UPDATE (April 9th 2021): Lallana has finished fourth at TFT Fates, taking home $16,000.
Original article (March 21st 2021): One of the UK’s consistently highest ranked Teamfight Tactics (TFT) players, Lallana, has qualified for the TFT: Fates Championship.
Lallana is one of six players from European Qualifiers to progress to Fates – Riot Games’ next big global TFT event that will feature 24 of the best players in the world.
The competition will take place from April 7th to 9th. It also features a $250,000 prize pool, an increase over last year’s TFT Galaxies Championship prize pool of $200,000.
French player Doubl61 – who won the Galaxies Championship last season – has not qualified this time round. And neither has Voltariux, who also previously attended the Galaxies Championship.
64 of the best players from Europe took part in the European Qualifiers, drawing 40 players from EUW, 10 from EUNE, four from CIS and 10 from TR. This started on March 6th and the final eight players also fought for a prize pool of 30,000 euros.
Riot announced the full format of the TFT EU qualifiers and dates back in January.
How did Lallana qualify for the Fates Championship?
Lallana consistently moved from round to round with each phase of the competition until there were eight players left. While Lallana did make the final eight, he did not reach the top four after four rounds, which would have given him automatic qualification.
Instead, Lallana ran the gauntlet in a Last Chance Qualifier event, which took the bottom four players from the main qualifier finals, and another four players who qualified through placing fifth and sixth from Round 2 groups.
The Last Chance Qualifier had the same format of points distribution and four rounds of gameplay, but players needed to place in the top two to make it to the Fates Championship.
Lallana started off strong with a first place finish in the first round and ended with a Chosen Adept Yone and Slayers composition, but then finished fifth and sixth in the next two rounds. With three players tied at 17 points (Lallana, Un33d and Cynarr), the final round was the decider.
The fourth and final round looked hopeful as Lallana was on a win-streak through the mid-game. With his closest rivals in points all dropping out, it all but punched his ticket to compete at Fates along with ZyK0o. However the true winner were the fans as they got to see a 3-star Duelist Azir by luffy57773!
A number of the other Regional Qualifiers have also finished. North America has determined its final four competitors and so has Oceania, which only gets one seed. The other regions will conclude in the coming days and weeks.
Riot Games has also recently announced its plans for the incoming Set 5 for TFT which will be titled ‘Reckoning’, as well as a new experimental feature known as TFT labs.
‘I definitely want to at least make top 8 at Fates. Nothing would be worse than making it to Worlds and dropping out early‘ – Lallana
Lallana shares some thoughts on making the Fates Championship, his thoughts on Set 4.5 and what his goals are at the competition.
“It feels amazing knowing I managed to make TFT Worlds, considering the strength of the competition in EU and with how badly I performed in the last year’s qualifier. I spent a lot of time just working on what went wrong the first time around, and in the end the hard work paid off. As for being the sole UK representative, it’s not so surprising as I feel like TFT is not a game that I’d consider popular to a UK audience, but hopefully I can do the UK proud.
For the final itself, I knew I was probably not making it after Game 2. In the first game I maybe got a bit unlucky to get sixth place, but in the second game I made a lot of decision-making and positioning errors which ended up costing me a winnable game.
So I decided to gamble for a high placement in the third game, which didn’t work out so I used the last game to mentally reset before the Last Chance Qualifier. So yeah, the pressure was really on, but luckily I got off to a good start which really helped resetting my mentality.
“I do think there will be a lot of different winning compositions at Fates, although I expect Samira to be in most of them.”
Personally, set 4.5 is my least favourite set. For me, there are just too many melee carries, and the carries themselves are very item-dependent. It’s very diverse in the fact that you can win the game with many different compositions, but the truth is to win you need close to perfect items, or perfect rolls, especially at a higher level.
I love some of the units but at the same time the chosen mechanic is not my favourite. A lot’s been said on it so I won’t go too much into detail, but I do think there will be a lot of different winning compositions at Fates, although I expect Samira to be in most of them.
I definitely want to at least make top 8 at Fates. Nothing would be worse than making it to Worlds and dropping out early, so I have a lot of prep to do. I’m really looking forward to playing against the NA representatives. I think all four of them are very strong, with MismatchedSocks, Kurumx, DQA and RamKev being a pretty well-rounded mix of playstyles and players.
I’m also looking forward to playing against the Chinese players and seeing if they are as good as people say. Also for EU reps, I think GingGG and Lyyress are standout players and ones for me to watch out for.
Big thanks to everyone who were cheering for me and watching my stream. Hopefully I can perform one last time and do the UK proud! Also, massive thanks to Wita for cheering for me on broadcast!”
‘Lallana, bring it home and don’t slam your desk too much!’ – Wita
Danish TFT caster Wita gave some of his thoughts on EU’s chances at Fates and the current Set 4.5
“I think all six players are strong. France as a region is incredible and has a lot of depth, and have an extraordinarily strong supporting network between all the players. I am very excited to see GingGG finally get his shot at the worlds stage as well as Lallana. As I said on stream, I believe Lallana is a player that has the potential to pop off and I’m excited to see what he brings to Fates.
To Lallana, bring it home and don’t slam your desk too much!
EU is definitely an extremely competitive region but it also comes down to how the game functions, some days the game just might not go your way. But I still think EU wins Worlds, there’s no debating it!
“I am very excited to see GingGG finally get his shot at the worlds stage as well as Lallana. As I said on stream, I believe Lallana is a player that has the potential to pop off and I’m excited to see what he brings to Fates.”
On a serious note… I’m excited to see NA get a shot at redemption after a dismal Galaxies Championship. After being lumped together with OCE it meant they only had one representative last year, where MismatchedSocks’ one-dimensional comp strategy got exposed.
China has been regarded as one of the strongest regions, but we haven’t been able to see them perform in this set so I have no idea what to expect from them.
That being said, Set 4.5 is a bit of a weird one. The Chosen mechanic adds a level of variance at the top level of play, to the point where it’s been getting lot of flack. However, it’s a mechanic that mostly ensures every end-game composition will look different, since you’ll be able to be more flexible with certain synergies.
In terms of playstyles, there’s definitely a lot of room in how you look to approach the game. For example, if you look towards NA we saw Agon play an ‘open fort’ playstyle where you lose a lot of rounds early to build up economy and make a big comeback in the late-game. A lot of it will come down to the patch that tournament is played on. When Riot released patch 11.5, it made some changes to ensure that reroll comps are viable without interfering with the more traditional play style.”
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