It had to end this way, the end of the General's Command

I didn't want my first story to be about a player quitting, I really didn't want it to be about TSM. This is not to say that I don't like TSM, I enjoy watching league as a hobby, and in all honestly, love watching every single game, digesting it, analyzing it, breaking down individual plays and trying to figure out what the teams were thinking (“…without comms” as MonteCristo would say). However, I think the end of one of the most polarizing figures in League of Legends and the retirement of a player who has been around the NA scene since its inception is worth a mention.

We will all miss TheOddOne, as I said, he is one of the longest standing players in NA; being a part of one of the most polarizing teams in the region and at the height of his career nearly inventing a new type of jungle that he played to great success. Love him or hate him, cult follower or not, respect the Maiokai or not, he needed to be replaced.

After their extremely disappointing finish in the 2013 Summer Split, TSM vowed on its VODs, and on Reddit to its fans that it would get better. Despite qualifying for worlds for a 3^rd time the team was not happy and team owner Reginald was not happy and did not want to look at another 14-14 season. Wanting to see his brand grow and wanting to be able to focus on the business that he had nurtured and grown, Reginald decided to sit himself and search for better talent.

Acquiring Bjergsen was seen as the best offseason moves of any of the NA teams and gave fans new hope for the return to the dominance of TSM. Bjergsen delivered and surprised many fans with his insane lane mechanics, his excellent champion pool, and his adaptibility within the scene. Bjergsen in many games was able to carry the team out of situations they should never have won through completely out-playing many of his lane opponents. This became the mantra of TSM, “Don’t lose lane, don’t lose game”. As long as they could come out of the lane phase even, close to even, or ahead, they were able to easy out-engage, and out-team-fight the other teams in NA.

While TSM was able to ride this new wave of successes to a 22-6 season, in week 11 of the split and into the playoffs it seemed that TSM was having a hard time adapting. Even in their interviews the TSM members talked about how they might have been struggling with adapting to the new patch and how they needed to just spend more time learning the changes and really figuring out a strategy for how to attack finals.

Reginald had shown that his team was capable of this showing in the 2013 Summer Split finals that he too can pull a rabbit out of the hat, switching over to double AP comps having Dyrus play Karthus in the top lane and having the team as a whole play more Chinese-Style push comps with WildTurtle going on Corki and Xpecial picking up Fiddlesticks to challenge the meta in the finals and ultimately win them their 4^th spot to worlds. The fans blew these losses off knowing that this was entirely possible again and trusting that the master-planner Reginald would again come up with a solution and work with the team.

The only problem with this was that the fans that turned a blind eye to the one sore spot on TSM’s record, which was the team’s extremely disappointing record against Cloud9, only going 1-3 against them during the split. Much of this success was attributed to Cloud9’s stellar consistency and their large champion pool, not to mention the rise of Sneaky and LemonNation as one of the best bottom lane duos in NA. However, many of the keen observers talked about the importance of the matchup of one of the most influential positions in League of Legends; simply because of the direct impact it places on the rest of your team and the opponent’s team, I am talking, of course, about the jungle.

As fans of the NA scene we were none too familiar with TheOddOne v. Meteos matchup as it had been featured a number of times during the coveted TSM/Cloud9 matchups. However, one common denominator of these matches was simply: Meteos was out-jungling TheOddOne at every turn. In the matches during the split we saw Meteos go 10-9-27 to TheOddOne’s 3-13-20. However, these scores don’t tell anything about the outcomes of the games where it was obvious that Cloud9 seemed to understand something that TSM didn’t out-maneuvering and out-pushing TSM at every turn and really showing the cracks in their lineup. Many players could see this to be particularly true in the mid lane where the record setting Bjergsen seemed to be able to do nothing against the ever-stalwart Hai and not being able to pressure or push the way he wanted simply due to the lack of lane-pressure and playmaking by TheOddOne.

This all changed though when the teams got 2 weeks off for the playoffs as they both were head-and-shoulders above the other teams in NA and earing their weeks off to prepare for their eventual opponents in the playoffs. Cloud9 was easily able to stick to their plan and swiftly defeat their opponents in Curse who had just come off of their emotional victory over Dignitas. However, TSM’s games told a much different story.

While CLG was on the rise and their team was starting to look better and better and, perhaps, like the true 2^nd ranked team in the NA it took multiple throws at multiple parts of the map for CLG to lose game 2 to TSM and arguably go on tilt for TSM to squeak back into the series and come back for their win. Many experts claim that if it wasn’t for Xpecial landing the mid-game Thresh hook in game 2 of the TSM/CLG final that CLG would have easily rolled that game to a 2-0 victory, but here we were with a repeat of the 2013 Summer Split final between Cloud9 and Team SoloMid.

The games were a stomp.

