🏆 Set 9 @TFT World Championship 🏆 🌍Regional Breakdown - EMEA 🌍 🇩🇪 Germany: 2 🇩🇪 🇫🇷 France: 2 🇫🇷 Despite EMEA coming out on top in the first ever World Championship ever held in Set 3 thanks to @TrainerDouble's magnificent performance at just 16 years old, the reputation of the scene has been in a downward spiral ever since. Going into Set 4 and 5, we still had great top 4 placements, such as @ZyK0oTFT's 2nd place at Fates, or @shircaneTFT's 4th place at Reckoning Championship. Coming into Gizmos and Gadgets, is where the problems began. EMEA failed to make the final lobby, and had a poor showing overall, and despite sending a roster of stacked historical names to the Dragonlands Championships, the same fate awaited us as a region. This had led to some fairly open mockery, in a joking tone or otherwise, from other regions, as EMEA continued to disappoint on the international stage. Throughout my interviews with many top players from other regions, many point out that they believe EMEA play too creatively or flexibly, and this turns out to be a detriment in worlds level lobbies, where players can not get away with playing into slightly subpar lines or item-slamming subpar items in a tempo oriented approach. That being said, Set 8 saw small resurgence in EMEA; with @enzobordonzotti proving he is one of the most talented up and coming players in TFT, with a 5th place finish overall, and @Canbizz_ managed to cap out one of the best domestic seasons of all time with a solid 16th place at Champs. For Set 9 we are sending a roster of truly consistent and capable players, and I wholeheartedly believe EMEA will finally return to the spotlight this weekend. @DarkHydraTFT and Wet Jungler will be representing Germany, and @Voltariuxwow and @ZyK0oTFT will be representing France this upcoming weekend. A healthy mix of veteran, new, and returning talent. A healthy mix of players representing the two powerhouse regions in EMEA. With one goal, to finally elevate EMEA to the high highs it deserves. 🇩🇪 DarkHydra - @DarkHydraTFT 🇩🇪 World Championship Reps: 1x Set 9 AVP: 3.83 Legend: URF DarkHydra is a legendary name in esports for many reasons, and I wouldn't be surprised if it rang a bell for many of my readers. Before TFT he had a competitive career in Starcraft, as well as a dominant run as one of the top players in Dota Auto Chess, but it was in TFT’s inception were Darkhydra really earned himself the respect of his competitors. Once TFT released DarkHydra played the game religiously, and throughout the entire set he DOMINATED the EUW ladder, being the first player to challenger and sometimes gapping 2nd place by hundreds of LP. During this time Hydra began streaming as well, and with the “clickbait” of being rank 1, he was able to quickly amass hundreds of viewers in his early streams. Hydra has fond memories of essentially competing solely vs Alanzq in the first few sets for rank 1, as both players were considerably further ahead than the competition. Hydra’s success both as a player and as an emerging streamer led to his signing for Team Liquid, in one of their first waves of commitments to signing players within TFT. Unfortunately, the lack of professional esports circuit started burning Hydra out, and in Set 4.5 he quit the game, nearly for good. His return to the game happened in Set 7.5, when he heard that official TRCs(a regional/national circuit that would qualify to major EMEA tournaments) project began across EMEA, and he came back to the game and quickly tried to regain the level of play he had last throughout these years. To his surprise, and despite feeling he was terrible at the game, Hydra made it through the qualifiers and would have a spot in the German TRC for Set 8. This lit a fire under him to compete, knowing that if he did will in the national league he would have a direct path to consistently qualify to all major tournaments in EMEA. Set 8 was his hyperbolic time chamber, a long and arduous process of trying to return to his almost godlike form in the first few sets of TFT. And he almost succeeded, being oh so close to closing out a miracle run that would see him qualify to EMEA regionals in Set 8, he needed a 4th place finish in GSC#3 but placed 15th instead, just barely missing out on an incredible return season. Despite this, longtime friend and competitor, @HaidenTFT , who had made a similar return to competition in this set, made it to finals and capped off the miracle run with a qualification to Worlds, so Hydra lived vicariously through him through the end of the season, knowing that next set he would work harder than ever for both players to make it to Worlds together. Set 9 brought consistent results for Hydra, alongside an incredible victory for the DACH team in the Superbrawl(4v4 tournament) alongside teammates @5454TFT , @asadfuego & @MemooooTFT . Leading into EMEA regionals, Hydra took a full week off of work and played/studied TFT religiously, for up to 16h every single day. He worked primarily alongside another long time friend and veteran player, @LallanaTFT , who is considered one of the strongest early game players in the EMEA region. He also prepped with @sologesangtv , and with this prep Hydra was able to dominate the weekend playing URF, leaning somewhat heavily on the Ionia Vanquisher line but overall displaying an incredibly thorough understanding of URF and all of it’s lines. With a cool, calm, and collected day 3, Hydra was able to beat out Zykoo in game 6 and become EMEA champion, officially cementing his return to the elite level of competitors in EMEA for the second time in his career. HIs success, alongside with Wet Jungler's rapid rise into stardom, marks a significant shift in regional power in EMEA as well. Where France used to once dominate, Germany had now joined to make it a two horse race. Coming into the weekend, Hydra remains very confident in his level of play. He despises the cookie cutter lines that URF presents, so Hydra will always try to find an edge through creative play in the midgame and will not always default to picking tome augments in every game like other players. In my entirely unbiased view, I believe Hydra has a very strong chance to make final lobby this weekend, and I would not be surprised in the slightest if he took it all the way and managed to truly fulfill his prophetic return to godlike form by bringing the trophy home for our region. 