Hotline League
WHO SHOULD YOU ROOT FOR in LTA NORTH? feat. Raz | Hotline League 347
it's going to be a fun one because we're gonna do a bunch of open calls. We're gonna hear all sorts of interesting stuff from all of you tonight, but it's also going to be fun because of the folks that I will be having these conversations with not just all of you but also as always, Cubby has gone. Doing well. Could to be back after the holiday and have some hot one that you look forward to. You are, as we were just discussing, you're showing your youth right now. I feel like with the short hair and the Jersey. It's just a very different vibe for you. Yeah. You know, I even the Jersey is a retro Jersey. So we're going back to better days. That's for all of us here, Travis. Yeah. That's so true. Reads. Honestly. Wait, what year was that CLG Jersey? It was like 2019 or something? No, it was the spring before they got acquired by NRG. So I'm going to win. I agree. Jersey right now. I have that Jersey. I can just change. Yeah. Was that Jersey last year then? So it was spring of last year? Probably. No, it was not spring at 23. It would have been 22 because it was sent to me and I got it in Illinois. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, I think, yes, spring of 22 was pretty bad for me, actually. So not better times. All right. Joining us as always as Razz. Also as always because he's always here. I can't get rid of him. Razz, how are you doing? You say this, but I've been ducking and ducking you for the past two weeks, Travis. This guy just constantly is trying to get out of the show. I was literally this weekend. I was at a friend's giving and he's just there stalking me. He's the one tracking me down. I said, no, twice. And he was like, Oh, you're going to Thanksgiving. I'm going to the same one. He demanded that I give him a ride home. And then he left a bribe of beer in the car. I just forgot to take the beer home. I didn't expect it. Actually, it was an open. It was an open. Like the cans were all sealed for stuff. Lawyers. Secondly. But it was it was the packaging had been opened for at least the six pack, but it was mango cart, which is actually where my fear of beer. So very tasty. Yeah, there we go. It was it was good. So now anyway, Razz is here, of course. Shout out to Izzy XT for sponsoring this episode. Also, we have a really cool sponsor that we're going to be talking about later on in the episode, none other than core punk, which is really cool. A video game that is now hitting early access. We're going to be looking at the trailer on it later on. With this with Cubby and I, we're going to be looking at the list. It's a new isometric MMORPG with mobile style combat. So folks can take a look at that as we get into it later in the episode. But yeah, how were both of your holidays? Mine was nice. I was remote setup last week as I went home. And yeah, we had a lot of food. There was a toddler cat and a dog at my Thanksgiving. And saw four out of my five cousins. So it was nice to get some good food and see the family. And it's also was my mom's birthday that week. So when I've heard dinner a couple times and yeah, my family just likes to have good food when we're around. So it's always lucky me and always fun to go home. Plus the birthday, you're just maximizing celebrations. Yeah, it's kind of works out nice. I get to two for one, the trip home. More reason to go home too. So that's good. Save on the flight. I see revenge is in the chat. Revenge can show up in my Twitch chat, but can't show up in my inbox to invite me to his going away party in Los Angeles. I have to find out about it. My roommate comes home. So just kind of interesting how that worked out. You know, oh, wait, wait, wait. He's thinking about the excuses right now. I was like, OK, maybe it got lost in the mail. He was my responsibility to get you there. That's a good out. You got there, Mo. Yeah. Oh, I gave the invite to Cubby. Maybe he didn't give you the message. What's on one lonely sad night months ago, my roommate came in Kobe and he said, Oh, man, that was sick. I was at revenge is going away party. It was wild. And now revenge is only cutting the knife either even deeper. He says like 100 plus people showed up. So it's not like this was a small thing. I started there. Sean there. We had a good chat. You know, this is vibing. It's good times. I think I won beer pong too. I did. Cubby, I think I beat your ass in beer pong. I'm pretty sure. No, I only played the other game. Oh, my God. I forgot who it was. I wasn't going on that table. Yeah, you guys. Sounds like you had such a good time. It was said. Yeah, it was actually a really good time. Yeah. And my winning shot, I was like, this is for Travis. Okay, whatever. Anyway, it's fine. I can now understand that revenge was only pretending to be my friend so he could get interviews when he was on a mortals. And now the truth has been revealed. Anyway, Raz, how did you spend the holiday break? Oh, well, I had a great, you know, friends giving. I decided to bring one of my specialty dishes, you know, a pie, actually, if you were wondering. Let me read this message. Where is it? This group chat. I don't know what you're talking about. I've got a group chat on November 23rd. Hey, everyone, please let us know what you'd like to bring. That was on the 23rd and then multiple days later. I think it was. Yeah, five days later, Raz replies to the group chat. I'm not comfortable at the moment cooking for other people, so I probably won't bring food. But let me know if there's anything you'd like beer or seltzers. True. Look, that was not a pie you made, Travis. You didn't make an apple pan pie. It was a $40 pie from Costco. No, from apple pan. The artisanal restaurant that's been open for 80 years in Los Angeles and is still in the same location. And, yeah, did you, or you didn't have any because you left before, but yeah, yeah. I told explicitly it was really good. I thought real hard. I was like, okay, I got the mango card as you mentioned. I also had, what was it, Jack and Coke. Let's just say someone was allergic to mangoes. So my beer wasn't actually the most universal product for the class. So, you know, I did, I came in and moved. That was my goal. Honestly, that's strategic, Raz. You, you know, it just so happens that someone has an allergy to what you brought, then you get to bring more homes. I just want people to hear that this is the approach that Raz takes to parties, and yet for some reason, he gets invited to parties and I do not. So, it's an interesting turn of events there. Feels good, doesn't it Travis? Yeah, doesn't