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Stalling Legacy: Interview with The Chiefs LoL
Last year's champions are about to take on their arch rivals - we ask them what it will take to win
Last year's victory
© T5 Photography
At the League of Legends OPL Split 2 Finals last year The Chiefs looked indefatigable, their victory inevitable. They'd wrapped up a flawless second split and they were looking to cap out a nearly perfect record for 2015. Legacy seemed nervous, and they talked about how everyone had already written them off. When we wrote about the two teams we described them as starkly different — the Chiefs' goal was to win, while Legacy's plan was to not lose.
The Chiefs aren't the same as they were last year, though. Literally, for a little while, as their roster was amended temporarily. They're tied for fourth, having lost some hard-fought matches against teams like the Dire Wolves and Sin Gaming. And Legacy aren't the same team either. They've made a roster change of their own, and more than that they've moved into a gaming house together. They're taking this season very seriously, and it shows — they're currently in the number one spot of the OPL Split 1, and they haven't dropped a single game along the way. As it stands now, they're poised to replicate what the Chiefs did last Split.
Nevertheless for many, Legacy won't have cemented their grasp on the OPL until they beat their perennial rivals, The Chiefs. And their opportunity to do that won't come until next Tuesday, when the two teams clash for the first time this season.
The Chiefs don't intend to make things easy for them. In preparation for the biggest match this year, The Chiefs Esports Club headed into Red Bull's offices in Sydney, where a boot camp and training centre was constructed. With them in our offices, we asked them to tell us, in their words, how they thought things would go.
"Our mindset is that we feel that our best will be better than their best," said Bryce 'EGym' Paule, The Chiefs Support, when we ask them how they think they'll fare against Legacy. The whole team is here, and they've been talking to us candidly about the relationship between the two teams. "It's a matter of us playing up to our potential. Talking back about Luna Park, it's about focusing on our team, on being our best, because that's how we win games."
Luna Park was a big deal. Not just for The Chiefs (they describe it as surreal), and not just for League of Legends' competitive scene in Australia — Riot taking over the iconic Harbourside theme park (even decking out the famous Face to look like Teemo) was huge for esports in Australia. But nevertheless, it wasn't the team's first competition, and they knew what needed to be done. So they headed into the OPL Split 2 Finals the same as they did any other competition.
"When we're going into a competition we alway focus on how we're going to play as opposed to thinking about our opponents," said Samuel 'Spookz' Broadley, the team's Jungle. "We were confident but we weren't cocky."
A classic rivalry continues this season
© Dylan Esguerra
But Legacy was still a special case. They'd proven to be a problem for the Chiefs before. "In 2014 going to two major tournaments we played them twice and we lost to them twice," explained Derek 'Raydere' Trang. "Going in we were favourites, and we beat them in the side tournaments but we just couldn't beat them in the major tournaments. We could beat a team who could beat them really easily, but we just couldn't beat them. If they were in third place, we'd beat the team in second much easier than we could beat Legacy. [At the OPL Finals] it was about a mindset then, it was about making sure we treated them as just any other team and not putting them on a pedestal."
It worked, and their confidence and chemistry took them all the way to the International Wild Card Tournament — all the way to the Finals of the IWCT, in fact.
"The first wildcard we went to, we were quite confident going into that, but then we didn't do very well and we got eliminated quickly," Simon 'Swiffer' Papamarkos, the team's Mid and Captain told us. "So going into the next Wildcard, I thought we were going to do similarly, or maybe a little better because we'd picked up a different player. Then we went to Germany to prepare and bootcamp, and whilst we were there it just felt like we weren't going to do well. We had this discussion, and from there we started improving rapidly, and the first day we did quite well and then the second day we did even better. And suddenly we were heading into the Finals and it seemed like we might just win and then we'd be going to Worlds."
"It was like a sudden realisation that we might actually make Worlds, which was a dream for all of us," interjected Spookz.
"Yeah I think that played into our eventual defeat. I was really jittery heading into that match instead of being calm like I had been the days before."
They lost the Finals, missing their opportunity to head to Worlds, but picking up more valuable LAN experience against some fantastic international teams. And more than that, they struck upon a specific element of their game — emotionality.
"For me personally I do struggle with this," admitted Brandon 'Swip3rR' Holland, the team's Top Laner. "Me and Derek (Raydere) mainly struggle here. Our emotions can get the best of us and we start to do stuff we wouldn't do in practice. For example Derek gets extremely greedy and he wants to just carry the game. And on the other hand I get scared and I don't want to engage. The fear of failure kicks in, because I'm in one of the more aggressively engaged roles, and if I do a bad engage we can lose the game off it."
There's one more secret up The Chiefs' sleeve ahead of their showdown, however. Swiffer will return to the roster just in time to take on Legacy after a three month long absence from the team. Sub Daniel 'Cheese' Brown did his best, but the synergy the team has with their captain at the helm is, at the very least, boosting confidence.
"Now that Simon (Swiffer) is back I think we've got a lot of confidence back, and we're back to a place where we were before, and the environment's really good and everyone is really keen to practice and stuff," said EGym.
The team at the Red Bull offices
© [unknown]
"Now that I'm back it feels exactly the same, like exactly how it did 5 months ago or however long it was," explained Swiffer. "So I feel very confident, and I think everyone feels confident that we're going to take out this split in a convincing fashion. And it's instances like these boot camps that will help bridge that game a lot quicker than if we were all just doing this stuff from home."
"I think this boot camp is a literally perfect scenario for our team," said Swip3rR. "Because I think we've been in a slump the last two weeks, but now Simon's back and we've got our new old team dynamic set up again, and now we're here, coming to Red Bull together as well."
"Just being able to come in to Red Bull to boot camp, even if it's just for a short period of time, it's super beneficial," Frank 'Sangy' Li, the team's founder and owner explained. "And it might even be more beneficial in the long run. Because I mean, you don't see conventional athletes all living in a house together right? For them, you separate your work and your personal life. So when we're here we're focused on League. And when we leave we're not any more, we're getting our mind away from things. I think that accentuates the time we get to spend practicing together here."
So doing what they do best, focusing on their team doing what they do well, they're obviously confident about their prospects next week.. It took some coaxing, but eventually they told us what they thought of Legacy's year so far.
"Obviously they've improved a bunch, they look really good in OPL," disclosed EGym. "And in OPL the games they win look better than our wins. The games they win, they win in a more dominant fashion, but seeing things behind the scenes I think it's a lot closer than it looks to fans."
"I think Legacy have five very good individual players, but from an analytical perspective I don't think they have the most structured play," Spookz told us. "It's very skirmish focused and chaotic and reactive. When we play at our very best I think we're much more structured, better."
We'll have to wait and see next Tuesday whether the Chiefs very best shows up or not.
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