Tundra Silver Airs Wasn't Always a Powerhouse
Tundra Silver Airs wasn't a powerhouse from the start. They only started getting treated like one exactly two years ago, when I—Dice—joined the team.
Looking at my career since joining, we'd snagged one league runners-up, one championship, and two Worlds runners-up finishes in those two years. Not just anyone could rack up a record like that.
Even so, the evaluations of Tundra were weaker than expected, all because of [Proud] and Starforce Gaming.
Despite Tundra's formidable strength, we weren't as destructively dominant in the league as we should have been. Even with those results, we got stuck with the derogatory nickname "the bridesmaids." It all boiled down to our head-to-heads against Starforce Gaming.
Tundra was weak against Starforce. No, that didn't even cover it. Tundra was hopelessly weak against them.
Last spring: 3 losses. Last summer: 3 losses. Last Eld Cup: 2 losses. This spring: 3 losses. This summer: 3 losses. This Eld Cup: 1 loss...
Even ignoring the records from before I joined Tundra, it was the kind of lopsided beatdown you couldn't watch with your eyes open.
If someone pinned the cause of that weakness on me, I'd obviously deny it. I'm not the guy people make me out to be—the one who turns into a sniveling mess whenever he faces Proud. In reality, we didn't lose that many games purely because of a mid-lane gap.
But whether it was true or not, there was this sticky, festering bad blood between me and Proud. And purely looking at head-to-head records, saying he was my hard counter wasn't entirely wrong.
That gap showed up starkly even in our usual scrims.
Of course, scrims are scrims. Both sides often ran experimental comps, so wins and losses didn't mean much. In fact, our scrim win rate against Starforce was actually higher than in official matches.
But it was all relative. We hardly ever had the edge against them, even in scrims.
And yet right now, Tundra had beaten Starforce.
By a pretty wide margin, at that.
And at the center of it was Tundra's new mid laner, my replacement, AOD. He didn't yield an inch to Proud's Engineer in lane—hell, he even had the advantage. In the 2v2 skirmish, his perfect skillshots and positioning snagged Proud.
In the end, Proud's Engineer rotted away pointlessly, and that moment became the game's biggest turning point.
Just one game. A single damn game.
You couldn't read everything into that alone. I'd beaten Proud in scrims before, too.
Maybe AOD was just on fire today by coincidence. Or Proud was off his game. Or perhaps the Bard's value as a counterpick to Engineer was bigger than we'd thought. Plenty of excuses if you wanted them.
But even so, the shock hit me hard because...
"Whoa, Seongjun-hyung! Total legend! Golden AOD! God AOD! Divine AOD!"
"Things are clicking today. Feels good when the games are this easy."
...the vibe was different.
How to put it? I never thought our team atmosphere was bad, but against Starforce Gaming, there was always this inexplicable fatigue, these nagging emotions I couldn't deny.
It wasn't some defeatist mentality. I always went in stubborn and convinced we'd win. And I figured my teammates did too.
But this vibe? It was different.
Lighter. Hard to explain, but fresher, more effortless.
No pressure from the team, no exhaustion.
What was this difference?
The second and third games followed the same flow.
AOD held mid at minimum even, or dominated outright, securing lane priority. From there, we halted Starforce's signature snowball ops, then steamrolled late game with our superior value, smashing their Nexus.
Second game: our win. Third: ours too.
And that meant today was the first time we'd smashed Starforce's Nexus three times in a single day.
"Whoa!! Man, how long's it been since we wrecked their Nexus like this?!"
"Hyung, you were insane. Whoa, I'm seriously saying you're my first love."
"Eww, get lost, Yujin. I don't do guys."
"It's just a figure of speech!"
"Never thought we'd see their Nexus shatter three times in a day."
"Didn't Hansam smash ours just this summer?"
"Against us."
Just scrims. Mere scrims, and the team was this hyped. It showed just how long Starforce had us pinned down.
If I'd been there, even I'd be pumped. No, I'd probably be the most excited.
But I wasn't.
Dice and AOD.
Seo Yeonwoo and Im Seongjun.
What was the difference?
What gap between us two could cause such a massive shift?
More than turning into a girl or losing skill, the team's new vibe after AOD joined pissed me off. And getting pissed at that pissed me off even more about myself.
What a petty bastard you are, Seo Yeonwoo.
No, not even a bastard anymore.
Lost my dick and turned into a full-on bitch.
~
After scrims ended, I naturally slipped out of the voice chat alone. No point crashing their fun and killing the mood. Not like I could even speak anyway.
I needed to review games, but my head was foggy, nothing coming to mind. As I sat there, a friend request popped up.
The chat cut off abruptly like that. I denied it, but the timing suggested Kim Seongchan had probably said something separately.
He must've been too embarrassed to ask outright after that one time. Cocky prick, but not a total asshole. If he was worried, he should've messaged me himself.
My mood didn't settle much, but at least I got some air. I went to queue up, then realized I was on my main account. Couldn't play ranked like this...
Or so I thought, but before I knew it, I was already in queue.
How to describe it? Frustrating. Maybe because Kim Seongchan came up in that chat with Lee Ji-cheol? Memories overlapped. Didn't want to be the one crying next time, he'd said. Dickhead. You think I cried because I wanted to?
Frustrating as hell. Even knowing I'd get stomped, I wanted to just take the L and get it over with. Maybe then I'd accept it.
Queue took forever. I could've canceled anytime, but didn't.
After an absurdly long wait, it popped. Mid lane. Chat exploded the second I locked in.
Some worried about me, others already flaming and dodging. Guess that stomp from the other day spread like wildfire.
I ignored chat, locked in Portrait of the Revolutionist, and muted the whole team to avoid drama. Game started.
And, just like that, I won.
......No, I got carried to victory.
~
Watching Tundra scrim Starforce with AOD taught me a lot, sparked some realizations.
Problem was, even after feeling all that, I couldn't put it into words. My vocabulary issue? Couldn't even identify the emotions.
Definitely some irritation mixed in. Futility? Emptiness? Maybe. Betrayal? What am I, some damsel? Nah.
So what had I realized from that scrim? What emotions hit me? What truth dawned? What did I end up accepting?
I didn't know that day. Not even after the solo queue massacre. But it didn't take long to figure out.
New Year rolled in. Season start was less than a week away. Everyone else was shooting opening vids, doing interviews—me? Holed up at home.
Could've asked the coach why no announcement yet, but everything felt like a hassle since then. Whatever. Not a starter anymore anyway.
Then front office hit me up.
Coach usually handled this stuff, so front office reaching out directly was new. Contract issue?
I'd re-signed multi-year at the end of my first season with Tundra—still valid through this year.
But I'd been deemed surplus, benched. Maybe they wanted changes.
...Shouldn't they have said something sooner?
Questions aside, they'd handle it. Been over three weeks locked indoors—condition was rough. Quick shower, threw on clothes, headed to Tundra's office for the meeting.
Other guys might see me, but who cares now? They wouldn't recognize me anyway. If they did, whatever.
I'd stayed quiet, but season start would force it out regardless.
Hiding my situation was the coach's call, not mine.