Anticarrying

League of Champions is a game of cooperating with your allies while competing against the enemy team.

The victory condition is simple: destroy their Nexus. To get there, you have to tear down the inhibitors and turrets guarding it one after another. And since the other team is never going to just sit there and let you, you need to be stronger than them if you want to break through their resistance.

Kill more minions for more gold. Soak more experience to pull ahead in levels. Grow, then crush the enemies standing between you and those turrets—all of it secondary to the real goal.

But growth is relative. You only need to grow better than they do. Which means focusing on stifling the opponent’s growth is a perfectly valid strategy in its own right.

Champions specialized in that role are commonly called anti-carries. Ones whose skill ratios are low enough that they can still contribute fully in a teamfight without needing to scale themselves. Or the extreme types who operate on the principle of “if neither of us has any presence, that’s a win ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for me.”

Panthea can use her strong early laning to stomp her lane opponent into the dirt. Of course she isn’t free of counters—sometimes she still loses the pure stat check against champions with good sustain. But the baseline is clear: after a string of one-sided trades, she pressures them with health deficits until they simply cannot grow properly. Exactly the anti-carry position I mentioned.

Mid lane, however, is different. That alone isn’t enough. A mid laner can just clear the wave, or soak experience and nothing else. Or they can abandon the minions shoved under their tower entirely and roam to another lane.

Naphi, having gained nothing from the lane phase, had just recalled to base to recover her lost health. She would buy boots for the movement speed, or an item that helped with assassinations, then use her newly spiked damage to put pressure on other lanes. If she even got a single kill out of it, the growth lead I had opened would become meaningless.

So I had to move first. Force her into one-sided losses while I steadily stacked advantages of my own. That was the basic skeleton of snowballing—only I needed to do it faster. Kill her or force the recall. In other words, play the anti-carry role across the entire map. Then my teammates, experts in their own lanes, would take the gaps we created and win the game with them.

That had been my mindset from the moment I got auto-filled mid.

I’ll leave everything to you guys. Just carry me.

Honestly, after grinding this hard for so long, wasn’t I allowed to freeload one game?

So I committed to the most optimized movements possible for getting carried.

I skewered the minion wave with my spear, then let the Tiamat effect splash wide-area damage and erase the entire wave in seconds. Naphi would pressure just enough, then immediately back off the moment the enemy jungler’s location became uncertain.

Another defining trait of Panthea: her ultimate let her appear from extreme ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠range to support an ally. The instant she vanished from the map, the enemy team was suddenly fighting an invisible Panthea. Had she dashed top? Was she walking bot? Or had she and her jungler invaded a jungle camp to pin down their own jungler?

Those exact thoughts showed in the way the enemy team’s eyes kept flicking to the minimap. Every laner started giving up last-hits out of pure caution, looking visibly cowed. Our own laners played along perfectly, bluffing as if I were about to arrive any second. And Naphi, seizing the moment I was gone, scrambled to clear her wave and shove the next one forward.

As if he had predicted that exact movement, our Echor dropped a round trajectory right on Naphi’s escape path. A few seconds later a time-warping sphere would crash down and explode, slowing everything inside it. If Echor himself entered the sphere, the slow would upgrade to a stun.

The distance was still long; if Echor simply walked up, Naphi would notice and slip away on her own. Which ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠meant it was my turn to answer.

I burned my remaining Blink to close on Echor, then leapt in with Shield Vault. One of the reasons Panthea gets called a fireball champion: an almost unmissable targeted stun.

Even with no health advantage, the fact that Panthea was diving her must have told Naphi someone had come to kill her. She reacted to the leap with a backflip. But the sphere Echor had already placed was still falling into that exact spot. No matter how far she tried to flip, Panthea’s already-cast leap had stunned her in place. She had no room left to dodge and took the sphere clean, stunning her a second time.

I walked up, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠drove the empowered spear through her, then carved her down with rapid thrusts, shredding her health. Echor dumped every skill he had while she was locked down, maximizing the damage. Barely conscious in near-death state, Naphi tried to crawl toward her turret on all fours. But with Blink already spent, there was no way for her to escape a spear-and-shield warrior and a boy who ran through time.

I had fully intended to funnel every growth resource to my teammates so I could freeload the win. Ideally Echor would have taken the last hit. He just didn’t seem interested in claiming the kill for himself. Well, Naphi was already dead—what could I do about it now?

I would use the gold from killing her to buy more items that supported the team. Of course it still wasn’t time to recall and reset. My health and mana were both healthy; I could still take one or two more fights.

Whether it was because he hated watching the minions die to the turret, the enemy jungler finally showed mid. Echor and I immediately drifted downward. The enemy bot laners, reading our movement, abandoned even experience and tucked under their turret. Lee Sin, the enemy jungler, belatedly started moving bot as well. But we had already pinged that they had vision of us and abandoned the idea of a bot dive.

