When Laus Playbook Esports made their MPL-Philippines debut last Saturday, only three players can be seen in the league’s Facebook livestream.
This, as the 1-2 punch of Joshua “Aspect” Tating and Nowee “Ryota” Macasa were forced to play at their respective homes due to health concerns.
The situation also meant that the troika of Arvin “Arvs” Bacayan, Peter “Jake the Dog”, Lapitan, and Ian “Beemo” Sergio had to communicate with Aspect and Ryota through Discord for the entirety of their series against fan-favorite Nexplay Esports.
“Yung Game One, honestly for me, it was a very good draft pero the problem is that two of our players, they had to play home and their connection was very, very poor so parang there were just three playing and yung dalawa were very isolated parang ranked games,” explained Playbook coach Brian “Panda” Lim in an exclusive interview with Tiebreaker Times.
Playbook was able to give Claude to Aspect in Game One, but playing the hero requires a lot of communication since Claude’s power spike hits in the late game. And Aspect needs to avoid early team fights to stand a chance against Nexplay’s aggressive lineup led by John Paul Salonga’s Roger and James Gloria’s Alice.
“The thing is we picked Claude jungle which requires so much communication and calibration with the team,” Panda bared.
“When we were together here sa Playbook before, that lineup is almost perfect. Pero nung Game One our jungler, si Aspect hindi niya alam kung anong gagawin, takot siya lagi, minsan he can use the Blazing Duet na pero hindi kasi takot siya kasi walang communication and he cannot hear his teammates.”
After dropping the opener, well, let’s just say that Playbook had to be more creative in their roster compositions no thanks to the handicap brought by the poor communication.
“After that, sa second and third game I said na, ‘Let’s not pick heroes na Aspect needs to make crucial decision making, let’s just pick heroes that’s easy lang. Someone who can focus on clearing the waves focus on getting enemy jungle, objectives,” he said.
In Playbook’s 25-19 Game Two victory, Panda brought the Yi Sun-Shin for Aspect while also picking up another core in Harith for Jake the Dog. The team did the same in Game Three, selecting the Bruno for Aspect and the side lane Claude for Jake the Dog. These seemed to answer Playbook’s communication issues as they ran away 2-1 reverse sweep of Nexplay Esports.
Playbook will try and make it two in a row Blacklist International on Saturday, March 27, at 7:30 p.m.
