League of Legends Worlds 2024: MAD Lions KOI, Kittens or Lions? (8/20)

The League of Legends 2024 World Championship kicks off in Berlin on the 25th of September. A total of 20 teams will compete to succeed T1 at the top of the Riot Games MOBA world hierarchy. On this occasion, Sheep Esports brings you a daily feature on one of the teams taking part. This September 12th, the seventh episode of our series focuses on MAD Lions KOI, the 3rd seed from the League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC).

Being placed at the bottom of many tierlists at the beginning of the season, MAD Lions KOI stand unaffected by their critics and have earned a qualification to Worlds 2024 following a surprise victory over G2 in the opening round of the LEC Season Finals. It made sense to place MDK among the lower teams in the power rankings since 4 of their 5 players had no LEC experience and came from the ERLs. However, the judgment has been showed to be hasted, as in spite of MDK's players's lack of games at the top level, their cohesion rooted in several splits played together in the ERLs (under the banner of Movistar Riders) translated in their LEC showings, allowing such good results.

Funnily enough, for a rookie team that was supposed to scale throughout the season, their best performance date from the Winter Split where they finished 2nd. It wasn't until the Season Finals that they managed to find back their early season form with a 3rd place finish that was close to be a 2nd. Between the beginning and the end, MDK indeed was struggling on pretty much every aspect that they could struggle with: individualities issue, lack of cohesion, frequent choking and inability to find an adaptation to the meta.

It goes without saying that for such a young team, being at Worlds is in itself an excellent opportunity to learn, however, it would be unfair to reduce MDK's Worlds journey to that of a tourist that will observe and gain knowledge, their season have in fact told everyone never to full count down the Spanish Armada.

Being the descendants of Movistar Riders' 2023 roster, MDK adopted their playstyle that was already unique in the ERLs. Basing their game on a lot of proactivity on the map from every player and shaking their opponent's foundation, MDK have had excellent moments of early game macro and decision making.

In the middle of the Spanish armada, the captain is obviously Javier "Elyoya" Prades Batalla, MAD player since 2021, the only veteran of the roster gladly took the leader role of his team with mixed results. Although he seemed very well integrated in his team as soon as the first games were on, something that was far from guaranteed considering his carry high-resource identity, the Spring and Summer Splits saw him struggling to be on the same page as his team, causing major team cohesion trouble. His synergy with support Álvaro "Alvaro" Fernández del Amo, as effective as unmatched in Winter, was nowhere to be seen afterwards.

This is where sololaners Alex "Myrwn" Pastor Villarejo and Bartłomiej "Fresskowy" Przewoźnik were able to compensate and allow MDK to diversify their playstyle. Originally, the gameplan consisted of enabling botlane -> using botlane's pressure and roam to control the map, with Myrwn and Fresskowy's change of gameplay in the end of the season and their respective improvement in the league, MDK was also able to play games from the midlane to their sides.

Two players would also be key in MDK's creativity on the map and in the draft : Myrwn and David "Supa" Martínez García. The spanish adc indeed played the roaming game much more than the others botlaners of the league, and could even be considered as a semi-sololaner at some point with the way of playing his waves on the botlane that resembled toplane wave management. Myrwn, on the other hand, showcased his cooking identity, with toplane picks such as Corki, Lulu or notoriously strange AD Nidalee top that sent many people back in 2013, he has been the main tool of MDK's difficult - but not impossible - drafting.

However, while MDK's strength shine very bright when they win, once the Spanish armada starts to sink, it does so very badly. It's impossible to talk about MAD Lions KOI's season without mentioning their crippling addiction to choking. The spanish crew has indeed fumbled many huge leads - something that was already frequent for MRS in the ERLs - peaking at their 1-2 defeat against BDS in the Summer Playoffs where MDK had all the win conditions in their hands but still lost regardless. Although Supa and Myrwn's names come out frequently when talking about choking for MDK, it has been blatantly clear that this was a team issue since the problem lies in a collective inability to play a game-winning Macro when all that remains in the game is to pull the last trigger to end the game.

Objective management and sidelanes pressure have been on the centre of MDK's difficulties to end games, with many times their carry being catched due to poor vision set up or missed tempo. However, sometimes, MDK simply hardchoked fair 5v5 after major mispositionning mistakes, so the issue is not only a macro one.

This is where Elyoya will once more be the guide that MDK will need to perform. Since he was the only player that had played in the LEC in the roster, he therefore is the only one who has participated in a World Championship, and is now on his fourth presence in a row at the biggest stage. Although he was an integral part of MDK's consistency issues, he still was the one player that, when he would rise up, would lead his team to great success. Elyoya's good position in the game and set up have never been without a strong team performance behind it, if he is on a good game where he can unroll his plan with ease, MDK will follow - and usually win.

A major difference for him is the pressure surrounding his team, in 2021, 2022 and 2023, MAD had strong rosters on paper and were either Split winners or runner-ups, meaning that MAD had high expectations coming into Worlds. However, the last two years have seen MAD performing below the expectations at the grand stage, delivering a poor Swiss stage last year, and failing to exit the play-ins in 2022. Malfuctionments were also clear in MAD's gameplay in these tournaments, either between the mid-jungle and the sidelanes as in 2022, or in-between the mid-jungle itself last year. This season, we can expect less issues alike.

These Worlds can also be seen as a training ground for a MDK roster whose potential is certain and who could very well stay very stable from this year to the next season. The Play-in stage looks to be very tough, but in the range of MDK, but whatever the result, these Worlds will be a massive learning moment for the 4 rookies of MDK.

You'll find below the 5-man roster of MAD Lions KOI: