The UK has qualified as one of the 16 teams participating in the Legends of Runeterra (LoR) Masters Europe: Chronicles of Shurima tournament.
The team of three consists of Fizzical, JimmyLihui and Trim ‘CasterGems’ Sejdiu, who is also a commentator. They will be battling against other European teams for a slice of the $24,000 prize pool as the group stages get underway this weekend.
The UK is up against Czechia, Finland and Portugal in Group D:
The team told Esports News UK in a statement: “I think we are definitely viewed as more of a dark horse within our group since we have the least amount of tournament experience shared amongst the three of us compared to the other players in our group, but we have extremely strong ladder players and a caster within the community who’s well versed in the tournament scene. It’s coming home!”
The UK qualified after teams across Europe spent two weeks climbing as high as they could on the ladder.
Qualification is based on the top 16 single highest players on the ladder. For example, Lebanon in Group A had one player in the top 16 which was enough to qualify the entire country, then the other two highest players from that country joined them.
With countries like Germany, France and the UK, competition was tough, as there were more players competing for spaces on each team.
“I think we are definitely viewed as more of a dark horse within our group since we have the least amount of tournament experience shared amongst the three of us compared to the other players in our group, but we have extremely strong ladder players and a caster within the community who’s well versed in the tournament scene. It’s coming home!”
Team UK
Gems told us the UK qualifications went down to literally the last minute before the deadline, with three players vying for the last two spots.
The UK’s spot was secured by JimmyLihui and the UK performed very strongly in the qualifiers for the spots, with Spaiikz coming very close to making it into team UK, for example. Spaiikz also wrote a LoR Masters Europe Chronicles of Shurima viewer’s guide, which you can check out here.
Spaiikz commented: “The UK team is stronger than people think and should be able to perform well.”
LoR Masters Europe: Chronicles of Shurima features a 3v3 format with players battling it out at the end of May and the entirety of June.
The UK LoR team will play against Portugal on May 29th at 5.30pm BST and against Czechia on May 30th from 1pm BST.
The quarter finals will take place on Sunday June 20th, with the finals on Sunday June 27th.
Following the group stage phase, the top two teams in each group will advance to the quarter finals. The championship bracket will be a single-elimination tournament with eight teams, with all matches being best-of-three except for the grand final, which will be a best-of-five.
You can watch the action on the LoR Twitch channel and Youtube, and see more info on LoR Masters Europe on the Legends of Runeterra website, as well as the initial LoR announcement here.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
