Scrim, vs Team CroMagnon (1)
Just before the scrim, Jin Gyeo-wool broke down the Winter Army's lane-by-lane weaknesses as follows.
Jungle, Choi Do-yun.
He had a strong tendency to cover Gyeo-wool's lane no matter what, forcing himself to scramble his jungle pathing and waste movement even when a top-side route wasn't necessary. He used to do the same thing whenever Bae Do-hyun ran his swamp-control style, so it was a problem Gyeo-wool had to call out every single time. If she didn't explicitly tell him not to come, he would inevitably swing by top and loiter, burning time.
Mid, Gong Je-hyeon.
As every mid laner who faced him pointed out, he threw far too often. Confidence was fine—swaggering because you trusted your own skill was fine—but a solo kill gifted by a mid laner could turn even a quiet game into a tidal wave, and that had to be avoided. Gyeo-wool had told him again and again to check vision and at least watch the area around mid, but it still wasn't fully fixed. Even now he got caught roaming all the time.
ADC, Yu Min-jae.
No major issues, but his excessive aggression still caused problems. Continuous feedback had improved things considerably, yet for reasons she couldn't quite pin down, a restless urgency clung to his play. He'd always had that tough-guy streak, sure, but now he felt rough and overaggressive, like something was chasing him. A budget version of Hon Gyeo-wool with zero anger management, maybe.
Support, Ha Jeong-uk.
The only one without real problems. He'd been Grandmaster for a while now, and he absorbed and applied Gyeo-wool's feedback faster than anyone. If she had to pick a flaw, it was that he was too passive. It would have been nice if he mixed more variation into his own play, but he felt completely dependent on her notes. A reliable steady seller—his only real downside was the lack of anything that seized the eye. Still, of the four, he was clearly improving the fastest.
And yet, even after defining all of that, the Winter Army's greatest weakness in Gyeo-wool's eyes was still the support: Ha Jeong-uk.
Not because he was bad—but because the enemy was most likely to target him in draft.
Just as Gyeo-wool had intended when she built the team, every player had a wide champion pool. The narrowest of them, though, belonged to Ha Jeong-uk, and he'd only recently climbed from Master into Grandmaster. Amateur ban-pick usually worked one of two ways: crush whoever looked weakest, or hobble whoever looked strongest. Team CroMagnon might not have known the Winter Army's full internal situation, but they at least knew Jeong-uk was the softest link.
Which was probably why ban marks landed on Morgana and Alistar—the two champions he'd been playing most often lately.
A pretty blatant ban.
As if to announce that the real mind games had begun, the Winter Army answered in kind, targeting CroMagnon's ADC and mid laner's signature picks. Kai'Sa, Caitlyn, and Anivia took the hits.
CroMagnon's mid laner muttered with interest as he watched the bans roll in.
"Oh, these guys actually did their ban-pick homework."
Then came the Winter Army's first pick on blue side.
The one pushed into first pick was Ha Jeong-uk, and his choice was Rakan. The intent was obvious—they wanted the Xayah–Rakan duo their bot lane had been running a lot lately.
CroMagnon read that intent and, at the end of the pick phase, played a strong hand of their own.
Leona, the Radiant Dawn—known as a Rakan counter, yet rarely seen in the recent competitive scene.
Today's scrim between the Winter Army and CroMagnon was scheduled for three games total.
In the first match, so-called "even" champions filled top and mid so both sides could gauge each other's level—but both teams had clearly poured power into the bottom lane. Relatively speaking, though, CroMagnon's aggression ran a little hotter. Not only had they pulled Graves jungle and Karma together, they'd also prepared Sion as an engage threat ready to crash in at any moment.
The reason Gyeo-wool had pulled Gangplank out of her vast champion pool was simple.
Through the Kleptomancy rune added in the 2018 season—which randomly handed out decent bonus gold and items—she wanted to test her luck going forward. At the same time, she wanted to confirm whether her map control would hold up against a reasonably prepared opponent stacked with Challenger and Grandmaster players. She'd gotten used to watching the entire map, but she'd never properly used that skill in a real match, and that was why she'd made the call.
