Part of why T1 just go back to standard meta drafting in LCK can be summed up by something Keria said at one point last year or two. He talked about how if you want to be the best player in the world, you should be able to play in any meta. And it makes sense from a player perspective. Contrary to what the LFN cast has been saying, T1 isn't a meta dependent team. If T1 is a meta dependent team, why is their worst placing at literally anything 3rd in the past 2-3 years? Regular season is the best time to be experimenting stage picks as well as adjusting and improving on picks they might be bad at. There's always a choice to be made whether or not they play to win or play to learn and improve. Fearless draft in LPL might have been the advantage that they needed to improve their versatility in draft compared to LCK. It's why I think GenG actually had a disadvantage in draft against TES because their overly winning ways made analyzing winning and losing drafts difficult.

The V&A museum in London is amazing. I preferred it to the British Museum

I'm not surprised that Riot would actually be involved somehow in the Saudi tournaments. It would probably explain some of the assets that came to the tournament. Also, there's nothing inherently wrong with countries with questionable policies and moral stances wanting to host their own esports tournament. I think people in video game communities these days put far too much emphasis on good morals and the obsession with it drives me nuts. Like yeah Saudi Arabia isn't the best country in the world when it comes to human rights, but there's always going to be governments in planet earth that don't agree with our view of what human rights should be. I do agree that if you virtue signal like a mofo and you decide to participate in their tournaments then you're a hypocrite, but I do not agree that being a willing participant of EWC necessarily means you have no qualms on how the Saudi government runs or agree with them by association. These days it's sickening how absurd people will go into lengths about flaunting their moral superiority to judge if people are "qualified" to be involved in their communities these days or hell play a video game. Like anyone can enjoy video games and watching our favorite players play, but I think people tend to forget that everyone has different cultural and moral backgrounds that they lived with.

On the 1 week tournament part i agree with Thorin , i heavily prefer them over the worlds 1 month lenght style. Everyone knows that if a team is on fire it is SO MUCH EASIER to keep momentum up if u keep playing back to back then if u get a week break between big games where each team has a chance to reset mentally.

Fucking McDonald's does bearnaise in Europe?

What about making a rule in competetive where teams are only allowed 1 teleport per team, it would create some more interesting gameplay in the lanes where u no longer have TP. Perhaps u mismatch so one team runs TP mid the other runs it Toplane and that could create interesting new dynamics, diffrent meta picks etc. We also get combat summoners in more lanes which should make the lanes much more active and less about playing PvE for 15 before first big teamfight where farmers like Chovy simply just has a leg up on everyone else.

When will we see some fire thumbnail faces from Thorin?

Thorin with an ABSOLUTE banger at 53:01

YAMATO IS BASED ASF, Snatch is my favorite movie of all time hands down

Take a shot whenever Throin says "the joke is". The joke is you'll get wasted or die if you attempt it.

The whole thing started when a *Gen G fan (Chovy fan) said that the loss doesnt count it was an unserious tournament blah blah and people started mocking and trolling him and he kept getting emotinal about it and was posting constantly about it

Sodaron was here 🎉

if youre on ukrains side then be happy sending them your money while all prices go up around u smh

Kinda surprised at the fact that nobody seems to care about the fact that almost the best NA team ever, with great macro is really just a Korean team. It's like taking current HLE and being shocked that they might randomly perform against Asian teams, whereas G2 despite being in not the greatest form atm is at least still actual western players.

Jacob Wolf is such a clown, perfect example of an American who doesn't know there's a world outside of America.

T1 win does matter, what kind of burnt ass ideas are yall cooking here

Lpl loves team fights.. lck run you all around the map and get gold lead..hence riot wants lpl to win by nerf all lck play style No need to complain.. riot just doing riot things . Helping lpl all day long

so in other world GenG didn't do the golden road since the event will be permanent now. so yeah ~

I don't think people give Tian the recognition he deserves as the true GOAT of match fixing.

Why is everyone so surprised? They took Chinas money with a smile, why wouldn't you take Saudis. hell you most of you Euros and Asians gave them that money back at the pump every day. Then lets not act like the west isn't fucked up in its own way. We are all dirty and all the virtue signaling makes me laugh.

They should have played taric supp using the space groove or 5th age skin during the tournament 😂😂

glad thorin remembered diamonprox - one of the greatest moments of watching esports to me was iem katowice vs both azubu teams and him flipping off blaze after the semi finals.