Cloud9 easily won all 3 games only giving TSM a small 20-25 minute window in game 2 to come back and an even smaller 10-15 minute window in game 3 before both of the games were out of control in Cloud9’s favor. The TSM members reacted by posting on social media about how they simply were out rotated and Xpecial even apologizing to his fans about how that was the “worst BO5 he had ever played” but the stats and the game footage said something different. These games were not simply the result of map movement, they weren’t the result of team-fighting, it was clear that there was one common denominator that was really holding TSM back, it was TheOddOne. The final match result of C9s 54-6 to TSMs 6-54 (KD) over the 3 matches didn’t begin to scratch the surface of how poorly these matches went for TSM. Again, with TheOddOne being the biggest culprit to this contributing 2-13 across the 3 games to this score. While, it may be true that this was 33% of TSMs kills it also was nearly 25% of TSMs deaths, way more than his fair share of deaths. Again, the scores would show that Dyrus did an equally unimpressive 1-13 across the 3 games but this was with Dyrus having 2 favorable matchups. Twice Cloud9’s Balls picked Jax into Dyrus’ Renekton knowing that he could easily rely on his jungle player Meteos to out-pressure TheOddOne and make up for Jax’s early game disadvantage and played it out perfectly as TheOddOne hardly showed his face in lane and watched helplessly as Dyrus gave away his early game advantage.

Further, fans watched on as TheOddOne who would have had the late-game Jungle advantage on a Feral Flare jungler in Xin’Zhao vs. Meteos’ Elise simply have little to no impact as Cloud9 was able to take map advantage before the Feral Flare was ever in range of being a threat to team fights or champion picks. Cloud9 seemed to be two steps ahead of TheOddOne on every turn even baiting him and Bjergsen into 2 blue buff steals/kills in game 2 allowing Hai and Meteos to simply walk over them for the rest of the game and set TheOddOne's jungle plans back 5 minutes in each mid-game where his Feral Flare should have mattered. You can call this a small champion pool, you can call it poor jungle mechanics, whatever the reason, it was obvious that this matchup was so tilted that this was a major flaw in TSMs game plan, and was something major that the organization failed to address in their team changes from the end of Worlds 2013 to the beginning of the Spring Split for this year.

I actually wanted to write another article at the end of the split, probably wise that I didn’t as anyone who actually reads it would have thought I was a TSM hater talking about how TSM was done as an organization. It wasn’t until the recent shake ups in teams that I realized that the problems that had seemed so obvious to me were obvious to others as well and that the ever-steadfast Reginald was on the case and ready to make the moves he needed. While it is true that TheOddOne stepped down one could speculate that there was already something in the works as just as soon as Reddit had wind of TheOddOne stepping down we found out about the newest TSM acquisition in Amazing. While it may be a large step-up in talent it was announced that TheOddOne was going to stay on as a coach and would be a part of the organization bringing it another set of much-needed eyes to help the team learn from its mistakes and learn to adapt to this new movement-heavy meta that they might be able to actually do some damage in the international scene.

The good news for the team and really the main point in the article is this: TSM as an organization has been around way too long and enjoyed way too much success that anything short of winning NA and making worlds would, at this point, be considered a colossal failure. The team at this point has had a strong grip on the NA scene and has shown that they’re willing to change players in order to accomplish their goals. While it may not have seemed that this was a problem until now, looking at games going back almost a year now it has become obvious that the TSM as we knew it needed to change in order to go on to greater things.

This was even confirmed by TheOddOne who on stream, very emotionally, admitted that he wants what is best for the organization, and that he knew there was an opportunity to get better talent, and he wanted the organization to do this. TheOddOne was even the one who claimed in a GameCribs interview back in s3, when Chaox was replaced, that TSM isn’t the kind of organization that would sit someone for performance reasons, yet here we are thinking “What a difference a year makes”.

While speculation is still out on how good of a shot caller Amazing is, and we all have been able to see and study his awesome plays that he put out with Copenhagen Wolves during the EU Spring Split 2014, there is no doubt that this was the correct move for TSM. It is agreed across the board that this is a jungle upgrade for TSM in the same way that Bjergsen was for Reginald. However, TSM fans are no longer cowering in fear of the upcoming split wondering if they would even be able to crack 17 wins.

I believe that this is a statement by Reginald that he really is taking to heart his business and he really is closely watching his team and making the correct decisions for his team’s ultimate success.  While his decisions will always remain controversial and the moving of Xpecial to Curse and acquisition of Gleebglarbu is still a looming topic of conversation, TSM fans can rest assured knowing that Reginald will be closely watching everything that his team does and has now proven that he is willing to make the tough calls for the overall success of his team.

Whether it be a change in the meta, a change in strategy, a change in players or even a change in management, we have been able to see that TSM as an organization is willing to make the moves that it must to keep going as an organization and understands the sacrifice that is necessary to be champions. We all know that sometimes having the best players isn’t enough, you need the best team, and I believe that TSM has proven that, possibly more than anyone, they understand this and are willing to do what is necessary.

We will miss you TheOddOne, we will miss our General of the rift and Yordle-Hater extraordinaire. It is unfortunate you were the one that got caught up in the cross fire of team synergy and were an unwanted casualty. While you will still be around in the scene and in our hearts I believe that Reginald, TheOddOne, the rest of the TSM family and fans are all sleeping better knowing that the organization continues to strive to be the best and understand what it takes to be champions.