Carzzy reveals shocking insights into LEC scrim culture and playing with Hylissang
“First split we won LEC, we were never winning scrims.”
In the most recent episode of The Sack Down podcast, guest Matyáš "Carzzy" Orság let loose and revealed several interesting insights into the way LEC teams and players operate.
Alongside hosts Jakob "YamatoCannon" Mebdi and Christian "IWillDominate" Rivera, Team Vitality's AD carry discussed playing with Hylissang, scrim experiences with previous teams and players, and some shocking Worlds stories.
After playing with Hylissang for two years, Carzzy knows exactly what the veteran support player is like in and out of the rift. (Credit: Wojciech Wandzel/Riot Games)Playing with Hylissang
Having coached Hylissang in Fnatic from 2020 to 2022, YamatoCannon knows exactly what the controversial support player is like.
“With Hyli, it’s like, you have to convince players to do something irrational. Hyli always comes into teams and usually when it’s off-season he’s chilling and then when he comes back he’s playing, like, Pyke on solo queue, he’s feeling out the champs. And then the first, like, four weeks of scrims he’s going to run it down mercilessly. And then, in those moments, you have to convince your teammates: ‘guys, you have to believe in him. If you believe in him, he’s going to reward you.’”
As for Carzzy, having been paired up with Hylissang in the bot lane since late 2022, first on MAD Lions and then on Team Vitality , his experiences with the Bulgarian support are very similar.
“I was telling people: ‘guys listen, when Hyli comes back from off-season he usually doesn’t play solo queue so you guys need to be, like, you cannot get tilted, okay? You need to just focus on your game and it’s gonna get better.”
According to Carzzy, most of Hylissang's bad-looking moments come from a lack of trust in him from teammates.
“Hyli is the type of person who wants to make plays, but nobody was, like, on the same page. And then he would go in and nobody would see it, you know? And when he wasn’t going in the issue is that nobody was doing anything.”
Not enjoying scrims
Carzzy admitted during the podcast to not personally enjoying scrim sessions, even going as far as admitting that, during the year in which he won the 2021 LEC Spring and Summer splits with MAD Lions, no one in the team wanted to play scrims.
“In the winning roster with Elyoya, me, Armut, Humanoid, Kaiser, I don’t know, we didn’t want to scrim. We didn’t even scrim, you know? We were cancelling every single day after, like, four games, just going home.”
And yet, despite the poor practice and constant cancelling of scrims, the team won the LEC all the same.
Even before the grand finals in 2021 against YamatoCannon's Fnatic, Carzzy admitted to be playing very little league at the time.
“Before finals I wasn’t even playing League. When we were going against you guys, I wasn’t even playing League. I was playing Baldur’s Gate. I had like 150 hours on Baldur’s Gate before the finals.”
Despite the lack of practice time, however, Carzzy and MAD Lions defeated Hylissang and Fnatic with a quick 3-1 in the grand finals of the 2021 LEC Summer Split. (Credit: Michal Konkol/Riot Games)The issue did not lie solely with him, however, as it was apparent that the whole team simply did not enjoy practicing very much at the time.
“I come to Humanoid’s room, he’s playing World of Warcraft with guild. He’s like, ‘we need to finish scrims fast today because I have a raid, you know?’ And stuff like this was happening the entire year.”
In the end, though, the 2021 MAD Lions roster's lackadaisical approach to League of Legends ended up catching up with them at Worlds against stronger opposition, where the team got eliminated in quick 0-3 fashion by DWG KIA in the tournament's quarterfinals.
“At Worlds we tried scrimming a bit, but then after one week of scrimming we got, like, demolished by Cloud9 in scrims and then we just cancelled scrims.”
Going out with a bang
In the closing stages of the podcast's episode, Carzzy revealed an even looser approach by MAD Lions previous roster with a story about the team at the 2020 World Championship.
“When we were in China (Worlds) 2020 and we dropped out, we went clubbing. We went to some Chinese luxurious club, and that was a really good experience in my life. Just teleporting around Shanghai. That was a lot of fun. I puked in some Chinese cab driver’s car … I just puked there and then I remember just lying down in front of the hotel.”
With the 2024 League of Legends World Championship taking place in Europe in less than a month's time, fans of the region will no doubt be hoping that the LEC teams present a more serious and professional approach to practice and to the tournament itself.
If you would like to watch the whole episde of The Sack Down podcast, you can find it below:
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Image source: Michal Konkol/Riot Games
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