Echor dashed out of the dragon pit and slipped into our jungle. I used my ultimate on the enemy jungle camps and leapt the long distance—straight toward the camps near top.

When you take vision control, you plant wards so the enemy can’t walk into your lane. People rarely expect an enemy to pop out of their own jungle camps. So the plan was to catch them off-guard by lurking deep in their territory. With Echor and me both missing, they would assume we were still focused on bot. That was why Lee Sin was heading that way. And once Naphi respawned, she would probably rush bot to help too.

Our jungler and bot duo had already read the same thing and prepared a counter. Thanks to me disappearing from vision, the enemy had freely given up experience and gold. Taking a small loss on our side this time didn’t feel bad at all.

Conversely, the call that Echor and I were bot must have reached top. The enemy top laner was playing aggressively—almost too aggressively—against our top laner. It made sense. The team score wasn’t hopelessly behind, but they were still losing overall, and he was feeling the pressure to do something himself.

I knew that feeling. The sense that if I didn’t make something happen, we would just lose helplessly. The first step of that desperation: kill the enemy top laner over and over until their presence was erased. That impatience. The confidence that came from having vision control. And pure belief in his own skill.

I’m going to kill you, Aatrox.

Trying to reverse the losing team atmosphere, Aatrox unfurled the wings he had kept folded and charged Jaxson. His own health was still healthy thanks to his passive healing, while Jaxson’s was low—he must have judged it a free kill.

But Jaxson trusted me. Or maybe he simply knew that even if he backed off, there was nowhere left to run. As Aatrox lunged forward and extended the greatsword, Jaxson stepped into it instead. He spun his lamppost and deflected the basic attack cleanly.

Counterstrike—the skill that lets him dodge basic attacks. At the same time, golden currents of energy began to swirl around Jaxson. The Grandmaster of Weapons could raise his armor and magic resist with his ultimate. He was buying time until I arrived.

If they simply traded until one of them died, the already-low-health Jaxson would obviously lose. Aatrox finally seemed to sense something was off and hurried to finish him, but I had no intention of betraying the teammate who had trusted me. Blind spot or not, I sprinted straight at Aatrox.

Ironically, our two great warriors were sworn enemies of each other. Aatrox, who had annihilated the divine being that once possessed his body, and Panthea, who had dealt Aatrox a grievous wound in return.

Meeting for the first time this game, the two spat out lines thick with hatred. A kind of easter egg. But it was also the kind of detail that pulled a player deeper into the fight—giving you a reason to want that bastard dead.

The moment I lunged, Aatrox predicted it and swung the greatsword. As always, Aatrox’s skill zones contained a sweet spot that dealt critical damage. Better to avoid that. But landing the hit also shortened the cooldown on his health-restoring passive. If I wanted to kill him before Jaxson died, I had to take that risk.

Not “better to dodge.” I had to dodge. The fastest way to kill him was to take a slight detour around the edge of the swing—and then crash into him.

Clang. The shield slammed home and Aatrox was stunned. Even while stunned he tried to keep fighting, bringing the greatsword down for a third strike. But both Jaxson and I were top laners who had faced Aatrox until we were sick of him. We had already predicted that much and stepped out of the way. I had bought boots, so it was even easier for me.

Freed from the stun, Aatrox burned Blink in a last desperate attempt to finish the nearly dead Jaxson. But Jaxson still had his own Blink. Their reactions were nearly simultaneous; he denied the approach completely.

Panthea claimed her first kill on her sworn enemy this game.

After that, the allies who had gained the lead simply rolled the snowball. My role was nothing more than clearing waves at high speed, then vanishing from the map. Taking vision with Echor and deleting the enemy’s wards. In that situation Naphi couldn’t do anything proactive. She had no information—whether I would burst out of a brush or roam to another lane. All she could do was hold her first turret so it wouldn’t fall.

The growth gap was already so wide that even equal-numbers fights heavily favored us. The enemy team even teleported Aatrox in to force a full engage, but the difference had grown large enough that we could win a four-versus-five. In the end our team wiped all five of them with only Thresh and me as sacrifices—a complete victory. The enemy team surrendered right after.

When they stopped showing on the map, our entire team gathered mid and began dismantling the turrets one by one. Inhibitor. Twin turrets. Then the Nexus.

The moment it fell, the heart that had been hammering wildly went completely still. The Nexus, its durability spent, exploded. The victory effect flooded the screen.

I closed the game and watched the post-match screen. The LP began to climb. Past the score people called the Grandmaster floor—400 points. 401. 402. 403. 404.

And the tier emblem…

The purple mark should have transformed into that lava-forged, reddish steel crest of Grandmaster…

It should have changed… right?

When the emblem still refused to update no matter how long I waited, I blinked and asked the chat.

“Uh… did the Grandmaster cutoff go up while I wasn’t looking?”

“Ah……”

I had played that entire game with my heart in my throat. Just hitting the point total wasn’t enough to promote.

In the face of that hollow letdown, the viewers’ teasing didn’t even register.