A scrim was a clash between armies that had been sharpening their blades—forces that lived in a constant state of war readiness. It felt different from ordinary practice, and the variables that erupted were different too. Feeling that sensation, Gyeo-wool wanted to take an objective measure of her own strength once more. It was groundwork—filling herself with confidence across the scrims to come so that when she stepped onto the official stage, she would never tense up.
No matter what happened, staying calm was what mattered.
A mistake in an official match was an opportunity for the enemy. The moment you handed one over, the game tilted fast and every plan you'd drawn up fell apart. And the reverse was just as bad—letting the tension go slack entirely. Some mistakes came from being wound too tight, but others slipped out because you'd gone too loose.
"Jeongtae-hyung, how many kills you planning today?"
"Me? Three solo kills mid, for starters."
"Is that even possible? Every time you run into Loki in solo queue you start the game by getting solokilled."
"Shut up…"
A somewhat loose early game. Cheerful chatter bounced back and forth between mid and bot.
Given CroMagnon's team style, the jungler focused hard on camping early while the laners played safe and looked for individual kill angles on their own. CroMagnon's jungler had also picked Graves intending to grow fast and serve as a third damage dealer in place of the top-lane Sion.
While Graves ran a full-clear red-side path through the upper jungle, the Winter Army's jungler—Trundle—was nowhere to be seen. The bot laners were arriving late too. Odds were they were delayed leashing red on the bottom side.
CroMagnon's ADC muttered in a bored voice.
"Enemy jungle's red starting."
Dismissing any strategic approach just because it was the first scrim.
Settling for a half-hearted read on the opponent just because they'd seen them often in solo queue.
Failing to account for variable plays at all.
All of those mistakes piled together as CroMagnon's two bot laners edged slightly past the midline. Jhin sat in the middle of the lane farming the first wave's CS, while Leona hid in the forward-most bush ready to poke whoever showed up.
"Why are these guys so late though? I'm gonna drop a ward by dragon."
"Yeah."
Jhin, with only four rounds in the chamber—the fourth of which was guaranteed to crit—spun Whisper on his finger as he loaded it, then strolled slowly toward the river bush on the dragon side. Completely unworried. Completely unaware of any variable. Careless footsteps born of total ease.
And then, with roughly three steps left before Jhin entered the bush, the Winter Army's jungler and bot duo—invisible until that exact moment—burst out.
"Ah, shit."
Three champions' attacks punched through Jhin's coat at once. Xayah's sharp feathers tore into him again and again; predicting that Trundle's pillar would cut off his escape, Jhin burned Flash.
"Yeah, I'm dead."
Even the support seemed to decide there was no saving it and hurried up along the lane. That was when Rakan—who'd been holding W / Grand Entrance—flashed his charming figure and latched onto Jhin.
With Jhin's death all but confirmed, Leona scrambled toward tower for her life.
"Aagh!"
To secure the kill, Xayah and Trundle both burned Flash too, sticking to Jhin and gleefully beating him down. Surviving that brutal clubbing with nothing but boots was impossible.
The Winter Army's three champions had Flashed intending to take Leona as well, but with her defensive skills and the Aftershock rune kicking in, she was tanky enough that they quickly gave up. There was still lane CS to collect, and forcing it wouldn't have gained them much. In the old days all three of them would have gone berserk and chased Leona all the way under tower—but Gyeo-wool's control had almost certainly cut in. Don't overextend.
With the bot-lane dynamic shaken by the first death, it was CroMagnon's jungler who hit the brakes. This was supposed to be the window for happily leveling up and accelerating his growth, but now the bot-lane phase was twisted and the complaining had started. On top of that, a Xayah with sky-high late-game potential was camping on the enemy bot side. As a jungler, he couldn't just ignore his own bot lane.
At least top and mid were holding even lanes cleanly, so if he tracked Trundle's position carefully there was still a chance to stab at bot once. But Graves's biggest problem as a champion was gank follow-up. Even when he found a good angle, getting a grip on a well-fed Xayah's throat meant first punching through the Rakan dancing in front of her.
He tried ganking twice after watching Rakan's tail sway back and forth—and failed cleanly both times. Rakan simply had too many escape tools. Not only that: both Xayah and Rakan were playing with so much leisure they hadn't spent a single summoner spell.
CroMagnon, overflowing with composure at the start of the game, was starting to get antsy. They'd locked aggressive picks, while the enemy composition only got stronger the later the game went. Falling behind as time passed was all but a foregone conclusion.
