Following on from a convincing start to the year,
BDS occupies a strong position at the end of the first two weeks of the summer split of
LEC, the
League of Legends EMEA Championship. The Swiss outfit shares second place of the standings with SK Gaming, with four wins and just one defeat. On Sunday, BDS had a hard-fought victory over Karmine Corp. French toplaner Adam "
Adam" Maanane looks back on this narrow victory over the Blue Wall.
Despite being even in kills with Karmine Corp, your team had a strong gold lead. Can you explain why?
Adam "Adam" Maanane: "We know that KC is not really a good mid game team so we just tried to abuse them with a good macro and baiting them in certain spots of the map so we could secure what we wanted. That's kinda what we did, when they tried to attack bot after we get Herald, but I managed to TP there and they didn't get anything, and then, like on one push we get T1 mid, T2 mid. We could see that they could not really answer our acceleration and we created a really strong lead from the start, and we were pretty confident that we would win.
Adam with his former teammate, Raphaël "Targamas" Crabbé
Despite your advantage, the game felt very close. For example, you had to steal Nashor from them. Why was that?
Adam: I think we were really strong inside the game, but we did a lot of mistakes. I think it comes from the choke. We choked a lot, kind of stupid errors. Usually, we don't do that, but I guess it's KC specific because we have like three French players and no one wanted to lose so...(laugh) Yeah, I think we kind of had our mind a bit stressed about it so that's why we did some stupid mistakes, but I think we wouldn't have done that against any other teams, just KC specific.
This game you played Yasuo to counter Twisted Fate. What makes it such a good counter pick?
Adam: First, because Yasuo can already pressure at level 1 as a melee with E-start, which not a lot of toplaners can do. If you are a bit scared to trade level 1, you can also start Q and force the prio, and Twisted Fate is all about having the lane control, having perma push, etc. But against Yasuo, it's really hard to do that, and also Windwall is really strong against TF because he cannot stun. Overall, Yasuo has a good laning phase and his kit kinda counters TF.
Adam: I mean... I know Canna when he was at T1, so I played against him at Worlds, even when I was with Fnatic in 2021, I was facing him in scrims as well. I've really admired him, because first if you get to play for T1, then it means you're really strong right? Like all of those players, I can only have respect for them. It was also really important to me that I showed I'm able to have a really strong lane against a player like him and try to capitalize on this.
You just played against KC, your former team. Does it feel special to play against them? Are you happy to see them in LEC?
Adam: Yeah, I mean, I'm always really happy to play against them because it's also the only team where I'm kind of allowed to do banter against because of course it's my old team and I have a certain proximity with KC fans and the French community so I always have this banter between them and me. You know, we just banter, right? It's really friendly and it brings something more to the game than only just a win. So yeah, I just like this.
Both in Winter and Spring, you guys finished third with really close best-of-fives. Do you think this split can be different? Do you think this split can be the one where you take it to the next step? And why would that be the case?
Adam: Our ambition is really clear, we want to win the Summer Split. We've been only on the right path since the beginning of the year, we've only been improving, but as you can see, all of the teams in LEC stepped up as well. You can see if you compare the average level of LEC from winter to now, I think there's a big difference. So, it was also important for us to improve, so we could maintain our lead compared to other teams. Our ambition was always clear since the beginning of the year, we want to at least win one split and we want to go to Worlds. And this is the only split we can do it.
What is BDS missing today to be a team on the same level as G2, for example?
Adam: I don't think we're that far from G2. If you check the Spring,
our best of 5 against them was really close actually, even though we lost 3-1. I do believe that the gap between G2 and us is closing slowly, day by day. Hopefully in Summer, the gap closes and favors us. So, we'll see, but our eyes are on the trophy and the split so we'll do whatever it takes.
In the toplane, who do you think is your biggest rival?
Adam: I would say it's Photon lane-wise. I believe Photon is one of the strongest laners you can find in the LEC right now. It's always a challenge for me to face him because I know that I cannot go with a chill mindset against him. I know that I need to be fully focused from the start.
I would like to ask you one bonus question from the Sheep Esports discord: Who do you think is the best French toplaner in League of Legends other than you?
Adam: A French one, I mean you don't have a lot. I do believe Cabochard, right? Because you kinda like French toplaners, I do believe that so... So yeah probably Cabochard.
Lastly, someone gave me a special leak today about you: When you were a kid, you played a lot of a video game called Habbo Hotel. One day you used the credit cards of your parents to pay a lot of stuff in the game. Could you tell me why you did that?
Adam: I think it was just like a kid mistake, right? Like you just call a special number, it gives you a code, then you enter the code, and it gives you like money inside the game. I think I credited like maybe 3000 euros from my parents to this, and they were like really mad at me by the way. But yeah, it was fine. It was just like a kid mistake and then I understood that it was pretty bad to do that, so I didn't do it anymore.
But I imagine with how it's turning out today they are happy that you played video games.
Adam: *laughs* Yeah, I guess they should be pretty happy."
Header Credit Photo: Michal Konkol/Riot Games
