In the early years of the North American League Championship Series players and organizations banded together to legitimize competitive gaming as a mainstream spectacle. Now, the NA LCS is big business. It costs millions to field a team on that stage, and more than ever the pressure is on players to perform. Rosters are constantly in flux as teams import international talent in the pursuit of winning an NA LCS Championship.
Organizations need franchise players that they can build an identity and culture around. A player to lead their team for years to come. A player who won’t waver when a new patch drops or new players are inserted into the starting lineup. A player that they can count on to hold a team together. A player like Sneaky. "What the f*** is up, professional maid streamer here." (Casting) Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi was born in Winter Springs, Florida, and played competitive World of Warcraft before League of Legends was released https://keygens-and-hack.com/how-to-make-an-amazing-video-game-bot-easily/. "I grew up in Orlando before I moved out to California to pursue my career." "My friends that got me into League, we kinda just played all the games together, we started off with WoW." "Which got us into DotA, and that's how I started with Heroes of Newerth, and moved into League of Legends through that." Sneaky started his competitive LoL career in 2012 with Absolute Gaming and like a lot of small tournament teams from that era, they only lasted about four months together. Sneaky then started his own team called Pulse Gaming with Kenikth, Onionbagel, Kevin and Support Daddy. Pulse, failed to qualify for 2013 LCS summer promotional tournaments at the MLG and IPL qualifier events they competed in and as the team constantly shuffled their roster, Sneaky began to lose confidence in their ability to make it to the LCS. "It's actually really saddening realizing that, because you actually realize that you're not very good as a team." "I remember our preparation was like, alright go look up these guys solo queues." "Whatever, alright let's go. Nothing past that, there was no notebook to write down pick bans, what their plan is." "It was just, pick whatever you feel like basically." So in April 2013 Sneaky joined Quantic gaming. Quantic had previously played under the Cloud9 banner without Sneaky during the promotional tournament for the inaugural LCS split in Spring 2013 but were subsequently dropped by the organization after they failed to qualify. The new Sneaky-empowered Quantic lineup — which also featured Hai, Balls, Meteos and LemonNation — managed to qualify for the LCS Summer 2013 split and re-joined the Cloud9 organization The classic C9 roster, that became one to the cornerstones of the LCS and paved the way for the macro gameplay in North America we know today was born. "And they were the most impressive team in the promotion tournament including Dignitas and CLG who had been demoted there, they steamrolled compLexity three games to none to earn their spot in the LCS." Cloud9 was nothing short of dominant in their first LCS split. The team posted a 25-3 record during the regular season and rolled through the playoffs without dropping a single match. (Casting) To this day, that record still puts 2013 C9 as one of the most dominating teams in NA LCS history. During that first split, Sneaky left his mark on the league. He led all AD Carries with a 6.96 KDA and cleaned up on Ashe, with which he posted a whopping 11-0 record. (Casting) Cloud9 qualified for the Season 3 World Championship. But despite earning a first-round bye, C9 were eliminated by the tournament’s top EU seed. (Casting) C9 and Sneaky continued their dominance into 2014 where they once again won the split. And Sneaky once again sat atop the KDA leaderboard not just for ADC but across all five positions. When you look at the numbers, you could make a case for Sneaky being NA’s best ADC in almost any LCS split he’s played in. "Yeah Sneaky's always been top tier North American AD Carry." "Sneaky was so consistent for this team, he just shows up every single day." Much like C9, he’s the model of consistency. C9 and Sneaky seemed to understand macro play much quicker than the rest of league and Sneaky credits a lot of their success to this. (Casting) They were able to play as a team all over the map, and use Hai’s shotcalling and their overall game knowledge to play around Sneaky and snowball games. (Casting) Between splits in 2014, C9 attended the international all-star event without their mid laner Hai, who was sidelined with a collapsed lung. They went 3-1 in the Group Stage, only losing to Faker’s SK Telecom. They would advance through groups, where they were dispatched by one of the Chinese representatives, OMG Gaming. (Casting) Cloud9 put NA on the map, making it clear that the region should not be overlooked internationally In Summer 2014 Sneaky and Cloud9 were met with real competition for the first time since they’d joined the LCS. "More than ever Cloud9 may not be the first place team. CLG's looking very strong, we also don't know LMQ." "How good are they, how bad are they?" "Yeah I think the team that has benefitted the most from these roster changes is C9."
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