Week 2 ended Monday morning for the TCL, and boy have these last two weeks been surprising. While many pre-season teams have lived up to their hype, or lack of it, a few surprises were in store, with one thought to-be strong roster falling flat on their faces. On the other hand, one team we didn’t expect to even take a win has managed to find the middle of the pack. With that said, lets get underway with out Week 2 Power Rankings!
As a note these rankings will cover Weeks 1 and 2, as I had prior obligations to take care of for Week 1, but expect weekly power-rankings going forward.
Rankings
1. BAUSuperMasive (+4)
GBM seems to have finally returned to his LCK form, leading the BAU-boys to a phenominal 6-0 start to the season. The whole line-up is firing on all cylinders right now, and has the Winter title in their eyes. This weekends match-up against league number two Royal Bandits will be their real test as to the strength of this roster. As the first match this Saturday, its looking to be a great start to this weekend!
2. Royal Bandits (-)
Outside of an off start, losing to bottom-side HWA Gaming, Royal Bandits have been off to the races. Malrang and Cepted have looked to already have developed strong synergy with their Turkish counterparts, putting on quiet a show these past two weeks. HolyPhoenix and Dumbledoge have looked great, as expected, and Broken Blade has even put up some strong numbers. The early loss to HWA is the only thing keeping them from first right now, and they’ll be fighting for that spot when they take on BAUSuperMassive this weekend.
3. 1907 Fenerbahçe (-2)
Fenerbahçe had a very rough start to the season, going 1-2 on the first week, and starting with two straight losses. The second week was much kinder to The Yellow Canaries (a Turkish nickname for the org), with a solid three game sweep of the opposition. The team seems to have struggled out of the gate with their communication, but its quickly coming together, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see them 3-0 the weekend, even with RB and BAU closing it out. Stumbles happen with new rosters, but not many get back on their footing so quickly
4. Dark Passage (-)
Dark Passage is setting itself up as the gatekeeper to the upper-echelon of the league. The teams beating them are looking for the title, and the ones losing are trying to avoid relegation. This is not to say though that the team is bad, far from it: they’re good, just not currently title material. Lucete as garnered some nice synergy with KaKAO, and the duo has made quick work of the lower half teams. While they likely won’t be pushing for the title this Winter, the team should be utilizing this time to build synergy and improve, and could make a deep run come the end of Summer.
5. Galakticos (+3)
I owe these boys an apology. I thought they’d be dead last and winless this split. But they surprised me and everyone else with a quick 2-0 start to the split with wins over YoungCrew and AURORA. J1mmy, the legend, and Rare both stepped up and brought strong performances to the team. Unfortunately, the team seems to have fallen off a cliff since then, going 0-4 in their next four games, and while a win against HWA seems likely, this team still looks like it has a long way to go before it’ll be a playoff contender. The team should spend the next few weeks building their synergy up and pushing to at least avoid the promotion tournament, and could make a decent run come Summer if they keep improving.
6. Team AURORA (-)
The good news for AURORA: the team isn’t the worst in the TCL. The bad news: there’s not much else going for them. The team has looked average at best, and everyone seems to just fade away in games they lose. Wisdom in particular seems to disappear on anything not named Jarvan so far, and Naru seems to struggle to find consistency (godly one game, feeding the next). The team needs to rely on Rain, who if given the tools to protect him, could potentially carry these team further up the standings, and has performed admirably so far.
7. YouthCrew (-4)
The biggest drop and disappointment so far, YouthCrew just can’t seem to get it together. With a single win over HWA as their lone victory, the team seems to struggle to find an identity. While the top half of the map has looked fine, the bot duo of Madness and Zzus have just looked dreadful. Combined, they have a total scoreline of 10/25/31 in six games, which gets even worse when you pull out their win against HWA, dropping them to an abysmal 6/24/21. Either the bot side comes together/the rest of the team picks up the slack, or YouthCrew could be looking down the barrel of the promotion tournament and relegation.
8. HWA Gaming (-1)
HWA took a surprising win in their first game of the split against Royal Bandits with a nearly perfect game. Unfortunately that’s about the only positive thing they’ve had going for them. They’ve been unable to get even close to the same performance since then, and seem to really struggle in shotcalling. Armut in particular has looked lost or forgetful of his abilities, as shown in their Sunday match against FB where he had the chance at a well placed four man Gnar ult that would win them the fight, but refuses to use the ability. In fact, I only saw him use it once all game, and that was to escape at the end. Their import, Ninja, is just not looking good right now either, and unlike YouthCrew they lack starpower to fall back upon. If the team can return to the form they had that first game, they might win the whole split, but with the way they’ve played since, I’m becoming increasingly doubtful.
The TCL 2018 Winter Split continues this Saturday, February 3rd. Be sure to stay tuned here for all the exciting coverage, and check out The Game Haus on Twitter and Facebook for more esports news. Don’t forget to also follow myself on Twitter for more news on the TCL.
~Isaac “Raptearer’ Chandler