International Wildcard Regional Survival Guide
On the road to Worlds, there are clear paths to qualification. The easiest way--and we use the word “easiest” there loosely--is to compete in one of the five major professional leagues: NA LCS, EU LCS, OGN, LPL, and GPL. But what happens if you’re a talented League of Legends team that doesn’t happen to hail from North America, the EU, Korea, China, or Southeast Asia?
Well, it turns out you’re in luck. Five other regions - Russia, Oceania, Turkey, Latin America, and Brazil - feed into the League of Legends 2014 World Championship through their respective regional tournaments:
- Russia – Starladder Season 2
- Oceania – Oceania Winter Regionals
- Turkey – Turkish Grand Finals
- LATAM – Copa LatinoAmerica
- Brazil – Circuito Brasileiro
The Latin America and Brazilian teams face off in a Best of 5 match at this year’s PAX, with the winner advancing to the Groups stage of the World Championship. Meanwhile, the teams from Russia, Turkey, and Oceania have already played their qualifying matches, with Turkey’s Dark Passage emerging as that group’s Worlds representative. Expect the final International Wildcard Worlds qualifier to emerge on August 29.
The History of International Wildcard
The International Wildcard is quite obviously the most diverse qualifying group eligible to compete on the Worlds stage. And given its relative newness (the IWC qualification path was first introduced for Worlds 2013), it’s perhaps unsurprising that it has yet to make a truly competitive showing. Mineski and GamingGear.eu were the two qualifying teams last year, and between the two of them, they went 1-15 in the Groups stage. Despite the disappointing start, both teams cited the experience as very helpful, thanks to being able to compete against the most competitive teams in the world.
However, since then, neither team has made a huge splash in the competitive scene. Mineski competed in the 2014 Spring GPL under the name Manila Eagles, but after a lackluster performance, have since lost their spot in the GPL series.
GamingGear.eu also continued on under the name Team Ultra Vires, but have not qualified for any major leagues since. Their mid laner, Mazzerin, subbed in for the Copenhagen Wolves in the 2014 Summer EU LCS.
Team Summaries
-
LATAM - PEX 
PEX is another team that seems to favor the late-game. In the Copa LatinoAmerica, Latin America’s International Wildcard qualifiers), their mid Uri was almost always on an extremely late-game scaling champion like Ryze or Orianna. Additionally, the team seemed intent on avoiding teamfights and simply rotating around objectives until they had enough teamfight strength. As a result, their games weren’t nearly as much of a bloodbath as many of the other matches within the LATAM region.
When PEX’s games were kill-heavy, though, it was typically thanks to one lane snowballing out of control, as opposed to early teamfights. Their top laner, MANTARRAYA, consistently outperformed his opponents in both CS and team-fighting presence.
On the other hand, PEX’s ADC, MegaJp, seemed to always fall behind in CS, even when he was ahead in kills. Given the extreme ADC talent on the international stage, it will be interesting to see how their bot lane matches up against the likes of Rekkles and other top-tier ADCs. And in the event that the bot lane duos collapse, how well the rest of the team can compensate.
-
Brazil - Kabum 
Kabum really knows how to handle a range advantage. Their mid-lane ADC combo is almost always extremely high ranged, with Tinowns and MinervaTT showing preferences for champions like Ziggs, Xerath, Kog’Maw, and Jinx. They seemed extremely comfortable on such compositions, using the range of those champions as a weapon against any strategy.
Against dive compositions, Kabum simply backed off and avoided engages, poking the enemy team down over time. Against poke comps, they were too far away even to be poked. They locked down mobily teams at range, and used ranged CC to make picks on immobile teams. With range coming into a premium in other leagues recently, thanks to the rise of champions like Kog’Maw and Xerath, the meta may just be perfectly poised for Brazil to make a Cinderella run.
Oh and as an aside, if there’s something the League of Legends scene can take away from the Brazilian scene, it’s excitement. Listen to how the casters and the crowd get behind the first teamfight of the grand finals!
-
Turkey - Dark Passage Dark Passage steamrolled through their own finals in the Turkish Grand Finals tournament, running the same composition in both of their blue side games. Their jungler, Crystal M, just seemed to be a step ahead of the opposing team at every step, going a combined 14-4-46 en route to the team’s 3-0 finals sweep.
Their team compositions seemed very reminiscent of a certain Cloud9’s 2014 Spring Splits, with great top-jungle synergy. If Dark Passage got Jax, the early-mid game gank potential of Elise allowed him to snowball, while the later pick potential made his split-pushing extremely dangerous. On the other hand, on red side, when they missed out on the opportunity to secure Jax, they simply ran the old worklizard Renekton, picking up Evelynn for more teamfight presence.
Of note, Dark Passage had a clear preference for running one single-target burst champion and one AoE burst champion. With Ziggs, they paired Lucian; with LeBlanc, they picked up Graves. The strategy was nothing less than potent. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the adversity of the most competitive stage in League of Legends.
At Gamescom, Dark Passage further proved themselves to be a team capable of competing on the international stage. Check out our full rundown of the team’s Finals match against Oceania’s Legacy eSports for more on how Dark Passage qualified to Worlds.
The International Wildcard scene is definitely the least developed, and thus faces the hardest road through the World Championship. Each team’s region has a very definitive style, and it remains to be seen how they will be able to compete with more diverse sets of styles. However, after a 1-15 showing last year, there’s really only progress to be made. These teams have nothing to lose, and that can only make them more dangerous.
is bad
