With the news about GGS leaving the LCS, I’d like to look back on the Golden Guardians’ and how things just never quite seemed to fall in place for them.
2018:
Went 1-8 with roster of Lourlo/Contractz/Hai/Deftly/Matt, was Locodoco’s last coaching assignment before he more or less left the scene as staff, Hai retired middle of the season, GGS starts 5-5 with Mickey, before losing all their remaining games and missing playoffs.
During a scrim session with TSM, Mickey gets solo killed 3 times by Bjergsen, rage quits scrims, and flees to his room before booking a ticket home to Korea.
2019:
GGS fields a roster of Hauntzer/Contractz/Froggen/Deftly/Olleh, and finishes tied for fourth in spring, before losing a 5 game series to Flyquest (who are promptly 3-0’d next week by Super TL).
In Summer GGS starts 4-2, before turbointing games to play a three way tiebreaker for 6th place and the last play off spot, lose to Optic in the last leg of the tiebreaker (who are promptly 3-0’d by CLG).
2020:
In Spring, GGS finishes 6th place fielding a roster of Hauntzer/Clozer/Goldenglue/FBI/Keith, with a 1-1 record against the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place teams. After Week 6, Keith is replaced by Huhi, and GGS is swept by a Flyquest in losers who would go onto beat TSM and EG, before falling to C9 in finals.
In Summer, GGS had it’s second best playoff performance, after finishing the regular season 9-9 (they’re best regular season record by % until 2023), sweeping TSM in the winners bracket, before losing in 5 games to TSM in losers, after being swept by TL in a series to qualify for Worlds. (This is the TSM “our wrath will be swift year”, before they went 0-6 at Worlds)
2021:
In the offseason, GGS loses Closer/FBI/Huhi/Damonte to 100T, Hauntzer to TSM Academy. They field a roster of Niles/Iconic/Ablazeolive/Stixxay/Newbie. They finish 3-15 in Spring, missing playoffs.
In Summer they sign Solo/Chime to replace Niles and Newbie (demoted to Academy), and start Summer strong beating reigning champions Cloud 9 in Week 1, before finishing 14-31, making Summer Playoffs, and being promptly swept in losers by Cloud 9.
2022:
In the offseason GGS fields a roster of Licorice/Pridestalker/Ablazeolive/Lost/Olleh, and finishes 9-9 before being swept by Cloud 9 in losers, once again.
In the Summer, they demote Pridestalker/Lost to Academy, Stixxay rejoins the main team from being a positional coach, River joins from Dignitas. GGS finishes 5-13, and takes CLG to 5 games in the first round of losers. (Every single losers matchup went to 5 games in 2022 Summer, before C9 3-0’d 100T to win the split).
In the offseason, Gori and Huhi join the team, and 2023 Golden Guardians is assembled.
Some Thoughts (Opinion):
Before Summer 2023, GGS has only ever been swept, been swept or won/lost in 5 games (They lost to NRG 3-1). They have only won 5 Best of 5 Series in organization history, 4/5 are during 2023.
2023 was the first season where GGS recorded more a +% win rate in a regular season, (or more than 9 wins depending on how you count the carried over record in 2021, where they technically won 11/27 games in Summer.
I feel like GGS tried, I don’t know if the rest of NA fans agree, but I think they tried their best. There were definitely some head scratchers, and midseason substitutions I probably missed, but I tried to give a good summary of results and roster changes.
I also think Inero might be up there with CoreJJ in positive voices looking to develop the NA scene, and his work to bring Champion’s Queue to life, and it’s subsequent nonuse by NA pros has endlessly depressed me.
Even as someone who over the years lost interest into the LCS, GG was always a team that I hoped would at some point just manage to get a high enough placement to be recognized in what they are doing. I’m glad that in their last year, they would finally make that international tournament in MSI and almost make Worlds too.