CBLoL Finals: INTZ vs. Keyd Stars
Riot·4/18/2015, 3:58:49 AM·0 votes·14,758 views
This weekend, thousands of people will descend upon the beautiful island of Florianópolis in Santa Catarina, Brazil, to watch the two best League of Legends teams in the region battle for the title of best in Brazil. Accompanying this honor is a ticket to the 2015 International Wildcard Invitational in Istanbul, Turkey, and the chance to appear at the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational to test their mettle against the best in the world.
The two teams in question are the hybrid roster powerhouse of Keyd Stars and regular season darlings INTZ e-Sports.
Keyd Stars in 2014 ruled their region due to Winged’s spectacular jungle play, the likes of which Brazil had not seen. Jumping out to a 6-0 record, the 2014 team was clearly the best, and it was the region that grew overall. Keyd’s losses came towards the latter half of the 2014 season as the rest of Brazil began to catch up. This year’s 2015 Keyd Stars are a completely different story, and a far more dangerous team for their opponents.
“They’re one of the first teams where all five players, no matter what, all just get along with each other,” Keyd Stars coach Will “iVillain” Hoag says of this year’s team. “Even when they hate each other, they actually secretly love each other and it’s not a big deal at all.”
An agreeable and upbeat group, Keyd Stars have used their time wisely over the course of the season to grow as a unit. Their two losses came early in the season against paiN Gaming in Week 1 and INTZ in Week 3. Since then, they have thoroughly shut down their opponents and have looked more coordinated with each game.
Instead of allowing the region to grow and match their pace, they arrive at this Finals match having developed exponentially as a team. IVillain attributes this to increased communication throughout the season.
“All of us, all of the Brazilian members of the team and me all understand the same amount of Korean. So we all come in on the same page. But also, both the Koreans and myself understand the same amount of Portuguese. So it’s very dynamic in the sense that we’re all trying to get accustomed to each other’s natural cultures and preferences and obviously communicate. So at the end of the day when we all try English, it’s super forgiving.”
Keyd’s communication system relies on simplified English sentences, along with allowing DayDream and Emperor to speak to each other in Korean when time is of the essence.
“They can’t say ‘I want to take this buff.’ They just say the word ‘Eat’ and everybody knows what it means. So if they say ‘Eat blue’ everyone knows what ‘Eat blue’ means. So from the Korean side it’s like that, but I also encourage Emperor and DayDream to speak to each other in Korean if that’s what they need to get ideas across more quickly. It’s a lot of fun, I mean, it is a challenge but it’s rewarding in its own ways.”
As Keyd has learned to communicate and coordinate as a team, they’ve looked more formidable. Their only loss in the second half of the season came to INTZ in the aforementioned tiebreaker. While INTZ came away with the victory then, iVillain believes that Keyd’s opponents won’t be as lucky in the Finals.
“Across the board, I just think we have stronger lanes. Across the lanes, I think we could easily just win all of our lanes and win the game. The reason they won during the season and during the tiebreaker was the meta at that time. I think we’ll be a lot more prepared. We won’t get shaken up as hard. We’ve done a lot of mental preparation and a lot of preparation in general, strategically for INTZ.”
“They're not a completely loony team like the Unicorns of Love over in Europe but they surprise me regularly with unconventional plays," said INTZ head coach Alexander “Abaxial” Haibel.
“The team is pretty good at guessing where they should be, but they don't always know why, so they're not taking the appropriate steps ahead of time," said Abaxial. "I am making them take a more conscious approach to the game so that they get the right wards and anticipate their opponent's reaction. Whenever they do manage to do that, they're pretty good about the nitty-gritty details of it, so usually I don't have to spend too much time on things like small coordination mistakes."
Keyd Stars Then and Now
With their new Vivo Fibra sponsorship and CJ Entus Blaze imports Kang “DayDream” Kyung-min and Kim “Emperor” Jin-hyun, Keyd Stars were expected to dominate the region, much like they had in 2014 with Korean imports Park “Winged” Tae-jin and An “SuNo” Sun-ho. Keyd Stars tore through the 2014 CBLoL season, cruising to a 17-3 regular season record. Similarly, their 2015 counterparts dropped only two games in regular season play, not including a Best of 1 tiebreaker for first place with INTZ.
