Star Horn Royal Club's Gamble: Tracking the Developments of Underdogs

Star Horn Royal Club is a team of underdogs. To a degree, every member of the team was a gamble for the organization with the possible exception of Jian "Uzi" Zihao. Jiang "Cola" Na was a top laner for the 15th place (out of 16) LoL Secondary Pro League team, KX.Cash, with a limited champion pool. Though whispers followed Lei "corn" Wen in solo queue, he came from a previous incarnation of Team King, which failed to qualify for LSPL at all in Spring.

Yoon "Zero" Kyungsup was a jack of all trades, master of none for the KT organization, having played mid lane, support, and jungle, but failing to display prowess outside the occasional Nami tidal wave. Choi "inSec" Inseok, though indisputably high on mechanical talent, hadn't shown hints of his previous form since returning to the jungle. Arguably even Uzi still had something to prove, as his team had only barely avoided relegation with sixth place in LPL the previous split.

On top of that, Star Horn Royal Club was very much at the forefront of the Korean experiment. There was as yet nothing to indicate that placing five members speaking two different languages on one team would yield results in a major league like LPL. At the time, only Brazilian squads like Team Keyd were willing to make such a gamble. Most would argue that, when team communication is an important part of League of Legends, creating a language barrier shouldn’t yield results in one split.

As earlier in the year, I commented on Star Horn Royal Club’s first unimpressive performance against Young Glory in the Demacia Cup, it’s worth revisiting what has changed. Each member of SHRC has improved individually, and team cohesion has taken an upturn.

Zero

It’s easiest to discuss Zero first, as he had the strongest start in LPL Summer of any member of his team. InSec and Uzi had a tendency to engage ahead of the rest of the squad, while Cola and corn played very conservatively. SHRC relied on Zero to reset scattered fights with Nami.

Zero’s penchant for Nami came instilled from when he played as a support substitute for the KT Bullets. In their set against NaJin Black Sword—the only set in which Zero played support for the Bullets—KTB lost Zero’s Leona game, but won the Nami game, largely on the back of some of his play-making Tidal Waves. On the whole, his vision control was underwhelming, but his ability to land his Nami skillshots allowed him to transition well into the Chinese meta.

With an influx of Korean players and coaches, Nami support became a new priority. Few supports in China understood the disengage mechanic on a proficient level, and Zero rode this wave of success. Most of his first games with Star Horn Royal Club were Nami or Thresh games in which he relied on the disengage potential of The Box or Tidal Wave to rescue his overzealous jungler and AD carry. In a meta where warding was only beginning to improve and Chinese support players by and large struggled with Nami’s new popularity, Zero had a very simple advantage.

That is to say, Zero looked good then, but he wasn’t. He was the only support player in LPL for some time with the highest kill participation on his team and the only support player in the top ten of the MVP rankings. In the context of being in contention for the title of second best support at Worlds, however, Zero had a long way to go.

By both of onGamers’ warding metrics from Group Stage, Star Horn Royal Club is far from top of their class, but that isn’t where Zero has developed. As his initial role on the team was simply to guard inSec and Uzi, he’s focused more and more onto Uzi with time. The trends of the meta have been a massive boon to Zero, as the emphasis on 2v2s after tower and dragon changes and the wave of Janna’s popularity have allowed Zero to focus his attention on a single target. Zero both augments Uzi’s damage and focuses almost entirely on peeling for him to let him do his job.

With less than perfect vision control and a weaker ADC meta, it’s hard to decide whether or not Zero would be effective. For this tournament, and this meta, he’s developed in a way such that the argument that he’s the best player on his team is entirely valid.

Cola

A few people have made the assessment that Cola was the weakest player in the semifinals, and now that the semifinals have passed, he’s still standing. Even despite his flaws, it’s difficult to debate that Cola has put up his strongest ever performances at Worlds. His Irelia baiting against SK Gaming to draw the team away from Baron and his flash into the Baron bit to kill Zhu “NaMei” Jiawen once he was caught stand out as some of his strongest single plays.

