Super Team Review
The Super Teams.
The four major guilds.
The symbols of this season's Korean league.
Thanks to their overwhelming carries, Korea shot straight into the mainstream of the guild world, and the Korea League rose to become a major among majors.
But many experts say this: while they've been lumped together for symbolic convenience, a clear gap exists between them. So to describe the current Korean league accurately, it should be expressed like this.
1:3
Mir Guild versus the other super teams.
Or, more precisely...
“...The question that runs through the entire league is this—who can stop Mir Guild’s solo run? That’s the core theme. And at the same time, it’s the viewing point everyone should be focusing on.”
Therefore.
Exactly what kind of performance did those three guilds show against Mir Guild in the first half?
That was the main topic of today’s broadcast, and the first up was Shinseong Guild.
“Shall we start with a light look at Shinseong Guild’s style? Shinseong basically runs slow-tempo teamfight compositions. Their games are really slow. The underlying belief is that as long as the team scales properly, they will never lose a five-on-five teamfight no matter how much time it takes.”
The King of Fist, who had the most similar style and was once called the genius of one-on-one combat, fully displayed the ‘defensive power’ he had equipped this year and completely removed the opposing top laner from the fight.
On the other hand, their bot carry Blaster boldly gave up the various abilities she could use. She focused solely on ‘range’ and ‘fire support,’ acting as a sub-dealer with excellent wave clear.
“These two completely lock down top and bottom. Side lane operation? No, it’s the opposite. It’s anti-side operation. They block all attempts at macro play, avoid chaotic fights as much as possible, and naturally guide the game into teamfights. They force it so that teamfights are the only option. They make it inevitable!”
In front of objectives, in front of towers.
An honest, well-organized teamfight that both sides know is coming.
“And once it reaches that point, the problem trio appears. Hwanhu, the Guardian, and Cross. That is the true identity of Shinseong Guild.”
When a fight breaks out, Shinseong Guild first pushes the Guardian forward.
211cm tall. 147kg in weight. A human tower.
The Guardian, who bulked up even further in hippo form, beats the drums at both hips and his thick belly while dancing and singing.
Area-wide buffs, area-wide recovery.
When Cross’s prayers are added on top, recovery and crowd control resistance are reduced even further.
And on top of that, Hwanhu Hwang Yeo-wang’s Black Tortoise lays down a shield. A shield that even recovers health in proportion to the damage received.
“Area-wide attack power buff, top-tier shield, top-tier crowd control resistance, and triple healing on top. Yes, the birth of the Shinseong zombies.”
Shinseong and zombies—what a horrifying combination. Yet Shinseong Guild brought that horror into reality, and with that horror they sank Kirin Guild, the final weapon of the league, and even showed the power to push Mir Guild to the very brink.
But!!
“...Pushing them to the very brink means they ultimately couldn’t finish the job! Now let’s take a look at how our mighty Mir Guild cooked these ridiculously tenacious Shinseong zombies.”
※ 24th Round Match
VS SHINSEONG GUILD
In the footage, the two guilds were engaged in a tense tug-of-war.
“What did I say earlier? Shinseong Guild loves extremely slow, low-tempo games. Keep that in mind and look at the minimap. It’s perfectly symmetrical, right? This is clearly Shinseong’s tempo.”
“There’s no way the Mountain King would just sit and watch. He immediately called in Big Bro Hwarang and started shaking them up like crazy.”
It was the roaming strategy of the Volcanic Duo, Mir Guild’s undisputed first option.
As expected of the first option, Shinseong Guild had obviously prepared for it. The Guardian’s defense after securing key points and the top and mid laners’ diligent support to counter the Volcanic Duo’s charge were genuinely impressive.
Yet the result did not change.
Mir Guild victory in games one and two.
“Their response itself was excellent. Honestly, it was better than I expected. But they still couldn’t keep up with our speed. Why? Hmm… Most likely they prepared based on last season’s Mir Guild.”
While the super teams were busy getting their teamwork together, Mir Guild hadn’t just been sitting on their hands. They had become even more solid. Even faster.
Lee Shin grinned mischievously.
“Want to hear one scary fact? Strictly speaking, last season our guild was a ‘re-tooled’ team after Hwarang-hyung and Yeonu joined?”
Huh… wait, really?
The chat window flooded with shock and astonishment.
That’s right. The ‘synergy building’ that the current super teams were doing—Mir Guild had done it too.
They had gone through the same growing pains. Yet they had still won the league and the Asian Championship in that state.
And now a year had passed. In other words, the current Mir Guild was far stronger than the legendary Mir Guild of last season.
“Well, it’s all possible thanks to the Mountain King and yours truly. Ahem. Now’s the time! Now’s the time to worship!!”
He spread both arms wide, enjoying a sudden worship and hug session for a brief moment.
