Path to Pro: Unicorns of Love
Riot·3/18/2015, 6:17:59 PM·0 votes·21,933 views
You might think that the well-being of the amateur League of Legends scene would be the last thing on Coach Fabian “Sheepy” Mallant’s mind. You would be mistaken.
His team, the Unicorns of Love, has gone from an underdog band of five amateurs playing League of Legends in dorm rooms and bedrooms scattered across Europe to a fan-favorite professional League Championship Series team. They’ve moved from humble beginnings to living in a dedicated gaming house, having high-profile sponsors, and becoming a globally recognized brand in a matter of months. Despite the team’s fairy tale rise to the professional League of Legends scene, Mallant maintains a keen concern in the health of the amateur scene his team only recently left behind.
“Do you know how rare it is for a team of five friends with no ex-LCS pros, no deep-pocketed organization, and no huge sponsors making it from the amateur scene to the LCS?” he asks. “There might be better sources and more experienced teams [than us], but the reason we want to talk about [the path to pro] is that we feel like we have an obligation to the community that we’ve so recently emerged from.”
To put the Unicorns of Love’s entry into the LCS into perspective, it’s worth looking at recent results from the EU LCS Promotion Tournament, the primary gatekeeper to the LCS. At the end of each LCS Split (Spring and Summer), the bottom three LCS teams face off against the top three amateur Challenger Series teams in a Best of 5 series, with the winner advancing to the LCS and the loser dropping into Challenger.
Dating back to the middle of last year, in the last six series between top Challenger and bottom LCS teams in the EU Promotion Tournament the amateurs have gone 1-5, with Unicorns of Love being the sole victor. Of the five other Challenger teams who even made it to the Promotion Tournament, all but one had the backing of a major esports organization such as Ninjas in Pyjamas or SK Gaming.
It’s hardly surprising that amateur teams enjoying the support of powerhouse esports organizations with infrastructure and financial muscle are particularly likely to rise to the top of the Challenger scene. Indeed, successful amateur teams are the ones most likely to attract interest from major esports organizations in the first place.
What is surprising is that a team of five friends playing for fun on top of coursework and other real-world commitments succeeded where so many brand-name rivals fell short.
“First you play for fun, pure joy of the game. Then you master the basics and start wondering ‘what if I…?’ and begin doing creative things in-game. Then at some point you start to realize ‘Wow… maybe I’m actually good at this… maybe I could make a living off of this.’ Literally, League of Legends is one of the only games where you can queue up, you get good enough, and you can play together with the pros.”
What first drove Mallant towards pro play was when he began to dabble in team play and the Ranked 5 vs. 5 ladder, which he likens to a “different game” from the famously chaotic solo queue ladder. “Once you get hooked on.... team play, it is very hard to get away,” he admits. The search for his eventual UoL teammates started with Mallant and some friends wanting to play with a full pre-made group of five players and asking one another "do you have a friend you want to invite?" From there, he carried his search for talented, good-natured players into solo queue.
“I remember I was playing with [eventual UoL top laner] Vizicsacsi in solo queue and he was an absolute monster, just so freaking good -- you can quote me on this, yes? -- and he was the first team member I found. Very talented, but also a really nice guy. Then some time later I bumped into [eventual UoL support] Hylissang -- Hylissang the God,” he corrects himself. “He was playing Orianna and did amazingly well, but we already had a mid laner so I asked him if he would play support for us. Honestly, I think he was too shy to push the issue on mid lane and refuse us, so he agreed to play support for us... and was an absolute monster at that role too. What a beast.”
“I think the most important thing in creating a team is understanding the people you're playing with,” Mallant explains. “I didn't play with these guys because I thought they were the best players I could find. I picked them because together I thought we were the best team we could possibly be. At the end of the day you don't just want to play with people who are good, but also with people who can improve.
"If you play with people who are just good and play against a team that can improve, even if less talented than you on paper, at some point you will get surpassed by them. It may not be right away, but that day will come. If you have a healthy mentality and people you like, then you can improve.
"I was looking for people like this.”
