What Evil Genius' Seven-Man Roster Could Mean for the LCS

The LCS’s First Seven-Man Roster

When Europe’s Evil Geniuses first announced their addition of Mojtaba “Shacker” Aflaton and Christoph “nRated” Seitz, many fans believed this was the end of EG’s five-man roster that had remained the same for over a year. Until then, any new additions to a team came at the cost of benching or removing another member, unless the new player was joining specifically as a sub, coach, or analyst. In EG’s announcement, they claimed they were adopting a seven-man roster, where Shacker and long-time jungler Snoopeh would be alternating between the role of jungle, and nRated would be filling the role of analyst. The team had a strong showing immediately after these changes, winning their first game with Shacker jungling, and suffering a close loss to Team Alternate, who Evil Geniuses are still yet to defeat.

Any fans’ fears that Snoopeh would be relegated to being a sub were assuaged when Snoopeh reappeared to jungle against Meet Your Makers in EG’s last match of week six, bringing the team to another victory. Since their adoption of the new roster, Evil Geniuses boast a record of five wins and three losses, with Snoopeh playing in three of the victories and Shacker in the other five games. If other teams believe this model to be effective and decide to adopt it, the LCS could see big changes to the way subs participate and the way teams prepare for their matches.

The Current Standing of Subs in the LCS

Until now, subs have had both sporadic and impactful appearances in the LCS. Unfortunately, this impact is typically negative for their team, as many subs have joined ill-prepared to play in the LCS or even with their own team. This is not the subs’ fault, as many of them are skilled and even well-known players in their own right, but rather stems from a lack of experience and practice with their team in a LAN environment like the LCS. Regardless of who the sub is, teams tend to underperform when missing part of their starting line-up, with the most painful example being Copenhagen Wolves’ 0-12 start to the European spring split without their star-player Bjergsen.

The flip-side of this situation is when a sub comes onto the team and performs so well that the team replaces their previous starter with him. This happened in the North American spring split with Wildturtle’s appearance on Team Solo Mid and more recently with Ecco’s explosive entrance on Velocity E-Sports that led them to their upset against Vulcun. While these situations are rare, both of them resulted in a near-immediate roster change to bring the sub on.

What a Seven-Man Roster Means for Subs

The fact that impressive and LCS-ready players such as Ecco and Wildturtle are waiting in the wings as subs makes a case for teams to adopt a structure that would give these subs more exposure. At the same time, giving subs a chance to play with the team more would help to prevent the team from being weaker when members of their starting line-up are gone. The seven-man roster style would allow for both of these situations. In addition, more active subs could bring better knowledge to the analyst role.

Many LCS teams have begun to adopt coaches and analysts, and nRated was brought on to Evil Geniuses primarily to fill the role of an analyst. While being a former pro player himself certainly improves Nrated’s ability to review EG’s games, EG’s members have specifically referred to him as a member of the team. Being a player on the team and sub for Krepo means nRated will have the additional perspective of what it is like to be in-game with EG’s members. This will lend him additional insight into how the team works, who is making calls, and what went right or wrong when he evaluates one of their games.

How Seven-Man Rosters Affect the Games

The LCS has done wonders for increasing the number of champions we see played at a professional level. The spring split saw about 75% of champions being played, and the summer split has had its fair share of interesting picks. However, barring the occasional strange pick (Karma or Malzahar Jungle), most teams have fairly predictable strategies or play styles that lead their players to selecting the same handful of champions throughout the split. Seven-man rosters would introduce a new element of variety to this, as the additional members will have champion pools different from their counterpart in their role. In addition to bringing their own champion pool, they will allow their teammates to bring out picks that might not have worked with other team compositions.

Along with opening up their teammate’s champion pools, seven-man rosters force their opponents to be prepared for different scenarios. More and more teams are focusing on pre-game preparations and planning, and seven-man rosters will force them to consider a wider variety of situations. Some teams, despite having worse records overall, consistently beat better teams by nature of their play styles, such as Meet Your Makers beating Lemondogs this split, or Ozone Giants beating Gambit Gaming in the last. Additional members on a team will help shore up weaknesses a team may have to another team’s play style by bringing new champions or strategies to the table.

 

How the seven-man roster works out for Evil Geniuses and whether other teams decide to adopt their model remains to be seen. The structure opens up a lot of flexibility for the team, its members, and their opponents and should western teams embrace it, it has the potential to change the way the LCS is played.