Honey mustard is king

dGon with the L for the episode imo. We don't care that you went to Saudi for the bag, but stop pretending like you have to be a saint to not go to Saudi

honestly, have listened to this podcast for years. And must say that monte and thoorins record being correct in there projection is quite bad xD Was it not like 2 weeks ago Monte said GenG was potentially the best team ever?? And now they have lost the first game in the tournament?? Yikes...

masterclass episode from thorin, really enjoyed watching this episode. All the analogies to non-esports related political issues, ability to theory-craft alternatives / thought experiments, pop culture references , kino

The irony of Americunts complaining about a nation "sports-washing" is beyond laughable

seeing thorin pop out of his chair for the first time was crazyyy

2:16:46 I can't deal with "going quietly into the night" or "solobolo". Also always make fun of "momentum".

Thorin is so annoying. Free Monte.

Screw Saudi. Can esports paid for view be like pokeGo? Long live LFN.

I will miss Monte on the show but as long as we get him on SI i can survive. Yamato is the best there could be to replace monte.

I hope we get to see yamato more!! Was so badass seeing dgon host ewc i was in chat spamming

Look at it this way : IF you disregard any personaly opinions about SA and ONLY look at it from a pure factual/logical way then it makes total sense that we have a large Esports scene in Riyadh if they are willing to invest alot of money into facilities etc It saves Riot alot of money , teams get a place where they can go to bootcamp and prepare for tournaments etc , the infrastructure can be built up and be kept in one location and thus improve production quality. I see no logical downsides to alteast MSI/EWC beeing held in Riyadh yearly and only upsides. Now ppl will go on and make stupid arguments about human rights or whatver but that BS doesnt hold up anymore. Nobody actually cares what so ever about theese topics when push comes to shove! (ppl just like to say they care cause thats they gotta do to not get cancelcultured)

Just desserts for the "if you don't like it then leave" crowd to be barred from locking in their fruity character skins at a Saudi Valorant tournament.

Stop motion Thoorin

EWC was far away from failing. You failed by keeping DGon on LFN. Bunch of hypocrites

That opening by Thorin guilted me into calling my parents.

I get the point about an increased Worlds' reward pool as the logical conclusion of the encroaching snowball effect, but wouldn't this kill a lot of the leagues inherently? Or am I misunderstanding? The amount of teams profiting from Worlds is limited, and it's often the same large orgs? If orgs have to depend on that revenue isn't it not worth the participation? I don't really understand what funds the smaller ineffectual teams in LCK and LPL even, which you hope would be continue to thrive in coming years. Edit: the Saudis and other 3rd party tournaments could fund the orgs additionally, but the participating teams would consistently be the big orgs anyways

No junglers that trash talk? Do we all forget Lord Gilius?

as saudi arabia starts covering more and more esports it becomes harder and harder to enjoy my hobby, sucks

👍

For me worst part was the english costreamers I was aware of were fucking morons every other time they opened their mouth lmao. Had to settle for Baus, ffs. And I mean, for fucks sake.

Thorin is esport and Ralf Reichert created esport. So Ralf Reichert is Thorin's father. Ralf has joined Saudi, one could argue the dark side. aka Ralf Reichert is Darth Vader, Thorin Luke Skywalker, and has to defeat him. Very nice

Although I agree on the opinion (opinion, not fact!) that this ewc shouldn't count for the golden road, this monte take on "everyone without a microphone doesn't deserve an opinion on whether this is the end of the golden road or not, nobody cares about your opinion" is one of the most disgustingly arrogant takes in general I've seen in a long time. Esports, any sport is nothing without their fans, it's basically just a circle jerk between talented people without their fans, even these media platforms where mildly qualified pundits talk about esports is nothing without their fans and listeners. What's the qualification for "having a microphone" to have a relevant opinion, anyway? If you want to discredit the opinions of casuals, do it with logic, instead of whining that "y'all's opinions don't matter".

I found it hard to find english coverage of the event for some reason. Wasn't interested in costreams, I ended up watching on some Thai stream or something lmao

EWC shows that Thoorin's TSM "AFK Mid" LeChoke'vy James can still choke with another Super Team.

I agree with monte about the golden road. How about we wait for GG to win before continuing with the golden road. They lost the best team in a world. Maybe jet lagg lack of practice ext ext. But let's not forget everyone and there momma assumed GG was going to sweep this tournament. Maybe if they win I'm hype for worlds and see if they can do it.

Thorin world record for interruptions during one attempted Monte rant .