This may seem counter-intuitive to those who are familiar with the League of Legends pro scene, since reaching the Challenger tier (not to be confused with the Challenger Series) is at first glance the most obvious way to make it into the pro scene. Each Split, top Ranked 5 vs. 5 teams play in the Challenger Series Qualifiers for a chance to play in the Challenger Series, where they have a chance to compete for a spot in the next LCS Split.
But it's not that simple, Mallant explains. And the limits of playing on ladder become steadily apparent once you reach its highest levels.
Because games on the Ranked 5 vs. 5 ladder do not reveal to a team who their opponents are during the champion select phase, targeted picks and bans or team-specific counter-strategies are rarely seen. Moreover, many teams save their best strategies and effort for scrims against rival teams. Though the Ranked 5 vs. 5 ladder offers high-level practice against skilled strangers, it doesn’t mirror the competitive LoL scene, where teams tirelessly scout their opponents, ruthlessly try to deny opposing players their favored champions and team compositions, and grow familiar with opponent’s tendencies by playing them over and over again.
As the Unicorns struggled to find their way into the inner circle of Europe’s most talented teams and players, they continued to search for practice that would mirror the talent and conditions they would be facing in the pro scene. This was no easy task for a group of five unknowns.
“We played some [amateur tournaments like] Go4LoLs, and found people trying a bit harder than in Challenger, but then after winning a few of those we started looking for the next level. We found it in tournaments like the hitbox Tournament and the Black Monster Cup, amateur tournaments that weren’t… well publicized but which featured a decent prize pool and attracted a lot of the top amateur teams in the region. We learned so much playing against the [higher caliber] of teams in these tournaments.”
As Mallant explains, “When you play against a team that has a big-name sponsor, a big-time owner, ex-LCS players... the mental disadvantage you have... the amount that you feel you don't belong on the stage with them, it's just incredible. Wow, they have sponsors! Maybe they have lots of money. Maybe they're scrimming LCS players. Maybe they just know all this stuff you don't. This kind of thinking is tempting, scary, and all too common.”
It was in the crucible of these amateur tournaments that the Unicorns began to face off against big-name teams in a competitive setting for the first time. As they slowly began to take games off of highly-touted teams like Cloud9 Eclipse in amateur tournaments, their fears began to give way to a dawning realization that they might actually be good enough to go all the way.
Mallant pauses for a moment to collect his thoughts, the gratitude apparent in his voice.
“It's important to know how thankful I am for those amateur tournaments. If it wasn't for those tournaments we would have never made it into LCS, we would have never even have become pro players. Those tournaments are where the up and coming talents can get exposure, and where people who could potentially become LCS teams are training in.”
Yet even with the success that the Unicorns found at amateur tournaments, the path to pro remained a mystery to them.
“Back in the day... we just had no clue of anything, how it all worked,” Mallant recalls ruefully. “People approach you, make promises... it's a very foggy process, it's hard to know what you're supposed to do. You’re in Challenger, but you feel stuck. How do you get scrims against top teams? As it turns out, once you’ve proven yourself to be good enough people will reach out to you for scrims, but we didn’t know that yet.”
Determined to advance but hamstrung by a lack of knowledge, Mallant and his teammates found themselves in a holding pattern. They were just successful enough to believe they could potentially go pro, but not successful enough to get scrims with the top teams in Europe or attention from a major esports organization.
The breakthrough came suddenly, though not for the reasons the team might have guessed.
“When we started doing well in Challenger a guy approached us and offered to be our manager. We weren’t really sure what we were doing and he struck us as friendly, and we knew that he managed the scrim channel for EU. The scrim channel is the go-to [mechanism] for getting scrims among top teams in Europe, and you can only get in if you're invited. It's not covered by Riot and it's not covered in the news, so you're not sure how to get in. Is it a Skype channel? A chat room? A specific guy you need to talk to? We had no idea. Nowadays it's mostly done over Skype, but I bet most people don't even know that. But anyways, at the time this guy who approached us managed the scrim channel and back in the day we felt like ‘he's the guy managing scrims and we need scrims,’ so we agreed to take him on as our manager."
Mallant was quick to qualify this breakthrough: Getting the right manager was a helpful step, but in retrospect it wasn’t anything their manager consciously did that made him so valuable to the team. Indeed, not long afterwards the Unicorns would lose their first Challenger Series match to Ninjas in Pyjamas 0-2, with their manager parting ways with the team almost immediately afterwards.