Even so, his weaknesses have shown through. With pressure from Ming “Clearlove” Kai, Tong “Koro1” Yang easily unraveled Cola, leading to two victories for EDG. Though Cola better covered his flank with wards in the final game, such a strategy may still be easy to exploit in the future.

Cola’s big story joining SHRC after playing on Kx.Cash, the 15th place LSPL team, however, was the retooling of his champion pool. Going into LPL Summer, Cola was known primarily for his extremely high solo queue win rates on Shyvana and Jax: both champions that fell out of favor in the meta throughout the summer.

Along the way, Cola also picked up Gragas, only to see it subsequently nerfed. Fans of the North American LCS might remember when LMQ’s Xiao “ackerman” Wang sat in the brush in a 2v1 against Team Dignitas as Gragas, only to upset Michael “imaqtpie” Santana with a sudden assault for first blood. LMQ’s coach later attributed the play to Cola, who used the same technique previously against LGD Gaming.

One of Cola’s greatest developments has been in split-pushing. Initially, as a Jax player, he would do his best to split even and follow inSec in his top side invasions, which, given SHRC’s bottom side emphasis, were few and far between. As time progressed, Cola had more success on Jax and Irelia, using a split-push formula that worked well against Chinese teams more accustomed to constant 5v5 brawls. Cola’s Jax could be so devastating, that even out of meta, OMG’s Gao “Gogoing” Diping would first pick the champion away from SHRC—though with mixed results.

Cola is far from the most improved or the strongest member of Star Horn Royal Club, but his advances cannot be disregarded, and SHRC could not have made it so far at Worlds if he hadn’t stepped up in a major way.

corn

Corn is the most improved member of Star Horn Royal Club this Summer. The same debate that can be applied to his improvements, however, is the same debate that can be applied to Uzi and inSec. How many free passes have they gotten in champion select by being able to play the same one or two champions consistently?

With a 19-6 Orianna record since the start of LPL Summer, it’s easy to call corn a one trick pony, but Fizz and Yasuo were frequently banned against him. Two of his only three losses on Fizz were during the World Championship, and in one of his earliest Fizz games against OMG, inSec made the decision to camp corn’s lane over Uzi’s, punishing Yu “Cool” Jiajun severely and giving corn the tools to carry the game almost entirely on his own.

Branching away from Uzi as the sole carry of the team put corn especially in the spotlight, and a sudden move to grant corn more kills allowed SHRC to take 2-0’s off both Edward Gaming and OMG in two weeks. A consistently fourth place LPL team made a bid for first place that they could well have landed if they had won one more game against Invictus Gaming, and Edward Gaming had split even with World Elite. As it was, they placed third, tying for second in points with OMG, but dropping down because OMG had more 2-0 victories.

Before Week Eight of LPL Summer, however, corn did not show much promise on any champion with the exception of the occasional strong Yasuo game. His playstyle was conservative, which reflected in his low death count, but he failed to impact the game. Seeing as he had a similar initial performance in Worlds Group Stage, it isn’t outlandish to posit that corn may experience a sense of stage fright.

Corn is a young player, having just barely turned 17 in time for Worlds. He has played on two amateur teams in the past with very limited salary or support structure, but found enough success on champions like Yasuo and Orianna for Star Horn Royal Club to take notice. As his champion pool slowly expands, he could become a very powerful player, but for now he likely doesn’t have the juice to contend with Samsung White’s Heo “PawN” Wonseok in the Finals.

inSec

For those who remember the semifinals set between OMG and SHRC, the constant Lee Sin and Rengar bans probably make a lot of sense after looking at inSec’s numbers. Throughout the season, if inSec could not get his hands on Lee Sin, Rengar, or Kha’Zix, he would fall back on Jarvan IV or Elise, which OMG was often able to punish well. Teams chose to attempt to ban out inSec or corn, as both were fairly easy targets and could be limited by removing one or two champions from the board.

