Is the New Era Fnatic Ready for the International Stage?

In my last post  I was talking about if TSM was ready for MSI. I found it only fair to then talk about their EU counter parts Fnatic. 

Is Fnatic ready for MSI?

Fnatic beat Unicorns of Love in the EU spring finals in a very close best of 5 series, going all the way to game 5. Fnatic is a team that likes to find fights around the map and against UoL they showed this with many of their games having 20+ kills. This amount of kills isn’t normally seen at the LCS level of play. You can just point to the fact that they were playing another team in UoL that also likes to find fights maybe even more than Fnatic.

With this aggressive play-style they then can turn into a snowball and can be very effective. But also they need to be more careful against higher caliber teams at MSI. With the team being so young (with 4 members being new to the LCS and Yellowstar the only guy that stayed around) this team still has a lot of room to improve and the success they have already is a huge step into the right direction.

Young and Ready?

Like I was saying before this Fnatic team is very young and doesn’t have a lot of experience on the international stage. How much will this effect the teams performance? We have to wait and see how they play at MSI and then we can give a true review on this team on the international stage. But not every person on this team is brand new to the pro League scene. Yellowstar, the teams support, has been on this team for many splits and has experience on the biggest stage League has to offer, the World Championship.

Last year, even though his team didn’t go far at Worlds, Yellowstar still has the experience that comes from going to Worlds. This knowledge and experience can help prepare his team for MSI and not go into it only thinking about how big it is and focus more on their gameplay.

Player Performance

One of the most important parts in League is player performance. How well does Fnatic stack up against other League talent? Huni, Fnatics new top laner, has shown that he has some real skill at the game and has carried his team in many games over the spring split and the playoffs. He is the key piece for them to win games at MSI and maybe upset teams. If Fnatic can get Huni champs like Rumble or Hecarim, he can carry games for them.

Huni isn’t the only piece of the puzzle that the team needs to get going to really try and make an impact at MSI. Fnatics jungler Reignover also is a huge piece of the Fnatic puzzle to become successful on the international stage. With getting MVP during spring finals he has shown that he is a top tier jungler in EU and maybe can show his worth to the world at MSI. Reignover showed us how good he can be on a champ like Rek’Sai with getting a quadra against the Unicorns of Love and that if the team needs him to help carry a game that he can step into the role and perform. 

Last Thoughts

This Fnatic team has the tools to become competitive on the international stage with additions like Huni and Reignover. This team just needs more time to get experience under their belts and more time to get to know one another. 

At the end of the day, I still think Fnatic will have some trouble at MSI with some of the better teams. But this will be a great learning tool for them to grow and learn what they need to improve on to become a world class team.

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