“The hardest part of trying to go pro,” Mallant explains, “is that once you find a great team of players, [now] you have to try to keep them together. Keeping players is really hard. Everybody is tempted, and everybody is looking for a team they can improve with. If you are struggling then people will want to get away from the bad feelings. I had grown close to these guys, and I wouldn’t grudge any of them if they took an opportunity with a big-name organization or big-money sponsor. I wanted them to get what they deserved... I just believed if we stayed together we could accomplish even more.
"I think we would have gone pro without having a manager, but having him added to the feeling that we were an actual team with actual management. That was what was important, and definitely motivated us, helped us stay together. Feeling like we were on a managed team [made us feel] like we were part of something that was going somewhere.”
As the team weathered the departure of their manager and players began seriously weighing offers to leave for big-name rivals, the odds seemed impossibly long for the Unicorns to stay together, much less achieve their dream of going pro. Yet against all odds, the team not only held together but in a matter of months would go on to qualify for the Challenger Series, and then into the EU LCS by dispatching French esports powerhouse Millenium’s League of Legends team in the 2015 Spring Promotion Tournament.
How?
"Sometimes you run into people that are interested in fame and money, and this kind of thing can poison a team very fast. Of course you should be rewarded for committing your time to a team, but it’s just too easy to transition from ‘I do this because I love the game’ to ‘I want to become famous.’ It's a delicate balance when you're looking for players with the right kind of attitude. You want to improve for the right reasons, and there's a big difference between wanting to improve because you want to be great, versus wanting to improve so you can get more money/fame.”
The willingness to play for the team rather than oneself combined with exceptional talent is a rare combination, but it quickly became the calling card for the Unicorns. Despite the allure of big esports organizations and selfish players with astounding potential, the Unicorns made a point of turning down offers and players that were at odds with the team’s goals.
During the team’s darkest hours, when many other amateur teams would fall apart, the camaraderie and personalities on the team kept the group from splintering. Even as the Unicorns flamed out of their first appearance in the EU Challenger Series, lost their manager, and struggled to deal with the gnawing doubt of whether they would ever truly make it, the core of the team remained intact.
The will to improve as a team, not just a desire to make it to the pros, drove the Unicorns forward. Though their first stint in the Challenger Series resulted in an unceremonious 0-2 sweep to the Ninjas in Pyjamas, the Unicorns came thundering back in the Summer Split, securing a top three finish and a shot in the Expansion Tournament. When they squared off against French esports organization Millenium’s LCS team they not only prevailed, but did so by using jaw-dropping strategies centered around unconventional picks like Twisted Fate in the jungle and Poppy in the top lane.
Mallant once more credits the team’s atmosphere and attitude of trust between players as the catalyst for the team’s creative play in the most high-stakes games of their lives up to that point. "Playing Jungle Twisted Fate in a tournament, practicing it for five hours a day, understanding how to leash correctly... none of that happens when you’re focused on how to get your money, how to become more famous.
It's difficult to play with people who are unwilling to let themselves be held down sometimes so that you may rise. Sometimes you struggle and you need your team to have your back, but if you're looking over your shoulder and afraid of losing or playing poorly because your teammate will blast you for it, you won't dare to try things like Jungle TF.”
In this regard, Mallant seems to suggest, the well-known unconventional streak in the Unicorns’ play isn't just reflective of a team strategy: It's a reflection of the team dynamic itself. The trust between a player trying a wildly unconventional pick and the four teammates who agree to let him try it says as much about the relationship between the team’s players as it does about their confidence in champions like Poppy to go top lane or Twisted Fate to jungle. The fact that the team is willing to choose such picks with their professional future on the line seems to underscore that trust yet further.
“Finding jewels, players that are willing to play for the team rather than themselves, are very very hard to find,” Mallant admits. Still, he stresses that in his experience the key to succeeding on the path to pro is above all else finding players who are in it for the love of the game and their teammates.
Would he say that Unicorns of Love is a team of five friends, fighting for each other and reaching for eSports glory? Isn’t he worried that sounds a little far-fetched?
"No, I wouldn't say we're only five friends," he admitted.
"We're five unicorns."