Keyd Stars in 2014 ruled their region due to Winged’s spectacular jungle play, the likes of which Brazil had not seen. Jumping out to a 6-0 record, the 2014 team was clearly the best, and it was the region that grew overall. Keyd’s losses came towards the latter half of the 2014 season as the rest of Brazil began to catch up. This year’s 2015 Keyd Stars are a completely different story, and a far more dangerous team for their opponents.
“They’re one of the first teams where all five players, no matter what, all just get along with each other,” Keyd Stars coach Will “iVillain” Hoag says of this year’s team. “Even when they hate each other, they actually secretly love each other and it’s not a big deal at all.”
An agreeable and upbeat group, Keyd Stars have used their time wisely over the course of the season to grow as a unit. Their two losses came early in the season against paiN Gaming in Week 1 and INTZ in Week 3. Since then, they have thoroughly shut down their opponents and have looked more coordinated with each game.
Instead of allowing the region to grow and match their pace, they arrive at this Finals match having developed exponentially as a team. IVillain attributes this to increased communication throughout the season.
“All of us, all of the Brazilian members of the team and me all understand the same amount of Korean. So we all come in on the same page. But also, both the Koreans and myself understand the same amount of Portuguese. So it’s very dynamic in the sense that we’re all trying to get accustomed to each other’s natural cultures and preferences and obviously communicate. So at the end of the day when we all try English, it’s super forgiving.”
Keyd’s communication system relies on simplified English sentences, along with allowing DayDream and Emperor to speak to each other in Korean when time is of the essence.
“They can’t say ‘I want to take this buff.’ They just say the word ‘Eat’ and everybody knows what it means. So if they say ‘Eat blue’ everyone knows what ‘Eat blue’ means. So from the Korean side it’s like that, but I also encourage Emperor and DayDream to speak to each other in Korean if that’s what they need to get ideas across more quickly. It’s a lot of fun, I mean, it is a challenge but it’s rewarding in its own ways.”
As Keyd has learned to communicate and coordinate as a team, they’ve looked more formidable. Their only loss in the second half of the season came to INTZ in the aforementioned tiebreaker. While INTZ came away with the victory then, iVillain believes that Keyd’s opponents won’t be as lucky in the Finals.
“Across the board, I just think we have stronger lanes. Across the lanes, I think we could easily just win all of our lanes and win the game. The reason they won during the season and during the tiebreaker was the meta at that time. I think we’ll be a lot more prepared. We won’t get shaken up as hard. We’ve done a lot of mental preparation and a lot of preparation in general, strategically for INTZ.”
The Intrepid Group of Five
While Keyd made a splash with their offseason acquisitions of DayDream and Emperor, INTZ had a comparatively smaller announcement, which turned out to be one of the best signings of the 2015 CBLoL season. Their jungler, Thiago “Djokovic” Maia, stepped down from the position and INTZ disclosed that Gabriel “Revolta” Henud would join the team as their starting jungler. As players, Djoko and Revolta could hardly be more different. Under Revolta’s reign, INTZ transformed from a team that relied on an extended laning phase to funnel gold to their primary carries to a hyper-aggressive early game team, led by Revolta’s rapid pace. Gabriel “Tockers” Claumann was now called upon to carry games from the mid lane, instead of playing more support-style mids, while support Luan “Jockster” Cardoso joined Revolta in roaming around the map, rather than sticking by his laning partner AD Carry Micael “micaO” Rodrigues. Though difficult at first, INTZ relied on the intuitive nature of their players, as well as their creativity, to adapt.“They're not a completely loony team like the Unicorns of Love over in Europe but they surprise me regularly with unconventional plays," said INTZ head coach Alexander “Abaxial” Haibel.
“The team is pretty good at guessing where they should be, but they don't always know why, so they're not taking the appropriate steps ahead of time," said Abaxial. "I am making them take a more conscious approach to the game so that they get the right wards and anticipate their opponent's reaction. Whenever they do manage to do that, they're pretty good about the nitty-gritty details of it, so usually I don't have to spend too much time on things like small coordination mistakes."
