When we last spoke to G2 Esports head coach Dylan Falco, he told us that Fearless drafting would be “great” for his side and would increase the impact a coach has on a match. Now G2 have played their very first Fearless best-of-five — a convincing 3-1 victory over Karmine Corp. We spoke to Falco for an interview after his side booked a place in the Winter split final with the win.
Esports.net: How did you find your first on-stage Fearless best-of-five?
Dylan Falco: I thought that this was a very fun experience actually, and we’ve been scrimming Fearless a lot, so I’ve had a decent amount of experience dealing with the format. But doing it under pressure with time restraints was definitely a cool experience. It was one of the most involved I’ve probably been in a best-of-five, so it was very fun.
Lee Jones: You were already known as one of the better drafting coaches, and you’ve said yourself that the coach is more involved now in Fearless.
Do you think that’s a benefit for yourself and G2 then?
So yeah, the Fearless format definitely makes draft a bigger determining factor in who wins the game as a lot of the reliable, practicable picks get removed in the series. So you have to be able to play champs that open yourselves up to being countered and the strategical aspect of it. You can’t just spam the same draft for a full week and play it on stage. So yeah, it’s a coach buff for sure.
It can go both ways. You can be very well prepared, but if there’s things you haven’t accounted for, you can’t see everything they can do, so you can come up with some bad, bad draughts as well. I think it suits us a lot. We have very deep champion pools and we’ve always been a very, very strong drafting team. I think we’ve always been one of the best drafting teams in the world.
That being said, I think today might have had some of the most one-sided drafts I’ve, like, ever seen. Fearless has a lot to do with it, but I also think they were taking some very aggressive picks early in the draft that ended up getting countered — they were also leaving themselves open.
Image credit: Riot Games
Lee Jones: Many people are calling for Riot to implement Fearless drafting permanently as the defacto format.
Would you be pleased to see that happen?
Dylan: I think they should implement Fearless for this full year. I think it’s better for the game and I think whatever is better for the game and for the viewers is better for us. It obviously changes what you need to value in your prep and your players and in everything you do, but I think the benefits far outweigh the downsides. So I know they’re speaking about it next year, but I think they should do it this year.
Once it got to game four and dozens of champions were banned, how are you logistically able to keep track of things? Did you have a long list of all the bans written down to check?
Dylan: At least for me, I’m very good at these types of [things] whether it’s card games or memorising things or stuff like this. I can recall draughts from 8 years ago, like no problem. I have that sort of a memory when it comes to League of Legends stuff, kind of like how those chess players do it. So I have just no problem dealing with the Fearless format. This is kind of in my zone, in my expertise, I think.
How have you found the additions of SkewMond and Labrov to the roster for this season?
Dylan: Oh, I think they’re insane pickups. I’m so happy with our roster this year. I was very super excited. I think the public perception based on our first week of regular season is kind of funny considering how strong we feel we are.
SkewMond is just crazy, he’s just like permanently ranked one in solo queue. The season restarts, 3 weeks later — oh, he’s back to rank one, 2,000 LP, just carrying all the games. It’s very crazy.
Labrov also insane laning, carried I think two or three games today against K Corp. So I couldn’t be happier than to have them.
Image credit: Riot Games
What do you think that slow first week was down to? Simply the new players still bedding in?
Dylan: Our drafts were getting out-scaled, first of all. We were also a bit afraid to take some fights, it was just some jitters of playing with the new roster. Especially support/jungle, they’re the ones who have to start the fights. And we were playing kind of like full melee comps so we had to engage or we lose the game. And they kind of had that pressure around them at a couple of big objective points and we couldn’t really coordinate the plays.
But they’re kind of hard situations to play, it wasn’t easy. And as soon as the drafting put it in easier cases to play and we just gained a bit more confidence, you can see they’re just crazy players and we’re a very good team. So I think it was very, very draft-related. Very, very Atakhan-related and just a bit of jitters of the first week of the season.
Who do you think will be the other team to reach the final and face G2 next week?
Dylan: Oh wow. Before today I thought for sure we’d be playing K Corp and then K Corp again. I think talent-wise they have the most talent of any other team. I wasn’t a huge fan of their approach to Fearless today, but at least from scrimming them, they usually are pretty good drafters in scrims. They come up with some cool stuff, so maybe we just got the best of them today. So I would say K Corp would be my prediction.