Dating back to the middle of last year, in the last six series between top Challenger and bottom LCS teams in the EU Promotion Tournament the amateurs have gone 1-5, with Unicorns of Love being the sole victor. Of the five other Challenger teams who even made it to the Promotion Tournament, all but one had the backing of a major esports organization such as Ninjas in Pyjamas or SK Gaming.
It’s hardly surprising that amateur teams enjoying the support of powerhouse esports organizations with infrastructure and financial muscle are particularly likely to rise to the top of the Challenger scene. Indeed, successful amateur teams are the ones most likely to attract interest from major esports organizations in the first place.
What is surprising is that a team of five friends playing for fun on top of coursework and other real-world commitments succeeded where so many brand-name rivals fell short.
ORIGINS
“The story of most amateur teams is pretty similar, I think,” Mallant explains.
“First you play for fun, pure joy of the game. Then you master the basics and start wondering ‘what if I…?’ and begin doing creative things in-game. Then at some point you start to realize ‘Wow… maybe I’m actually good at this… maybe I could make a living off of this.’ Literally, League of Legends is one of the only games where you can queue up, you get good enough, and you can play together with the pros.”
What first drove Mallant towards pro play was when he began to dabble in team play and the Ranked 5 vs. 5 ladder, which he likens to a “different game” from the famously chaotic solo queue ladder. “Once you get hooked on.... team play, it is very hard to get away,” he admits. The search for his eventual UoL teammates started with Mallant and some friends wanting to play with a full pre-made group of five players and asking one another "do you have a friend you want to invite?" From there, he carried his search for talented, good-natured players into solo queue.
“I remember I was playing with [eventual UoL top laner] Vizicsacsi in solo queue and he was an absolute monster, just so freaking good -- you can quote me on this, yes? -- and he was the first team member I found. Very talented, but also a really nice guy. Then some time later I bumped into [eventual UoL support] Hylissang -- Hylissang the God,” he corrects himself. “He was playing Orianna and did amazingly well, but we already had a mid laner so I asked him if he would play support for us. Honestly, I think he was too shy to push the issue on mid lane and refuse us, so he agreed to play support for us... and was an absolute monster at that role too. What a beast.”
“I think the most important thing in creating a team is understanding the people you're playing with,” Mallant explains. “I didn't play with these guys because I thought they were the best players I could find. I picked them because together I thought we were the best team we could possibly be. At the end of the day you don't just want to play with people who are good, but also with people who can improve.
"If you play with people who are just good and play against a team that can improve, even if less talented than you on paper, at some point you will get surpassed by them. It may not be right away, but that day will come. If you have a healthy mentality and people you like, then you can improve.
"I was looking for people like this.”
THE CLIMB
As the Unicorns pulled their roster together they began playing Ranked 5 vs. 5 games together to try and see just how far down the rabbit hole of “going pro” went. With regular practice to refine their team play they soon rocketed to the top of the in-game standings. “We were so incredibly happy the first time we got Challenger, we were so thrilled,” Mallant recalls. “But it was incredibly hard... I swear, there's not a guideline to explain what you do next, and you can feel like you're paralyzed because there's no way to go further once you're Challenger. The path forward isn’t clear at all.”
This may seem counter-intuitive to those who are familiar with the League of Legends pro scene, since reaching the Challenger tier (not to be confused with the Challenger Series) is at first glance the most obvious way to make it into the pro scene. Each Split, top Ranked 5 vs. 5 teams play in the Challenger Series Qualifiers for a chance to play in the Challenger Series, where they have a chance to compete for a spot in the next LCS Split.
But it's not that simple, Mallant explains. And the limits of playing on ladder become steadily apparent once you reach its highest levels.
Because games on the Ranked 5 vs. 5 ladder do not reveal to a team who their opponents are during the champion select phase, targeted picks and bans or team-specific counter-strategies are rarely seen. Moreover, many teams save their best strategies and effort for scrims against rival teams. Though the Ranked 5 vs. 5 ladder offers high-level practice against skilled strangers, it doesn’t mirror the competitive LoL scene, where teams tirelessly scout their opponents, ruthlessly try to deny opposing players their favored champions and team compositions, and grow familiar with opponent’s tendencies by playing them over and over again.
