forced to vacate his position on the starting lineup due to injury, forcing H2K to find a suitable replacement for the remainder of the split and eventually Worlds. Fortunately for H2K, they picked somebody who has been famed for being one of the absolute best marksman the west has ever had in Forg1ven. While the never ending rumors of Forg1ven’s attitude rages on, H2K managed to make the best out of a dull situation, get far enough in the playoffs in summer to qualify themselves for Worlds based on circuit points.

One of the key advantages that we’ve been able to notice from having Forg1ven in the line up, is the attention that Jankos can now put around the upper side of the map while not having a losing bottom lane. While Freeze is a great AD Carry in his own right, his injury seemed to have hurt H2K very thoroughly, possibly not allowing Freeze to practice as freely as he desired several weeks of the summer split. It’ll be both a pleasure to see Forg1ven play as it will be a shame to see Freeze have to sit this one out due to injury. We hope to see Freeze recover soon and return to the top level of LCS stage.

Support - Oskar “Vander” Bogdan

Just like his Polish companion Jankos, Vander also makes his debut at Worlds after being unable to qualify last year. For those unaware of Vander’s play, we must inform them that Vander has always been within the upper tier of supports in EU. Once time had come to leave ROCCAT and branch out to other squads in an attempt to find a more suitable roster, Vander came across H2K and their newest AD Carry, Forg1ven.

Rumors had always floated around the scene whether or not Forg1ven and Vander actually got along for the majority of the spring split. If these rumors had any truth behind them, it didn’t manifest on stage because both Vander and Forg1ven were capable of decimating enemy bottom lanes without much problem during spring. More often than not, teams would dive the H2K bot lane simply to try and shut Forg1ven down before he had any chance to go off. As summer came along, Forg1ven had been substituted by Freeze. While initially it didn’t look like much of a difference, with time we began to see that Freeze’s limitations would also hinder Vander’s ability to roam effectively and follow up on Jankos’ crazy crusades.

Final Thoughts:

As summer progressed, H2K did look like they were falling off as one of EU’s powerhouses -- not by talent, or even by early game standards, but simply they had a lot of issues during the mid game. Team synergy was clearly an issue throughout all of summer. Despite their issues, H2K is one of the best EU has seen when it comes to creating an early advantage, to the point where some of their early leads have eclipsed their mid game mismanagement. It’ll be very interesting to see if H2K have been capable of fixing their issues in teamplay heading into worlds.

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Images and cover photo courtesy of Riot Games flickr

All player stats have been checked from oracleselixir.com