Then he quickly returned to the topic.
If games one and two had shown Mir Guild’s true mode, games three and four were the sets where Shinseong Guild displayed why they were a super team.
“I’ll confess first—out of the two sets we lost, at least one was entirely my fault. I was too busy and neglected the match too much.”
While Mir Guild maintained what they did best, Shinseong Guild threw out an unthinkable, drastic move.
“Giving up all first turrets in both top and bottom! It was crazy. But that crazy move was crucial! They shrank their defensive line and naturally built an encirclement.”
The moment they gave up the first side turrets, the laning phase was essentially over. The room for the Volcanic Duo to run wild decreased even if only slightly.
With another turret gone, they could also draw the opponent into their own formation.
Of course, even if they weren’t shaken by the Volcanic Duo, the lost initiative made the difficulty of defending skyrocket.
But Shinseong Guild had judged in an instant.
We can handle this.
“And amazingly, they actually did handle it. In the end, Shinseong Guild crushed the Volcanic Duo’s pressure and cut down our genius Yeonu—who only knows how to charge forward—multiple times. They caught both rabbits.”
“At that point, I and the Mountain King had to acknowledge two facts.”
First. The sustain of the Shinseong zombies—Guardian, Cross, and Hwanhu—was far beyond what we had imagined.
Second. Among them, Hwanhu was clearly an irregular.
“She creates shields with recovery using the Black Tortoise, becomes an assassin with the White Tiger. The Azure Dragon grants various crowd control and wide-area space control for initiation, while the Vermilion Bird crushes opponents with single-target and area damage.”
To be able to keep two of the Four Sacred Beasts at her side with no cost. If you excluded the ‘randomness’ that reset every three minutes, it was truly a fraudulent ability.
As expected of the Friend of the Four Sacred Beasts, Hwanhu Hwang Yeo-wang, whose talent and uniqueness even surpassed the Divine Archer.
“Just as they had misjudged our skill, we also failed to properly grasp Hwanhu’s ceiling. I and the old man cleanly acknowledged this fact and put forward the most certain countermeasure.”
“That’s right. The Colossus.”
Irregular versus irregular.
The engine of the colossus they had saved for the upper leagues spewed flames.
At level three, the Gigant that raised its output in the footage crushed everything that stood in its way.
It was pressure on a completely different level from the previous sets. No, across all the matches played so far, this level of pressure was a first.
“Hwanhu’s ceiling was completely blocked by that violent pressure. Of course it was—if you spread influence around while leaving that mechanical monster alone, it wouldn’t be the mid lane that broke. It would be the nexus.”
The moment Hwanhu’s wonder was buried under the colossus’s mechanical mass, the game became a rerun of sets one and two.
The Volcanic Duo ran wild, and the genius could not be controlled. The match ended in Mir Guild’s perfect victory, to the point that Blitz’s late-game carry wasn’t even needed.
“It was a match where both sides gained a lot. If Shinseong Guild realized how slow they were in the laning phase and how dependent they were on Hwanhu, we realized that just doing our thing well wasn’t enough—that we could lose when the super teams showed their potential.”
“And based on the lessons we gained from our first super team match, we were able to show a better performance in the next 27th round match against Taeyang Guild.”
※ 27th Round Match
VS TAEYANG GUILD
“Everyone knows the result, right? That’s correct—it was a 3:1 victory. Although we dropped one set, unlike Shinseong Guild this doesn’t require much explanation. Ah, and don’t misunderstand. That doesn’t mean Taeyang is weaker than Shinseong.”
“The reason it doesn’t need much explanation is simple. Taeyang Guild basically has a similar color to our guild. To be precise, their Guardian and Black Star, along with Taeyang’s Black Tiger duo, are extremely similar to our Volcanic Duo.”
Is there a world-class commander? Yes.
Is there a world-class summoner? Yes.
If the Mountain King scatters elementals to dominate the field, Black Star dominates the field with skeletons and zombies. While Hwarang covers the field with quick feet and high activity, Guardian does the same with his Bengal tiger and versatile utility.
“Thanks to that, despite the 3:1 score, the match itself was incredibly fun and fierce. The moment a gap appeared, they bit down without hesitation. It really felt like two fighters in the center of the ring dropping their guards and going at it.”
Who would get knocked out first?
Taeyang Guild desperately launched offensives to learn their current level, while Mir Guild raised their fighting spirit as if to say they could not lose to a roaming strategy that was on a different level from the imitations they had seen before.
After a slugfest that exceeded two kills per minute, the result was 3:1.
Just like against Shinseong, Mir Guild gained a lot from the match against Taeyang Guild and claimed victory.
“Look closely. Shinseong Guild showed differentiation that only they could do. Taeyang showed the precision of pushing their specialty to the limit. What do these two have in common? In the end, they both looked for the answer inside themselves, inside their own guilds.”