As the Unicorns struggled to find their way into the inner circle of Europe’s most talented teams and players, they continued to search for practice that would mirror the talent and conditions they would be facing in the pro scene. This was no easy task for a group of five unknowns.
“We played some [amateur tournaments like] Go4LoLs, and found people trying a bit harder than in Challenger, but then after winning a few of those we started looking for the next level. We found it in tournaments like the hitbox Tournament and the Black Monster Cup, amateur tournaments that weren’t… well publicized but which featured a decent prize pool and attracted a lot of the top amateur teams in the region. We learned so much playing against the [higher caliber] of teams in these tournaments.”
As Mallant explains, “When you play against a team that has a big-name sponsor, a big-time owner, ex-LCS players... the mental disadvantage you have... the amount that you feel you don't belong on the stage with them, it's just incredible. Wow, they have sponsors! Maybe they have lots of money. Maybe they're scrimming LCS players. Maybe they just know all this stuff you don't. This kind of thinking is tempting, scary, and all too common.”
It was in the crucible of these amateur tournaments that the Unicorns began to face off against big-name teams in a competitive setting for the first time. As they slowly began to take games off of highly-touted teams like Cloud9 Eclipse in amateur tournaments, their fears began to give way to a dawning realization that they might actually be good enough to go all the way.
Mallant pauses for a moment to collect his thoughts, the gratitude apparent in his voice.
“It's important to know how thankful I am for those amateur tournaments. If it wasn't for those tournaments we would have never made it into LCS, we would have never even have become pro players. Those tournaments are where the up and coming talents can get exposure, and where people who could potentially become LCS teams are training in.”
Yet even with the success that the Unicorns found at amateur tournaments, the path to pro remained a mystery to them.
“Back in the day... we just had no clue of anything, how it all worked,” Mallant recalls ruefully. “People approach you, make promises... it's a very foggy process, it's hard to know what you're supposed to do. You’re in Challenger, but you feel stuck. How do you get scrims against top teams? As it turns out, once you’ve proven yourself to be good enough people will reach out to you for scrims, but we didn’t know that yet.”
Determined to advance but hamstrung by a lack of knowledge, Mallant and his teammates found themselves in a holding pattern. They were just successful enough to believe they could potentially go pro, but not successful enough to get scrims with the top teams in Europe or attention from a major esports organization.
The breakthrough came suddenly, though not for the reasons the team might have guessed.
“When we started doing well in Challenger a guy approached us and offered to be our manager. We weren’t really sure what we were doing and he struck us as friendly, and we knew that he managed the scrim channel for EU. The scrim channel is the go-to [mechanism] for getting scrims among top teams in Europe, and you can only get in if you're invited. It's not covered by Riot and it's not covered in the news, so you're not sure how to get in. Is it a Skype channel? A chat room? A specific guy you need to talk to? We had no idea. Nowadays it's mostly done over Skype, but I bet most people don't even know that. But anyways, at the time this guy who approached us managed the scrim channel and back in the day we felt like ‘he's the guy managing scrims and we need scrims,’ so we agreed to take him on as our manager."
Mallant was quick to qualify this breakthrough: Getting the right manager was a helpful step, but in retrospect it wasn’t anything their manager consciously did that made him so valuable to the team. Indeed, not long afterwards the Unicorns would lose their first Challenger Series match to Ninjas in Pyjamas 0-2, with their manager parting ways with the team almost immediately afterwards.
“The hardest part of trying to go pro,” Mallant explains, “is that once you find a great team of players, [now] you have to try to keep them together. Keeping players is really hard. Everybody is tempted, and everybody is looking for a team they can improve with. If you are struggling then people will want to get away from the bad feelings. I had grown close to these guys, and I wouldn’t grudge any of them if they took an opportunity with a big-name organization or big-money sponsor. I wanted them to get what they deserved... I just believed if we stayed together we could accomplish even more.
"I think we would have gone pro without having a manager, but having him added to the feeling that we were an actual team with actual management. That was what was important, and definitely motivated us, helped us stay together. Feeling like we were on a managed team [made us feel] like we were part of something that was going somewhere.”