"Let's do a bot dive."
"I'm heading down."
And so a somewhat reckless plan took shape—just to cut down Yu Min-jae's growing Xayah even once. Mid-lane Karma, who'd recalled and vanished from the map, linked up immediately with Graves, who'd taken the scuttle and come down along the river, completing a four-man dive.
But from a pro's perspective it was clumsy and overforced—a play they didn't need to make, one that could produce the worst possible result if it failed. League of Council was a game where you were predator and prey at the same time. Charge in staring only at the enemy's throat, and there was always a chance your own exposed neck would get torn open by the rest of their team. One of the critical points separating pros from amateurs was the precise cost-benefit calculation required in moments like this.
But CroMagnon was an amateur team—an unpolished, feral squad that made calls based on their own experience. Even knowing failure would bring a reverse gale, their animal instinct had already told them the game was slipping. They made the irreversible choice anyway.
Park Su-ho, locked in a fairly grueling top-lane duel with Jin Gyeo-wool, realized what was happening too late and asked his teammates,
"Is the dive okay? Wouldn't it be better not to force it? Gangplank has ult and Galio can join, right? Trundle's probably in the bot jungle."
Right now the numbers were 4-to-2, but the moment a join angle formed it flipped instantly to 4-to-4.5. On top of that, it was a dangerous strategy that required charging a tower-hugging enemy. Park Su-ho spoke almost pleadingly, hoping someone—anyone—would grasp the point. Unfortunately, his words drifted alone through empty air. Everyone was blood-drunk on the fight in front of them; not a single person was listening.
If his teammates had heard him and delayed the call even a little, the result might have been different.
"Ah, shit—root."
Of all times, right as they telegraphed the dive and charged in, the bot duo got rooted by Xayah's feather recall. If they'd engaged immediately the fight would at least have happened in front of the tower; instead it bought a little more time.
"Ah. Root missed."
On top of that, the E / Zenith Blade Leona flung into empty air failed to connect, locking the 4-versus-2 battlefield firmly behind the blue bot tower. If CroMagnon got reversed now, the damage they'd take was painfully obvious.
Blue team's assault troops closing in. The Winter Army's bot duo pressed tight against the lower side of the lane. And CroMagnon's four members tightening the noose from above the lane to surround them.
Leona Flashed in boldly, landing her stun on Xayah the same instant CroMagnon's teammates charged.
— Hoh hahahahahahaha!
In that moment, a wide circle stamped with a round kraken mark blanketed all four of CroMagnon's champions—a summons announcing that cannon fire from dozens of warships was about to hammer the area.
At the same time Rakan knocked the nearby Leona into the air, and Xayah spun back toward the turret while husbanding her ultimate as much as possible. Taking tower shots and Xayah's damage, Leona's health drained in an instant and she had to peel off toward blue team's tier-two tower.
Graves, Jhin, and Karma weren't in great shape either. The endless barrage Gyeo-wool had fired completely sealed the lane, making it hard both to hit the Xayah and Rakan hiding under tower and to retreat the shortest path past it. To make matters worse, Trundle—fresh off a recall—was charging from the front, club swinging.
"Whoa. We're fucked. I'm dead."
Leona's death was already a given. Graves fired his ultimate at Xayah and Rakan in a what-the-hell spirit, but Xayah simply tanked it with the summoner spell Heal. In the middle of that chaos, Yu Min-jae's Xayah showed outrageous poking sense at max range, planting three feathers under the feet of a Graves who couldn't decide whether to commit or run.
The living feathers snapped back toward Xayah with a shhk, binding Graves in place on the spot.
"Ah. I'm dead too."
If he'd abandoned the kill greed, Graves might have lived—but they hadn't exactly been calm, had they? The four of them, who hadn't checked the enemy's summoner spells and hadn't listened to Park Su-ho's careful calls either, bore a heavy responsibility.
LOW Doyoon▶CroMagnon ShyWolf
LOW MJLow▶CroMagnon Slow
The play failed, and on top of that they handed over a double kill. A well-fed Graves was dead, and in the middle of it all Xayah had picked up yet another kill.
A forced dive they never needed to take. CroMagnon had personally set the table so the Winter Army could start rolling the game at full speed.