As already stated, inSec had a tendency to try to make similarly aggressive plays regardless of whether SHRC had a lead or not. He would engage ahead of his team with or without backup and with or without a gold lead. Sometimes his health bar would disappear from the map instantly, and other times he would engage a fight that snowballed SHRC ahead. His and Uzi's decisiveness functioned as SHRC’s biggest asset, but his carelessness sometimes cost them games.

SHRC proved that they can anticipate strategies and identify these perceived flaws. Over time, the team became more in synch, and when Uzi or inSec led the charge in a team fight, corn and Cola would follow up. The team’s play became less about Zero reversing poor calls and augmenting damage in proper engagements and more about coordination in all plays—whether or not they were good ones.

More importantly, when OMG repeated their previously successful strategy of banning out inSec in the Worlds Semifinals, inSec came prepared with two niche champion picks. Since OMG were less accustomed to playing against Fiddlesticks and Pantheon this summer, they had poorer reactions to the picks, and SHRC were able to identify and exploit a perceived weakness. Almost every aspect about SHRC’s play has become a magnified high risk, high reward approach that lacks sophisitication, but when the entire team is on the same page, they’ve been able to throw Chinese heavyweights Edward Gaming and OMG off their game on the big stage.

Uzi

There’s an argument to be made for placing Uzi in the bottom four AD carries in LPL during different parts of the year. When he initially made the transition back to AD carry in Spring, his arrogant Vayne pick against Energy Pacemaker had him out of laning phase with a score of 0-4. Though certainly there is a lot to be said for the fact that his laning partner at that time, Zhang “Bao” Jiazhi, was nowhere near the level of Zero, it’s worth noting that perhaps Uzi’s perceived bold attitude has made him look more brash and gotten him into poor situations that other Chinese ADCs avoid.

When we look at the proportion of deaths AD carries had relative to the rest of their teams’ deaths throughout LPL Summer, Uzi had 29.27% of SHRC’s fatalities. The only AD carry in LPL with a larger proportion of his team’s fatalities was Invictus Gaming’s Kid at 30.70%. This was problematic when he also took in a large proportion of the team’s kill gold.

Uzi’s deaths declined after the Week Eight transition. He and Zero could get easier advantages in 2v2s, preventing him from making risky 1v2 dives. In addition, team cohesion and followup came more readily. Uzi can carry off plays where he dives into several people since his team will always rush after him and offer support.

The biggest thing to note, however, was how frequently Uzi got his hands on Lucian. Since he could perform fairly well on other champions, it may have been perceived as not worth denying, but Uzi’s proficiency on Lucian is still head and shoulders over his proficiency on other champions because of the sheer volume of games.

It cannot be understated, however, that Uzi improved astronomically this summer. The Uzi we’ve seen at Worlds is nowhere near the Uzi who threw games throughout LPL Summer. Arguably, Uzi’s biggest development this year has been in becoming less of the sole focal point of Star Horn. Though the team seems to understand that Uzi is their greatest carry asset, Cola and corn have had standout performances that have won games for SHRC.

In general, SHRC only truly began to succeed when their strategies opened up. As most of the roster has a very limited champion pool or one or two champions they favor heavily above the rest, they've been able to adapt their playstyle depending upon who the opponent might target in ban phase.

SHRC is a roster full of players who were not necessarily the best in their roles in China—with the obvious exception of Zero and the arguable exception of Uzi—but the fact that many of the new acquisitions were raw talent allowed the team to develop together stylistically. SHRC is a rare case of simply brute forcing a roster until it works.

SHRC beat out both the other Chinese teams at Worlds, which they hadn't accomplished in either Summer Playoffs or Regionals. Uzi and Chinese coach, Chris, are reprising their appearances in Worlds Finals. The massive Star Horn Royal Club gamble paid off.

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