As the team weathered the departure of their manager and players began seriously weighing offers to leave for big-name rivals, the odds seemed impossibly long for the Unicorns to stay together, much less achieve their dream of going pro. Yet against all odds, the team not only held together but in a matter of months would go on to qualify for the Challenger Series, and then into the EU LCS by dispatching French esports powerhouse Millenium’s League of Legends team in the 2015 Spring Promotion Tournament.
How?
THE SECRET
“Creating a good team environment is the hardest thing in [pro] League of Legends. In every sport. It’s the highest achievement, having good team chemistry,” Mallant explains. Having spoken with and played against countless other LCS hopefuls during his time in the semi-pro scene, Mallant has seen his fair share of team dynamics. One of his players once remarked to him that the Unicorns’ team dynamic was completely different from what he had experienced on his previous team, which enjoyed the backing of a major esports organization. On that team he would simply never hear spontaneous, light-hearted praise during practice such as "wow, well played" or "THE GOD," frequent exclamations in the UoL gaming house after someone has made a sharp play. Making mistakes is used constructively and admitting to them is commonplace, Mallant notes. “For some people, they believe telling their teammate that he did well makes them look weak because they’re not the one making that play, so they should just be quiet about it. I think there's a temptation to have that kind of survival-at-all-costs mindset in business, and the same is true of League of Legends.
"Sometimes you run into people that are interested in fame and money, and this kind of thing can poison a team very fast. Of course you should be rewarded for committing your time to a team, but it’s just too easy to transition from ‘I do this because I love the game’ to ‘I want to become famous.’ It's a delicate balance when you're looking for players with the right kind of attitude. You want to improve for the right reasons, and there's a big difference between wanting to improve because you want to be great, versus wanting to improve so you can get more money/fame.”
The willingness to play for the team rather than oneself combined with exceptional talent is a rare combination, but it quickly became the calling card for the Unicorns. Despite the allure of big esports organizations and selfish players with astounding potential, the Unicorns made a point of turning down offers and players that were at odds with the team’s goals.
During the team’s darkest hours, when many other amateur teams would fall apart, the camaraderie and personalities on the team kept the group from splintering. Even as the Unicorns flamed out of their first appearance in the EU Challenger Series, lost their manager, and struggled to deal with the gnawing doubt of whether they would ever truly make it, the core of the team remained intact.
The will to improve as a team, not just a desire to make it to the pros, drove the Unicorns forward. Though their first stint in the Challenger Series resulted in an unceremonious 0-2 sweep to the Ninjas in Pyjamas, the Unicorns came thundering back in the Summer Split, securing a top three finish and a shot in the Expansion Tournament. When they squared off against French esports organization Millenium’s LCS team they not only prevailed, but did so by using jaw-dropping strategies centered around unconventional picks like Twisted Fate in the jungle and Poppy in the top lane.
Mallant once more credits the team’s atmosphere and attitude of trust between players as the catalyst for the team’s creative play in the most high-stakes games of their lives up to that point. "Playing Jungle Twisted Fate in a tournament, practicing it for five hours a day, understanding how to leash correctly... none of that happens when you’re focused on how to get your money, how to become more famous.
It's difficult to play with people who are unwilling to let themselves be held down sometimes so that you may rise. Sometimes you struggle and you need your team to have your back, but if you're looking over your shoulder and afraid of losing or playing poorly because your teammate will blast you for it, you won't dare to try things like Jungle TF.”
In this regard, Mallant seems to suggest, the well-known unconventional streak in the Unicorns’ play isn't just reflective of a team strategy: It's a reflection of the team dynamic itself. The trust between a player trying a wildly unconventional pick and the four teammates who agree to let him try it says as much about the relationship between the team’s players as it does about their confidence in champions like Poppy to go top lane or Twisted Fate to jungle. The fact that the team is willing to choose such picks with their professional future on the line seems to underscore that trust yet further.
“Finding jewels, players that are willing to play for the team rather than themselves, are very very hard to find,” Mallant admits. Still, he stresses that in his experience the key to succeeding on the path to pro is above all else finding players who are in it for the love of the game and their teammates.
Would he say that Unicorns of Love is a team of five friends, fighting for each other and reaching for eSports glory? Isn’t he worried that sounds a little far-fetched?
"No, I wouldn't say we're only five friends," he admitted.
"We're five unicorns."
