A fond farewell to the NA Challenger Series
The League of Legends North American Challenger Series has officially ended to make way for the new Academy teams. It is time to bid a fond farewell.
The League of Legends North American Championship Series (NACS) has ended with a final competition between E-United and Gold Coin United on Thursday, July 27th, 2017. Gold Coin United dominated the best of 5 series with a 3-1 win and won the final NACS Championship.
For most people, the big draw in League of Legends Esports is the League Championship Series (LCS). This is where the best players are and where you can see the highest level of competition for each region. While the Challenger series doesn’t have the high production value or the high skill level of the LCS, it brought us a lot of entertaining moments.
The NA LCS has a fairly small champion pool when it comes to champ select. The players stick closely to the established meta. One of the reasons I loved watching the Challenger Series was that you were able to see a wider variety of champs. Being able to see Karthus, Yasuo, Riven, and Quinn played is exciting and reminds viewers that just because a champ isn’t played at the highest level, doesn’t mean they can’t be played very competitively.
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This year we were introduced to the new Delta Fox. While they are a disaster as a team, it made for some very entertaining news and created a lot of buzz when it reunited some fan favorites, like Dyrus and Scarra. Who wasn’t excited to watch them?
At least until they started getting wrecked by the other Challenger teams. It was always exciting to see which new teams came into the NACS and if they would be able to battle their way into the Promotion Tournament, and maybe into the NA LCS.
Challenger Series was also our introduction to all the new talent coming up to the LCS. Any teams that were able to get through relegation, came from Challenger. Any casters who we are so fond of now (and Phreak) came up through the Challenger Series broadcast. I can only hope that the Academy system keeps some of these elements, at least with casters.
At the end of the broadcast, there was a wonderful flashback to all the great moments from NA CS. Skip ahead to 58:05 to see it. The nostalgia is real.
So, while we still have the (last) relegation tournament coming in August, this was our final farewell to the NA Challenger Series. I am excited to see what the Academy system brings, but I am still sad to see the NACS go.