Meet The Teams: Gold Major

By: Cassidy

After four painful qualifiers, the top 10 teams have been decided and are ready to play this Wednesday. Veteran teams such as Chubby Babies, FriendZoned, and Literal Monkeys are back with new rosters to fill in the gaps of ranked out players. This leaves seven new teams that fought their way through qualifiers at a chance to be BOL Majors Champions. Today we’re going to take a look at those teams to catch you up.

---

Imperial Esports

This team took the first two qualifiers by storm and consists of some household gold league names such as Azurexfire and Awoo, as well as some new players. Looking at the roster, they’ll be shaking up their bot lane by moving their current ADC to sub and moving Awoo to ADC. It will be exciting to see if they’ll be able to continue stomping the league after their shakeup or if their team will finally be exposable due to a possible lack of synergy in the bot lane.

FriendZoned

Moment of silence for the loss of SingularBread as he shot up to plat and is no longer able to play in Gold anymore. All is not lost though as 3 of the original team members still remain. FriendZoned didn’t get much playtime in the qualifiers as they were one of two teams to earn their spot through the Loyalty Application. It will be interesting to see how they stack up, and if they’ll be coming back stronger than in the first qualifier where they lost to the dominant Imperial Esports.

Chubby Babies

Chubby Babies is another team that made it in through the Loyalty Application. There’s no doubt that this team wouldn’t have qualified without it. However, I personally believe they’re probably the strongest team in the league as of now. This team consists of 3 returning members from the last season’s roster and picked up a man who was brought back from retirement, CANMaple. This squad won't need a miracle run to make it to the playoffs this time.

Scarlet Foxes

Good ol’ JJ and company are back. They participated in the first three qualifiers, and stomped the competition in the 3rd one which earned them spot in Gold Major. As of late, there have been a couple role changes within the team. At this point, I hope that they’ve had enough time to gel in their respective roles because they have the hardest first week of games out of any team.

Crosspoint Pegasus

This team has an incredibly high ceiling, but at the same time, they lose games that they really shouldn’t lose. Crosspoint was guaranteed a spot based off of points from the first couple qualifiers and is not a team that should be slept on. They have really talented players and create some real screenshot worthy trashtalk that might come back to bite them in the butt. Excited to see how they stack up against the top teams in Majors.

Brevity Esports/WulfPack Esports

WulfPack Esports placed well in the first and third qualifier which earned them enough points to mathematically guarantee their spot in Major. This team has proven to be good enough to not drop games in the earlier rounds of the qualifiers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like they are able to pull it together to win when it matters most. Their team is incredibly flexible with picks and aren’t afraid to drop mages bot to really make it hard to draft against them. WulfPack is definitely a promising team but there’s not really that much to go off of. We’ll have to wait and see how they perform in their games this week.

Natural Selection Gaming Gold

If you paid any attention to last season’s Open League, then you most likely remember NSG. While I’m not too familiar with their roster, I do know that TheRunicBlade and Karma Divine are definitely going to be contenders for best in role this season. They are another team that we’ll have to wait and see to judge whether the rest of the team can hold their own against the other teams.

The Epidemic

The Epidemic had a pretty rough time in the first three qualifiers after not being able to come out with a single win in the 2nd and 3rd qualifier. However, they stabilized their roster and were able to claw their way to winning in the 4th and final qualifier for the season. This team has the potential to grow into something promising if they’re able to fix some glaring and easily exploitable mistakes. They are definitely a team that will be able to steal wins off of any team in Gold Major if they’re not careful.

Shadowz

Able to squeak in with just enough points from the 4th qualifier is Shadowz. This team from my experience is the textbook definition of coinflip. Their drafts are extremely one dimensional and they haven’t had any standout games so far, however I think their roster still has a lot of promise and I hope that they were able to improve and lock down a consistent roster for the entirety of the season.

Literal Monkeys

The Epidemic are still waiting for their payment for keeping Literal Monkeys in Major. Jokes aside, this team struggled with half of their roster breaking off and creating a new team (which didn’t even make it to majors, ouch). Their roster is almost completely new outside of Zupho. Their new players are a definite upgrade over the players they replaced. With Zupho, who is a veteran shotcaller, and a solid team surrounding him, Literal Monkeys should only be getting better as advance through the season.