🇫🇷 Zykoo - @ZyK0oTFT 🇫🇷 World Championship Reps: 2x Set 9 AVP: 4.04 Legend: URF Zykoo is a unique player, and not just for a singular reason. The 24 year old frenchman has a degree in Mathematics(more specifically Statistics), and was first inspired to take competition seriously after seeing Double61 emerge victorious in the first ever TFT World Championship in Set 3. This inspiration was seemingly so strong that Zykoo suddenly found himself at the doors of winning his own World Champinoship title in next Set’s World Championship. Similarly to Title, Zykoo has already been just a single step away from being a World Champion, although some would even argue he has been even closer than that(cough @esportslaw cough). He finished 2nd place in the Set 4 World Championship, falling to Korea’s 8ljaywalking, but all in all this was all a bonus for Zykoo, who was taking every final phase of Set 4 day to day, as he was still studying full-time and could not dedicate himself fully to TFT, making it as far as he did was in some ways a true surprise. In Set 6, he finished his studies, and this is when his full-time TFT career began. Unfortunately for Zykoo, the results have not quite accompanied him since then, at least not in tournaments. In Set 6, Zykoo was just two qualifier points away from making EMEA regionals which was very demoralizing for him. Despite this, Zykoo has a very unique(and successful) approach to ladder. He’s a player that caught my attention every single set in EUW, as while I scoured the ladder to find any interesting players Zykoo always caught my attention. He played few games compared to most, yes, but he always had close to a 25% winrate and a 70% top4, which is insane for a ladder as competitive as EUW. Zykoo claims he doesn’t like to play many games, he believes most players play too much, and instead he spends the majority of his time watching streams from all over the world and studying stats fervently. After a lack of qualifying success in past sets, in Set 9 Zykoo pushed himself to play more games than usual and qualify through ladder snapshots, a mission in which he unsurprisingly succeeded considering his usual dominance of the ladder scene in EUW: As a player, Zykoo does not have a particular style. As a diligent student of the game, Zykoo simply finds an edge throughout his study, both of players and stats, and focuses on optimizing that edge to perfection, usually opting to play around a set amount of comps or strategies instead of trying to make himself out to be the creative flex genius of TFT, a pitfall many top players succumb to regularly. For Set 9 regionals, this of course meant studying the multicaster line and being prepared to execute it to perfection. Zykoo, alongside the elite french prep group of @TrainerDouble , @Canbizz_ , @LyyyressTFT , and @Lescolleguestft entered the tournament feeling confident, and very rarely pivoted from his strategy. Once he qualified for the final day, he knew he would be facing mostly urf players or “TFT purists”, whose gameplan’s would rarely revolve around forcing multicasters, so Zykoo pushed his advantage mostly uncontested, playing a high tempo winstreak style of multicasters and very nearly crowning himself EMEA champion in the process, losing his chance to Darkhydra with a 7th place finish in game 6. Going into this weekend, Zykoo is aware he had to pivot his gameplan entirely since multicasters have been nerfed into the ground. With his raw talent and the unique luck of having the elite french players in his corner, I believe Zykoo is well equipped to make the pivot to URF and still have great results this weekend. That being said, Zykoo has admitted the URF gameplan clashes heavily with his usual playstyle, and has been a massive URF hater throughout the set, telling any french player that would listen that it was mostly a gamble and not a good legend to play. There are many question marks surrounding Zykoo for the weekend, but I believe if anyone will be able to find slight edges in the URF gameplan for the weekend, it will be Zykoo. 🇩🇪 Wet Jungler 🇩🇪 - 😡No twitter😡 World Championship Reps: 1x Set 9 AVP: 3.71 Legend: URF If you told me you were entirely unfamiliar with Wet Jungler as a player, I wouldn’t be surprised. If you told me you were a casual fan of EMEA’s competitive circuit and still didn’t quite remember Wet Jungler, it wouldn’t shock me. The 19 year old German has very quietly risen to the top of the circuit, but has earned the respect of every single elite player in the region along the way. Despite being around all the way since the beginning, including a rank 1 peak in EUW in Set 3 and a participation in Set 4’s regional finals, Wet Jungler had to take a massive stepback from competition to finish his studies and did not really compete seriously at all through Sets 5, 6, and 7. But in Set 8, once he finished his studies and could dedicate himself fully to the game, well….the demon was unleashed. Since Set 8’s inception, Wet Jungler has been an absolute mainstay of the top 10 spots on EUW’s