Golden Guardians and Team BDS kick off LoL Worlds 2023 with inaugural NA vs. EU qualifying series

This year’s League of Legends World Championship, set to take place in South Korea, marks the first implementation of the Worlds “qualifying series,” where the fourth seeds of the LCS and LEC will battle for a chance to represent their region in the remainder of the tournament. The series, featuring the LCS’ Golden Guardians and the LEC’s Team BDS, will occur on Oct. 9 and signals the unofficial start of the international competition in 2023.

The new addition to the format came to fruition following the removal of the LCL from World Championship qualification last year, opening a spot that Riot decided would go to one of the other major regions that does not already have four representatives. Yet a win in the Worlds qualifying series is just the beginning of a long road ahead: That team will be thrown immediately into the play-in bracket, where they’ll meet other competition from around the world.

Despite being the fourth seeds of their respective regions, both Golden Guardians and Team BDS have spent the 2023 season writing their Cinderella stories as the underdogs, taking down some of the most storied organizations and players in the process. These two teams—and many of their players—now have the opportunity to appear on the Worlds main stage for the first time, giving their regions a better shot at overall performance.

Here’s everything you need to know about the journeys these two teams took to get to this point—both yet again prepared to make the doubters believe.

A golden opportunity

Since the organization’s debut during the 2018 LCS season, Golden Guardians has consistently been glossed over by fans and players alike, long considered a team that has sported successful talent but fails to put together rosters that deliver. Nearly every split, the results were the same: pick up a few coin-flip wins but ultimately fall to the bottom of the standings. Yet Golden Guardians surprisingly retained a faithful following nonetheless due to its drive and passion for the LCS as a whole.

Although 2023 became the most successful year in the organization’s history, the circumstances didn’t appear to be very different for the new iteration of the Golden Guardians when the season began. The veterans—Licorice, Stixxay, and Huhi—as well as the newer faces—Gori and River—struggled to find their synergy in the first few weeks of the Spring Split, falling to all of the long-standing top teams in the LCS and seemingly adjusting once more to a mediocre run.

After those eight weeks, Golden Guardians made their way into the Spring Split playoff bracket through lower-bracket qualification, where the miracle run began. First, it was a five-game victory over the stars of 100 Thieves, then a surprise sweep through the momentum of Evil Geniuses, and finally a burst through the wall of FlyQuest—then staring directly at Cloud9 in the grand finals. Yet the final boss of the LCS was a challenge the underdogs were not ready to overcome.

From there, the conversation no longer became wondering what Golden Guardians could do, but rather how far they’d be able to take this momentum. Between the organization’s first MSI run to a dominant Summer Split finish complete with the most wins the organization had ever accrued in a single split, the team had cemented themselves as one that was not yet ready to end their year without making more history—even without taking home an LCS trophy.

A major highlight of Golden Guardians’ success up to this point has been the resurgence in the careers of the team’s veteran players: Licorice, Stixxay, and Huhi. The three, though sporting a number of accolades throughout their LCS careers, had strayed away from the heights they had previously reached. Yet throughout this season, it was Licorice and Huhi stepping up as Golden Guardians’ shot callers and initiators with Stixxay as the staple carry, a strategy that afforded the team constant victories—even earning all three players spots on the top two all-pro teams.

Of the three veteran LCS players, Stixxay emerged from the shortened Summer Split with not just another career pentakill, this time on Aphelios, but the highest KDA of his entire team at 5.35—the fourth-highest for an ADC in the split, according to Leaguepedia. Huhi sported this accolade during the Spring Split with a KDA of 5.24, demonstrating that the former teammates had quickly rediscovered their synergy with one another, becoming one of the most important components of Golden Guardians’ rise to the top of the LCS.

Should Golden Guardians make it past Team BDS—in the first time these two teams have ever faced one another—they’ll join Cloud9, NRG, and Team Liquid in the remainder of the Worlds bracket, though they’ll be forced to climb further through a play-in start.

