Like many other teams League of Legends, it is now Golden Guardians who announced on Wednesday that it would be his academic team who will participate from January 14 in the LCS Lock In Tournament.
Within the lineup announced by Golden Guardians for the LCS Lock In Tournament, we find the toplaner Tony top, the jungler Iconic, the midlaner ry0ma, AD carry Stixxay and finally, the support Chime. Most of these players will participate for Golden Guardians at Academy Spring Split. We find Stixxay in a botlaner role, who leaves his coach position to replace Violet, the botlaner recruited by Golden Guardians following his 2021 Worlds performance with Australian team Peace. The latter is in the inability to participate in this tournament due to a visa issue.
It is in a video posted by Golden Guardians that Danan Flanger, the manager of the team, announces that visa problems should be taken into account, due to many changes within their roster. According to him, all these concerns should nevertheless be resolved. before the start of the LCS regular season. He also affirms that during this Lock In, the LCS team of the structure will continue to train with substitutes and that the entire roster should be present from the first week of LCS.
Other teams are also experiencing visa issues lately, as TSM which will also send its academic roster to Lock In. As for Dignitas and Cloud9, the two teams announced to send un hybrid roster, made up of players from their LCS team and their academic team.
With the new wave of Covid hitting the world, the first part of the LCS Lock In Tournament will be played remotely, due to the number of positive tests exploding in Los Angeles. The pandemic has created many complications as for the international trips of the players of the different teams and we still don’t know if the pre-season Knockout Stage and LCS Spring Split can be organized face-to-face.
The LCS Lock In Tournament will take place from January 14th to 30th this year. Each team will be able to participate remotely from its premises. Right after, it’s the LCS Spring Split which will start on February 5th, the opportunity for Golden Guardians to do better than their eighth place obtained last year on the 10 participants of the Spring Split.