FLY Thinkcard: "As of now, we’re making the mistake too many times, but it’s fewer times than in Split 1"

Playoffs bring out the best in competitors, and the first post-season series of the 2026 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) is no exception. The teams are eager to lift the championship in front of the roaring Arizona crowd. The teams paired on the first match of Round 1 of the playoffs, and , had sparred less than a week ago.

The series proved to be a banger, a Game 2 where the victorious team evaded the jaws of defeat, and a surprising comeback to force Silver Scrapes. Unfortunately for the fourth-placed team, lady luck was not on their side, as FlyQuest fell in a close 2-3 series. Head Coach Thomas “Thinkcard” Slotkin chatted with Sheep Esports about bringing out Johnson “" Le’s Shyvana, the process of peddling back the team’s natural aggression, and beating their kryptonite next week: .

Thomas “Thinkcard” Slotkin: “In general, we identified what Cloud9 is good at, and, for almost the whole series, I felt really confident with our drafts. Honestly, the only draft I didn’t like that much was Game 3 because there was another character I could have picked on R4-R5, and I didn’t, but we ended up winning the game. Either way, we were very prepared, and I was very happy with how we prepared our drafts. Whereas in Week 6, I didn’t like our draft in Game 2. Game 3 was okay, but it could have been better. We did a great job anticipating what they wanted to play, and they weren’t happy with most of their drafts.

Thinkcard: Unlike what other teams think, I believe we’re a pretty versatile team. The community thinks we need to play fighting champions, but for the most part, I do think we’re quite smart in how we control the game. The more important thing when facing C9 is what they want to play, and I think that’s our advantage when facing most teams in the LCS. It’s pretty clear what the enemy team is going for and what they’re good at. We are slightly more unpredictable because we have more tools in our champion pools. For example, in Game 5, playing Akali against Gnar is an uncomfortable thing for the enemy. It didn’t go our way, but stuff like that makes us pretty creative when drafting situations unexpected to the enemy but advantageous to us.

Thinkcard: It’s definitely worrying to make this mistake. If I were to compare Game 3 of the Week 6 series with Game 5 of the playoff series, we picked Mundo, ran in, and died at the first objective, even if it didn’t look very good. I think it’s a maturing process for the players. They have to be able to get into these situations and recognize when to avoid them. Whether they make the mistake once, twice, or three times, we’re improving over time, which is why we’re getting really competitive against all the top teams in the league: TL, LYON, and C9. With a little more maturing and allowing ourselves to zoom out and see the bigger picture, I think we will do better. As of now, we’re making the mistake too many times, but it’s fewer times than in Split 1. Even in Split 2, it’s decent, but it can be better. Hopefully, throughout the playoffs and into Split 3, we will be more intelligent in our fight selection.

Thinkcard: I don’t think it’s the pressure. Most of our players played pretty well, and, in the end, we faltered because of the team’s decision-making. As I said, in Week 6 we made similar mistakes, so I don’t think it’s pressure. I think they're really impressed with how they rose to the occasion and performed really well. I would say it’s just a work in progress. Obviously, the mistakes aren’t good, but we’re improving. The scrims are getting better because we’re getting more valuable scrims than we had in the beginning. We’re playing better fundamentally, and we can practice the situations we need to. It’s going to be a repetition thing: how long it takes us to understand and master fight selection.

Thinkcard: We think the champion is strong. Its weakness is the early game, but if we can get your camps and scale, she starts scaling up the passive stacks, and when you get green smite, you get the health shield. That’s really nice because you have all that armor and magic resist from your stacks. Overall, it scales really well, and when you get your ultimate, you become a god. When your ultimate is on cooldown, you farm until it’s back up. It’s a strong champion, and in the Game 3 draft, the weakness is if they pressure you hard during the early game before Shyvana can get her ultimate. As soon as I saw that the early game was going fine, I knew that Gryffinn would have a good game.

Thinkcard: It’s hard being a young roster and long a game like Game 2 when we probably should have won from that situation. It’s hard because there’s no secret word that you can say. I’m trying to look at the players to see if they’re okay, and everyone looked to be. I know that, based on Game 1 and Game 2, I was going to be really happy with my drafts for the rest of the series. I’m really confident we were going to be in good spots, and credit to the players for coming back after Game 2. They played well in Game 2, and Games 3 and 4 had some moments in Game 5.

Thinkcard: At this point in the series, Kalista and Renata should have a pretty good match in the bot lane. Though we should be able to get 2v2 pressure pretty easily, so when we have to burn flashes and summs, that shouldn’t really happen. We should have pressure, but these other dynamics shouldn’t occur. In Game 2, our jungler tried to mind game the enemy jungler by going for top crab instead of the one bot. He was thinking the enemy was going for the top crab, so we lost pressure bot as a result. Many small things happened during the game, but basically, the way it should work is that the enemy team should have no damage. We have Kalista and Renata, and they had Swain, Sej, Gnar, and Jhin. If we decide not to fight that first dragon, even though our bot lane made a mistake, the game should be in a good spot. We even saw how close the late-game fights were. They had mountain soul, and Azir wasn’t even in that fight, so it’s even harder for them. We could see, if they hadn’t snowballed their lead, how hard it was for the enemy team to play. It should have been hard for them to snowball into Kalista and Renata, and Azir should be allowed to scale once the locked Swain. If the gold is anywhere near even at the 18 or 20-minute mark, I think it’s hard for the enemy team to win. Azir is going to kill everyone, and they can’t dive because we have Kalista and Renata. I was pretty happy with that draft, and I don’t think we should lose that game.

Thinkcard: Fight selection. Cloud9 is a team that also loves to fight everything. I think that’s something both teams have to fix. Especially for us, we have very confident players with great mechanics, so they’re used to mechanically outplaying their enemies in solo queue and throughout their careers. It’s easier for me to have to deal with these types of players and get them to think more intelligently about their fight selection than to go the other way. I almost always design rosters with an overconfidence problem rather than an underconfidence problem because it’s easier to move the needle back to an intelligent position.

Thinkcard: I think they’re a good team that does well against us because they’re very smart with their fight selection and macro. They have some good carries in Isaac “" Chou and Cho “" Min-seong. Choi “" Jae-hyun is very smart about moving around the map. I think, if we play well and avoid nerves and frustration, we should play well against them. Even compared to a month ago, we’re way better than what we used to be. I think we are the better team, and if we play well, we will win. I do think Sentinels have good gameplans, annoying draft tools they use sometimes, and they’re a good team. We’re not going to underestimate them because they deserve to be in the playoffs fighting for the top spot. I think it’s going to be a good match, and hopefully we’ve improved enough to topple Sentinels.