Hanging with the big dogs

This year, the LEC served as the guinea pig for what may be a massive international overhaul to the competitive League circuit at some point in the near future. Instead of the standard Spring Split and Summer Split with two playoff brackets, the LEC season was split into three: winter, spring, and summer—then followed up by an overall Season Finals.

While the new format allowed fans to indulge in games earlier and more frequently, a new weight was given to each individual game, no longer allowing teams to place their hopes in comebacks during later weeks. This wasn’t a particular issue for teams like MAD Lions and G2 Esports, who had long sat at the top of the LEC, though it forced teams that had historically struggled to step up or quickly fall—leading to the meteoric rise of Team BDS.

The team’s debut in the LEC last year, stepping onto the main stage after spending time in the LFL, was less than memorable. Though the team was lined with promising names in every role, when they stepped onto Summoner’s Rift together, something seemed off. Team BDS’ strengths were almost entirely in their top and jungle pairing of Adam and Cinkrof, which wasn’t enough to assist the team through a season where the meta revolved around the bot lane. This led fans to quickly write off the team as yet another expensive failed attempt at shaking up the league.

Due to these results, Team BDS opted for a near-complete overhaul of its existing roster heading into the massive changes of the 2023 LEC season. The team promoted jungler Sheo and ADC Crownie from its Academy roster to the main stage, while also welcoming Labrov to the support role from Team Vitality in an attempt to revitalize the career of the young player. On paper, it seemed like BDS was taking a lot of risks with this roster but starting with a strong foundation to build upwards.

What was a team that had spent the entirety of their debut year struggling to make an impact quickly became one that, in this new shortened format, adapted to their strengths and weaknesses to locate their consistent win condition—the resurgence of their new ADC, Crownie. In his time away from the LEC for the 2022 season, Crownie had cemented his status as a dominant bot laner within the LFL, bringing his understanding of a bot lane-focused meta back onto the main stage this year.

While piloting some of the year’s more meta picks like Aphelios, Zeri, and Xayah, Crownie aimed to rejuvenate his career, putting the years of CROWNSHOT behind him as he now led BDS to various group and playoff performances—including a second-place finish in the Spring Split playoffs.

After earning qualification into the Season Finals bracket, Team BDS found another opportunity to test themselves in best-of-fives, with the possibility of both winning the entire LEC season and Worlds qualification on the table. Once more, the team’s bot lane duo proved to be a pivotal part of their success, matching and overcoming dominant opposing pairs like G2’s Hans Sama and Mikyx as well as Fnatic’s Noah and Trymbi, ultimately falling short to the latter with a fourth-place finish in the Season Finals.

Yet ending an impressive season in this position has afforded Team BDS one last shot at competing in Worlds: a battle against the LCS in the Worlds qualifying series. As Adam is the only member of the team that possesses previous experience competing in an international tournament, Team BDS enter this bout with a fair amount of pressure on their shoulders.

But if they’ve shown anything this entire season, it’s that they can’t be counted out, regardless of the odds.

No room for top lane islands

In comparison, the playstyles of these two teams are strikingly similar. While both Golden Guardians and Team BDS place great trust in the potential of their bot lane, making for what is sure to be the focal point of teamfights, it’s the priority on making their top laners factors in the game earlier on that separates them from other teams in their respective regions.

By the time the mid game comes around, Licorice and Adam are oftentimes sporting a substantial lead over their opponents thanks to their junglers. And if both teams aim to use the same strategy during this series, that means one side must do so more efficiently than the other. Ultimately, the members of both teams have spent the entirety of the 2023 season proving that they are more than capable of holding their own individually and as a team, making them great contenders for the Worlds play-in bracket—though only one can get through.

The Worlds qualifying series between Golden Guardians and BDS will take place on Oct. 9, a day prior to the start of the 2023 World Championship play-in stage—which one of these teams will then join to continue their run through the international tournament.