ladder. He also went on to be one of the most consistent tournaments players of all time across two sets, only finishing lower than 25th, once. His results, below: Set 8 GSC1: 6th Set 8 GSC2: 25th Set 8 GSC1: 14th Set 8 Finals: 18th Set 9 GSC1: 40th Set 9 GSC2: 14th Set 9 GSC1: 16th Set 9 Finals: 3rd Regardless of the patch, regardless of the set, Wet Jungler performed consistently. And yet, few knew his name. He doesn’t have any social media presence, he doesn’t stream, and he preps solo. He also doesn’t really believe in stats. Wet Jungler is a player that learns through intuition, he watches streams from around the world, including @sologesangtv , @kevinparkertft and @MemooooTFT in EMEA and even @k3soju and @setsukotft when his german compatriots aren’t live. He learns through hands-on experience, and always has an eye on the top 10 players from regions all over the world. When preparing for EMEA finals, he admits URF didn’t really work for him and instead opted to play TF, but relying heavily on Nilah instead of going down the route of multicasters. With Wet Jungler’s incredible game sense and experience on many different lines, whenever we pivoted to his board we would almost always see him playing the strongest possible comp that was uncontested in any lobby he played, which usually ended up being Nilah. This perfect understanding of the meta and adaptive playstyle saw him post consistent results across the entire tournament, including Day 3 where he finally finished 3rd, qualifying him to his first ever World Championship. Wet Jungler admits this was an incredibly moving moment, the moment he knew he had made it he cried, he didnt care about anything else in that moment in time. All of his hard work had finally paid off, and now fans of competitive TFT would have no choice but to notice him as one of EMEA’s, and maybe the World’s, most promising up and coming players. Going into this weekend, Wet Jungler admits he doesn’t feel any pressure. He has had two weeks now to adapt to playing URF, and he is finally feeling comfortable. He doesn't think it's a guarantee he will make final lobby, and doesn’t think at all he will be a favorite to win it all, but he is very much looking forward to testing himself against he worlds best. It’s his first ever Worlds appearance, but he is confident it won’t be his last. He sees this as an opportunity to calibrate his play against some of TFT’s elite, see where he stands and adjust from there as he takes the next steps in his career. In my opinion, there is no greater Dark horse in this weekend’s tournament than the young german player, and I strongly believe he is poised to surprise the world and finally make a name for himself on the international stage. 🇫🇷 Voltariux - @Voltariuxwow 🇫🇷 World Championship Representation: 3x Set 9 AVP: 4.04 Legend: URF Team: @SolaryTV Voltariux is back, and this time with a vengeance. Throughout an illustrious career, Volta has cemented himself as one of the historically most accomplished players in EMEA, and more specifically, in French history. Before even becoming the behemoth he is in TFT, Voltariux first had a career in WoW PvP esports. This is especially interesting considering the contrast between the high apm required in such a modality compared to his usual APM in TFT, jokingly called “the grandpa” of french TFT due to his slow rolldowns and transitions. But this is mostly a sign of a very thorough and deliberate gameplan from the French legend, slowly putting together every step of the puzzle in his head before executing with lethal precision. Voltariux enters this World Championship weekend representing @SolaryTV as one of the most veteran players on the international stage, having made it in Set 3 Championship, finishing 4th overall, as well as Set 6’s Championship, finishing 19th. That being said, looking through all of Voltariux’s accolades is a task in an off itself, a his Liquidpedia page requires considerable SCROLLING to get through the dozens of tournaments he’s participated in, both community and official, and usually finishing within the top 10 in most of them. Few in EMEA has matches Voltariux’s consistency, as since the Rising Legends circuit started, Volta has qualified to every single Golden Spatula Cup(11/12) except for the very first one on this Set 9, as well as 3 out of 4 EMEA regional finals, only missing in Set 8. His consistent careers also hosts a few high points, including the Superbrawl win alongside the french team in Set 8, and the recent crowning as HexLeague Champion in Set 9.5, maybe the most competitive TRC Championship in EMEA considering the overall strength of the French competitive scene. Throughout the EMEA finals, Volta once again delivered on his trademark consistency, finishing every day of competition within he top 5 spots, including winning the 12 games stage of the tournament outright with a 69 point(nice) finish in Day 2 of competition. As a long time and experienced URF player, Volta has a significant advantage over the rest of the competition. Volta’s has an incredibly strong mental, and I imagine he will be a consistent performer all across this weekend. The only question is will he have the chance to display his mastery of finding win conditions and capping out his board in spectacular fashion as he is used to, and will it happen enough times to catapult him into the top 8 of the standings when Day 2 concludes. Volta leads the EMEA pack when it comes to experience, and he is a surefire bet to finish, at the very least, among the top 16 players this weekend.

EMEA on top of NA The official @TFT account has spoken, the debate has been settled tyvm brand manager i knew u had our backs 🫡 xitter.cf/TFT/status/17193396125…