Immortals have had a tumultuous season so far after choosing to bench veteran jungler Xmithie at the start of the 2020 LCS Summer Split. As a result, the League of Legends team decided to bring up its Academy roster for the third week of the season.
The 29-year-old revealed in an interview with Travis Gafford, however, that the decision to switch rosters was a “last minute” decision. The coaching staff and players made the call on Wednesday, June 24, which was a day before their Academy games that week.
Xmithie also said that he and the rest of his teammates on the Academy team hadn’t practiced against any LCS squads up to that point in the season. In fact, they had only scrimmed against fellow Academy teams up to week three. As a result, the org was “second guessing” the decision to switch rosters but eventually pulled the trigger on the move.
Immortals ended up earning their first win of the season this weekend at the hands of a few veterans like Xmithie, AD carry Apollo, and support Hakuho. The weekend wasn’t completely clean, however. They lost their second match of the weekend against an unbeaten Cloud9 roster looking to go back-to-back as LCS champions.
The team recently parted ways with head coach Thomas “Zaboutine” Si-Hassen and general manager Keaton Cryer after an abysmal start to the summer. Xmithie confirmed that coach Adrien “GotoOne” Picard has been helping out with the team while the organization searches for a new head coach.
In their breakout match, the newest iteration of Immortals overcame a 3,300 gold deficit to defeat Golden Guardians in just under 35 minutes. Immortals AD carry Apollo Apollo Price led the charge, securing an unofficial quadrakill and even stealing a drake as Ezreal to propel his team back on top. Insanity’s debut was also impressive, going deathless on Orianna against Golden Guardians’ Tanner “Damonte” Damonte.
But while Immortals took the victory, it was Golden Guardians that made some avoidable mistakes. During the drafting phase, it was confirmed that top laner Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell accidentally locked in the incorrect runes. Instead of choosing the Conqueror keystone, Hauntzer ran with Fleet Footwork for his Mordekaiser pick, resulting in significantly less sustain within prolonged brawls. The Golden Guardians solo laner finished the match with a disappointing 2/5/0 performance.
This put a good precedent for LCS teams to use their academy rosters more often instead of recycling old veterans. There’s plenty of NA talent in minor Leagues, but which don’t get time to shine due to the stubbornness of teams using the same players over and over again, even though they’ve fallen off from their prime.
This season has been rough, but with their first win under their belts, maybe Immortals will start to turn things around for the better as we approach the midway point of the season.
