“We played our baseline today,” Evan Verhulst tells me after TSM’s first group stage matches this morning. “I don’t think we popped off, but we didn’t do bad. It’s a pretty boring, average day.”
TSM came third out of the 20 teams in the first lobby of the Year 4 ALGS Championship, which to most people would seem like a good result. But for a team with standards as high as TSM’s, it’s nothing special. The organisation is synonymous with competitive Apex Legends, having lifted the trophy at numerous LAN tournaments across the globe. But Verhulst thinks they need to do better in order to repeat past success in Sapporo this year.
“We’ve been consistently getting top five in scrims, but we haven’t won anything. We’re the most consistent 40-50 point team, but getting to that 60 point [Match Point] threshold has been really difficult. I’m very confident we’ll keep getting at least 40+ points every set, it’s just a matter of getting over 60 points.”
The other difference in Sapporo to Birmingham this time last year is the lack of Phillip ‘ImperialHal’ Dosen. The biggest name in the esport left TSM in May to join a supergroup under the banner of Team Falcons. If losing the player many recognise to be the greatest of all time wasn’t bad enough, TSM also lost their in-game leader (IGL), leaving a seemingly irreparable void in his wake.
“It was pretty difficult,” Verhulst says, lamenting the lack of available players in the middle of a season. Eventually he and teammate Jordan ‘Reps’ Wolfe settled on Nelson ‘zap’ Bangs, a player they admired but had never actually played alongside. Verhulst himself admits it was a “huge gamble”, but it’s one that seems to be working out.
“We have no excuse not to get top two this time around.”
“We ended up trying to tri-IGL, [where] all three of us were pitching in, but eventually zap ended up taking the lead making the final calls because he seemed to be pretty natural; in the heat of the moment calling to do something, which is hard to do if you don’t practice.”
Is there still any bad blood between TSM and the IGL who left them? It’s hard to say, but there’s certainly some competitive needle. “I definitely don’t want Falcons to win. They’d be the worst team who could possibly win,” Verhulst tells me. “I don’t think it’s as strong as it was when Hal first left – it’s calmed down a bit – but there’s definitely still a rivalry there.”
A New Era For TSM In Apex Legends
As for TSM’s own chances? Verhulst is as confident after their first round of matches as he was coming into the tournament. “I’m 100 percent confident our team can win,” he says. “Anything less than top two would be pretty sad.”
Verhulst is likely acknowledging the randomness of Match Point format may come into play here, meaning that TSM could finish the tournament with the most points but without that crucial win to seal first place. Still, he’s confident. TSM’s win percentage in scrims is among the highest and he believes that they’ll pull it out on the day.
“If we get ultra unlucky with like zones or something and we got a third, fourth, or fifth, we can tolerate it – depending on what happened. But if we don’t get top two because we made individual mistakes, that’d be the worst-case scenario… Our team’s been together for a long time. We have no excuse not to get top two this time around.”
I point out that the last time someone uttered the words “anything outside of top two would be catastrophic” was DarkZero’s Rhys ‘Zer0’ Perry at last year’s ALGS Championship, right before his team crashed out of the competition in agonising 23rd place. But the caster’s curse (or, in this case, writer’s curse) doesn’t bother Verhulst.
“If you don’t have that mindset, what are you doing?” he asks, rhetorically. “Are you going to play for third place? Anything less than top two in Match Point is – if you’re not first, you’re last, right?”
An Alternative Bootcamp Experience
While many teams bootcamped in Japan or nearby South Korea ahead of the Championship, in order to acclimatise to the new timezone and surroundings, TSM elected to stay at home in the USA. However, Verhulst and his teammates have been preparing for the shift.
“To avoid jet lag, we set our sleep schedules to the Japan schedule,” he explains. “So we were waking up at 5pm and going to bed at 8am for a week before and it actually helped a lot. I don’t feel jet lagged at all.”
“I’ve wanted to play Rampart forever.”
It clearly hasn’t impacted their performance. While, at the time of writing, TSM sit behind Fnatic and 100 Thieves in the leaderboard with six matches played, they’re well on track to make it to the final on Sunday. Part of that is thanks to Verhulst’s decision to play as Rampart. A Legend who was hardly utilised in the competitive scene just a month ago, now – thanks in no small part to his commitment to the Legend – she’s a meta staple featuring in most teams.
Verhulst explains that Team Liquid made the switch to Rampart first, exclusively on Storm Point, but it was he who decided to use her across all three maps. It’s something he had been championing for a while, but his calls had fallen on his teammates’ deaf ears. Eventually, he wasn’t left with any choice but to force her into TSM’s team composition.
“’I’m gonna be honest, I’ve always been a proponent to play Rampart but my teammates really didn’t want to, so I’m gonna take some credit here,” he laughs. “I’ve wanted to play Rampart forever. I always thought she’d be really good because she’s the only counter to Newcastle.”
With Team Liquid giving him the impetus to act on his gut feeling that Rampart would be a great anti-meta pick, I wonder how he broached the subject with his teammates and persuaded him to use the thought-to-be-useless character on the biggest stage of all.
“I didn’t,” he says. “I just played it. Zap didn’t want me to, but I’m like nah, I’m playing Rampart and we just tried it.”
Nearly every other team followed suit. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Verhulst had waited until today to unveil the Rampart plan on LAN lobbies, causing havoc to the meta and not allowing teams the chance to adapt in scrims leading up to the event. But that wouldn’t have allowed TSM any chance to practice themselves, and likely would have limited their potential.
As it stands, TSM have already shown it is of the most consistent teams in the world, and that consistency shows no signs of stopping. While Verhulst would like to see more of those ‘pop off games’ that can take a team from a reasonable place on the leaderboard to securing the $600,000 top prize, TSM fans needn’t worry. With this mindset in their heads and Sheila in their hands, TSM look well-placed to pull off another of their iconic victories. They’ve just got to get past Falcons first.
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