Always making it so far, even to the Finals, but always failing – will this be the fate of Rogue this Summer as well? Check out our LEC Rogue Summer Preview.
Some sides seem to be set by a Curse, especially in the LEC. Look at Fnatic who wants to beat G2 Esports as a secondary goal next to making it to Summer Playoffs and ultimately this year’s World Championship. Rogue has another achievement they want to reach: breaking the curse and finally winning the LEC Title.
The organization joined the LEC in its first season after rebranding from the EU LCS, but didn’t have the best start. Rogue was one of the weakest teams with the first lineup, of which Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek, who played for Unicorns of Love. Before the 2019 Summer Season, Rogue revised its roster, signing a whole new team apart from Oskar “Vander” Bogdan and Finn “Finn” Wiestal, and they acquired Kacper “Inspired” Sloma and Emil “Larssen” Larsson in the process.
The new Rogue team made it to the top 6, finishing 5th place and getting to 4th in the Summer Playoffs in 2019, getting knocked out by FC Schalke 04. They signed a new ADC before 2020, so now Steven “Hans sama” Liv was a part of the team, and Rogue finished 5th in the Spring Playoffs, 1st in the Summer Regular Season, but only 3rd in the second half of the Split. They went to Worlds that year, but only managed to win one match.
Last year after adding Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu and Adrian “Trymbi” Trybus to their midst, Rogue had a great performance making it to the top. Then they battled it out with G2 Esports in the Spring Regular Season for first place but lost. After fighting their way through the best of the European region, they fought MAD Lions in the Finals, but got reverse swept by Irfan “Armut” Tükek and co after getting a 2-0 lead. They finally got first place again in the Summer Regular Season, but at the cost of not making it to the Finals, finishing 3rd at the hands of Fnatic. However, they went to Worlds and had a much better showing than last time around, finishing in the top 11 teams.
Inspired and Hans sama left the team after the 2021 Season concluded, as both traveled overseas to compete in the LCS. In their place, Rogue signed Markos “Comp” Stamkopoulos, who returned to competition after spending 6 months on the bench of Team Vitality, and Korean import Kim “Malrang” Geun-seong. With this team, they could put on a very dominant performance in the Spring, averaging a 30:36 game duration. This was mostly thanks to Malrang’s aggressive playstyle which secured the early game for Rogue, after which most teams couldn’t stabilize, but even if they found a way, Comp proved to be a great Carry player for the team.
For the first time in the history of the organization, Rogue went on to win a LEC Spring Regular Season, finishing with a 14-4 record. They had a great showing in the Playoffs as well, beating Misfits Gaming 3-1, then reverse sweeping Fnatic in the Upper Bracket Finals. But when they made it to the last match of Spring, they lost before they could even play, as G2 Esports blew them out of the Rift and won the series 3-0.
This was a painful experience for the whole team, but mostly for Odoamne, who is always at the top of the contenders, but could never make the breakthrough – will Rogue be able to break the cycle this Summer?
