It does not feel like five years of League of Legends, but as the LPL, LCS, and LCK are finishing their playoffs, World’s Season 5 is upon us. Over that time, many teams have come and gone, but for Thorin, 20 of these team hold the top spots. Over on gfinity.net, veteran eSports journalist Thorin has his top 20 League teams, starting with a fan favorite at number 20:
20. Team SoloMid (TSM) – Active period: March 2012 to March 2013
Line-up:
Top – Dyrus
Jungle – TheOddOne
Mid – Reginald
ADC – Chaox
Support – Xpecial
Accomplishments:
2012 IPL 4 (1st)
2012 Reign of Gaming International Invitational (1st)
2012 MLG Spring Championship (1st)
2012 GIGABYTE Esports LAN (1st)
2012 MLG Summer Arena (2nd)
2012 IPL Face Off: San Francisco (1st)
2012 Season 2 NA Regional (1st)
2012 Season 2 World Championship (5th-8th)
2012 MLG Fall Championship (5th-6th)
2012 IPL5 (9th-12th)
The LCS era has made such matters more difficult to gauge, in the context of the open circuit preceding it, but a very reasonable case can still be made that this TSM line-up is the best North American line-up in history. On home soil, they were dominant against domestic competition, winning six out of their first seven offline tournaments. It didn’t matter which NA teams came up against them, they beat them all when it mattered and put together a trophy collection that will never be forgotten in the context of Western success.
This is a team which have been hard done by in the manner in which they are remembered and characterised. They lost to M5 before they got this line-up and then remained in North America, while M5 remained in Europe. Thus, with both teams dominating their regions, it was always speculated that M5 would have crushed TSM and thus TSM weren’t battling the best. While they did not play against M5 with this line-up, TSM did beat the likes of CLG.EU and win tournaments which featured a number of top European sides.
The biggest black mark on this line-ups’ resume is their inability to win against top Asian sides, famously going 0:11 against elite level Korean teams. Even so, competition between top Western sides and the Koreans was rare and practically nobody was beating them in series during 2012, with the exception of CLG.EU’s OGN semi-final over the new NaJin Sword line-up. With that said, TSM were very poor in many of their games against the Koreans, particularly Mid laner Reginald’s aggressive style was exposed and abused.
TSM’s greatness clearly lies in their success as a Western team and in a time when the context of the era was that Western results still mattered and made you one of the best in the world. That they consistently won domestically is not to be swept aside merely on the basis that they did not achieve much international success when the Asian teams became more involved, towards the latter half of their time together.
International success is important, especially for Western teams, but that does not mean it is the only factor to be considered. Domestic competition carries its own weight and in that respect TSM account for themselves quite admirably and impressively. A team like NaJin White Shield of 2014 may well have played better League of Legends, but this TSM line-up is a greater team, in the context of their time and history.
Check out numbers 19-11 here, and see if your favorite team makes the cut.