“But the guild we’re introducing now is different.”
※ 31st Round Match
VS KIRIN GUILD
“The Kirin match was the most recent, so you’ve probably all seen it. While the first two guilds looked for answers internally, Kirin Guild set a completely different direction.”
What was that direction?
“Overthrow Mir. Anti-Mir. Kirin Guild built their strategy with exact precision to target us. That led to the bot-destroying combination of Flame Queen and Trickster.”
I mentioned it before.
In a roaming strategy, Hwarang and the Mountain King’s roaming is important, but fundamentally the role of each laner supporting that roaming is even more crucial.
An aggressive top laner.
An unshakeable mid laner.
A bot lane that somehow survives.
Kirin Guild had shaken that foundation.
“The Trickster is a supporter with considerable damage and the ability to inflict every type of status effect currently in existence. The Flame Queen is also an ADC whose instant explosions mean her laning is by no means weak.”
Airborne, stun, root, silence, blind—they all fly in without pause. Using every technique the arrows can unleash.
Just as a human cannot dodge rain, realistically it is impossible to dodge all of them.
And the moment even one hits, the Flame Queen’s instant explosion follows. The instant damage is taken, the next arrow filled with crowd control is a guaranteed hit. They continue risk-free trading until the opponent dies.
“To exaggerate a little, one hit means a kill. The only person who could possibly stop the destructive power of this bot duo alone is… well, there isn’t one. Even our Lira couldn’t endure it.”
“In the end Hwarang had to step in. Which means, in other words, that our first option was broken.”
In reality, Kirin Guild prevented Mir Guild from even uttering the word ‘roaming.’ They had forced Mir Guild into a standard laning phase according to their strategy.
But Mir Guild asked the reverse.
Are you serious? You really want to fight us like this?
“Standard means using the standard approach, and if both sides are using the standard approach, this becomes a head-on collision. So what is it? It’s a weight class fight, obviously.”
In the brutal Korean rankings where not a single rank could be discarded, Mir Guild was composed entirely of single-digit rankers.
A weight class fight was actually welcome.
And sure enough, the balance quickly collapsed.
“It was top lane. The Tyrant, famous for his toughness, was pushed by genius Yeonu, and the game went bad in a hurry.”
It was the Tyrant who was currently in charge of Kirin’s ‘instability.’
There were many speculations. Some said he was still adapting to the league, others that the competition level was something he hadn’t experienced in America, and rumors circulated that there were communication problems with the Divine Archer.
Regardless, the important thing was that the Tyrant was shaking, and Lee Shin had not raised Baek Yeon-woo so weakly that he couldn’t punish a single shaking opponent.
“Over the three sets he recorded twenty-nine kills, and our Yeonu took over the match for the first time in a while. And so the final first-half matchup ended 3:0.”
At this point, what was interesting was the relationship between the three guilds.
Kirin Guild, having built an anti-Mir strategy, won against the similar-colored Taeyang Guild and lost to Shinseong Guild, who walked their own path.
Taeyang Guild won against Shinseong Guild and lost to Kirin.
Shinseong Guild won against Kirin and lost to Taeyang.
A rock-paper-scissors relationship was drawn between the three super teams.
“And amid all that chaos, our Mir Guild completed the first half of the match schedule with nineteen wins. A perfect, flawless undefeated run!”
Then.
At this timing, it would be impossible to hold back… right?
“Are you ready, Dragon?”
“Dance!”
It was a frenzy dance time.
* * *
After reviewing the major matches, analyzing the lower-ranked guilds, giving his opinion on the currently trending ‘five-minute copy theory,’ and even enjoying occasional party time, the broadcast that had started in the late afternoon had now passed midnight.
It was time to end.
“Ah, that was fun! It feels like I’ve been healed. How about you guys? It wasn’t just fun for me, right?”
When Lee Shin asked with a smile, the chat filled with messages saying they had fun too, that it felt healing, that they had eaten until their stomachs burst—all sorts of expressions of satisfaction.
“Thanks for looking satisfied. The set is slowly being cleaned up, so I’ll probably be able to broadcast occasionally during the second half.”
Once again, joyful emoticons and super chats poured in.
As he was about to end the broadcast while receiving their farewells, a question happened to catch Lee Shin’s eye.
At that moment, Lee Shin slapped his forehead.
“Ah, that’s right! Look at my mind—I almost forgot the most important thing.”
He had started the broadcast after the breaking season began but hadn’t mentioned the schedule. If he had ended it like this, he would have gotten an earful from Dong-ha.
“There’s nothing.”
There really was nothing.
Lee Shin glanced at his watch and spoke casually.
“We’re going on vacation.”
After a brief silence, the chat window exploded.