AHQ: Out of the Shadows

With Southeast Asia in comparative obscurity, teams beyond the Taipei Assassins are often overlooked. But in AHQ's case, obscurity is the last thing they want or deserve – only two teams have ever taken a GPL championship title in its three years, and AHQ wrested theirs directly out of the claws of the former world championship team. Amid toil and hardship, they are now the foremost contender for the second 2014 World Championship seed in Southeast Asia.

OPENING THE DOOR

Though long considered one of Taiwan's strongest teams, AHQ's actual successes have been largely marginalized by their rivalry with the Taipei Assassins. The first snubs came as TPA denied their debut on the world stage in back-to-back qualifiers for both the Season 2 World Championship and IPL5. It extended into the first half of Season 3 as well, when the world champion team held firm for a while longer in the GPL standings. Roster management problems also factored into their slow start. Ace mid laner Westdoor was not part of the original roster, and wouldn’t be until well into the second half of Season 3. But with him onboard, the team was quickly transformed, as his aggressive assassins-oriented play paved the way to victory. AHQ was turned from a generically high-skilled Taiwanese team into a uniquely aggressive force within the GPL, and the nightmare of many opposing mid laners. There's little dispute that Fizz is by far the most ban-worthy champion in Westdoor's roster – and even with Fizz handled, his Kassadin and Zed is going to tear holes in the opposing defense. Between Westdoor’s preferred play style and ability to almost single-handedly turn losing games into wins, AHQ quickly adopted and maintained a reputation for bloodthirsty fight-oriented play – the other extreme, in fact, of the Taipei Assassins' meticulous objectives-oriented play. AHQ's development of a definite identity coincided with former world championship team Taipei Assassins’ slow dissolution. By the end of the Season 3 summer split, AHQ had outright usurped the GPL throne. Despite their differences in play, the results were the same: total dominance of the regular season, and swift completion of the playoff series. The most brutal team the GPL's ever seen had taken the crown with frighteningly effective force.

A SHORT AND BRUTAL REIGN

AHQ was now fighting a two-front war, as the Taipei Snipers hunted for them in the domestic Nova League, and the second generation of the Taipei Assassins held on in the GPL. Though AHQ's experience kept them on top of the locals in the LNL, it was by increasingly thin margins. The Snipers, in particular, were a brutal matchup – even as their older siblings on TPA were floundering at the end of the year, the Snipers were now considered the biggest threat to AHQ’s ascension onto the world stage. Except that it didn't quite work out that way. The Grand Finals of the Taiwan Regionals wasn't between the powerhouse Snipers and reigning GPL champions AHQ. In fact, despite coming out of the group stages without a single loss, they were immediately knocked into the loser’s bracket by the Snipers. When the Gamania Bears, an overlooked mid-ranked team, knocked them out of the tournament entirely, it seemed a colossal blunder by AHQ. There was only bitter comfort to be found for AHQ when the Snipers, in turn, were mauled off the stage by the Bears. The changes to the game since also kept AHQ on their toes. They'd doubled down on offensive fighting tactics with the advent of 2014, and continued to be among the strongest teams in the GPL, still winning in brutal fashion against the other countries. But their games developed a disheartening trend: otherwise action-packed, high kill-count games perversely took up to an hour to actually conclude. Dominance also slipped through their grasp as the Taipei Assassins resurrected their old rivalry. AHQ failed to reclaim the GPL championship title in any of the three splits of 2014 – they were stopped dead in their tracks by the Taipei Snipers during the winter semifinals, and ran aground against the new Taipei Assassins in the finals of both spring and summer, with the second time being the most humiliating in the form of a 0-3 defeat. Though they'd recently hired former TPA and TPS Captain MiSTakE as a team consultant, his assistance came too late and paled in the face of TPA's acquisition of OGN coach Sim Sung-soo. But this isn't the end of the road for AHQ.

GLORY OR BUST

They've been denied the road to Worlds for two years running – perhaps a third shot will finally pay off. Though the Taipei Assassins are once again the undisputed best team of their region, it's hard to argue that AHQ's undeserving of recognition as second best. Unlike with the Taipei Snipers, they've managed to remain stable in the last two years with minimal roster attrition and consistent GPL qualification and placement. Vietnamese sibling teams Saigon Jokers and Saigon Fantastic Five are also likely adversaries on the road to Worlds, but neither have ever taken more than a single game off of AHQ over the course of a split either. In fact, though they've markedly improved their matchups against the rest of the GPL, it seems as if the gap between them and the dual kings of AHQ and TPA has only broadened over the intervening splits. But most importantly, as the team with the second-most circuit points in the GPL, AHQ has the No. 1 seed in the playoffs, reducing their burden to a single best-of-five set against teams they know they can beat. It may finally be time, long overdue, for Westdoor to make his bid against the world.

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