it? I did, yesterday I did a white elephant with some, with the magic group, which was fun. Cubby made it to the chaos trap that we did afterwards. Yeah. That was a, so this is nice relaxing weekend. The crazy thing is tomorrow I fly to Salt Lake City to go to Dragonsteel Nexus, which is Brandon Sanderson's event. Hoping to do an interview with him there. I just am finishing my reread of Rhythm of War. So that's really cool. And then on Friday night, I fly from Salt Lake to Houston for the Laughing Dragon Magic the Gathering event that's happening in Houston. And then next week's episode, if we're doing one, which I'm pretty sure we will, we'll take place. I'll be in Austin. So, yeah, kind of all over the place, but a lot of travel coming up. At least in the chat. Mr. Turkey man himself. Incredible Turkey. By the way, Elias. Fantastic Turkey. I ate the ham. The hospitality was amazing. The ham was good. All right. Let's talk about League of Legends esports. As little as there is to talk about this week, we are going to, we are going to do some open lines of conversation for all of you, if you want to call in. But then also, yeah, there's been some roster changes. Some roster announcements and some tier two stuff. Cubby, what's been going on in tier two? Yeah, so they announced seven out of the 10 teams that are going to be in NACL for this upcoming year. Three teams will have to qualify through in OQ. They're going to do is it won't start until March. And yeah, luminosity gaming is a new brand that's actually going to be in the space. I can't remember the last time they were in the space. I think it was when L.S. was working with them way, way, way back one. But yeah, that's that's that's news. No, actually, no, he was tempo swarm. Sorry. Yeah, I can call this game. Yeah, that was similar. Anyway, yeah, it was that's going to be interesting. Most of the roster. It's been reported that it's going to be most of the Shopify rebellion crew. So, Zaisal and Sanity, tactical, tell me, oh, fake God, and coach by Deos is someone around that it's been coaching for a long time and collegiate in tier two. So that's going to be a really competitive roster. It's going to be already in tier two competing for the tier one spot, you know, the year. How did they make that announcement? Actually, it wasn't announced. Oh, oh, just the teams that were in. They stuck it into a post. It was the other week. I don't think we've talked about it on here, but yeah, there's really not much tier one news. Yeah, it's it's pretty quiet. The news is pretty quiet this week. I guess the only one that I've seen is the, yeah, you are right. It would be the tier two on also disguised, I guess. Do you guys think that luminosity is doing this because they're trying to like, are they choosing to do this now because there's a chance for them to promote into the league? Absolutely, Travis. You already know, like this is the classic gold coin United or C9 challenger or United tactic where you're just like, you are stacking money. It's not supposed to be financially responsible. It's for a year. If you make it great, if you don't awful, we lost money. It's like, yeah, it happens in the past and it's kind of crazy that we're back to the same thing, but at least we're not randomly importing like mad life and dandy to do it. Yeah. Oh my God. That's a throwback or, or the whole L.O.M. Q thing. Right. That way, yeah, honestly, but once it could even get to the dam qualifier Apple guns, a local Doko and stuff. Oh, dude, the tier two memories are so good. What was it? Team Ember team who has golden glue publicized all their, they publicized all their salaries. After I was like, after I made a video saying salaries should be public, they're like, we agree and we just are going to do it. And then they immediately were the flame for paying people like more than LCS players and then they just started out. They were the team that were late for scrims once because they were meditating. I was like, oh, I've never heard that one before. Actually, I prefer that reason than any other ones, which are like, yeah, the players still asleep. That one's a better excuse. It's funny because the rumor mill says, like what they're saying is that the reason why Luminosity's roster was already reported on is because they're paying a lot more than the market. I mean, these players are good. They deserve it. But yeah, I think it's going to be closer to California minimums or some might be California minimums instead of just X amount of dollars a month, which is what most NACL players get. So that's going to be quite interesting to see if that affects the rest of the market coming up here. Yeah. Wait, the other thing that got announced I think this past week was the Team Liquid FlyQuest Dodge, right? They're just back and then TL out of the coach. No, I was talking about here. Cubby, I don't know if you know this. There's a secondary system called Tier 2. And I'm really tuned into Tier 2. I know you aren't, but both FlyQuest and Team Liquid previously had Tier 2 rosters and they were the only remaining teams from the LCS that did it. And they announced that they're not going to do it anymore because they don't think they can get top tier talent, which I personally think is just the world's greatest excuse for a budget cut. I've ever heard. Yeah, I mean, I can talk about that a little bit because they, like them being in the league, they did have first dibs on whatever talent they wanted. Like Masu wasn't going anywhere else besides FlyQuest or TL, right? So with the changes being made, the fact that if they were to win the league and then they were to promote that they just wouldn't get in, you're going to have players that do not select to play for them. So, like, fielding a team of five, in a sense, isn't the best for them. Yes, it is an excuse to cut budget, but there are other ways where they can hopefully work with players. And I know that they're exploring it a little bit as to what they can do to still get their hands on talent. And I hope they follow through with that, unlike all the other teams that dropped out of NHL and then didn't do anything to help out with talent afterwards. So I really in the camp of, oh, you go first. I was going to say two things. One, for those that are unaware, the whole argument that both teams made was, hey, we can't, our teams cannot promote into the league because we're already here so we're banned from winning the promotion tournament and winning the spot. But two, that means that we're not going to be able to get players to come play for us because players will want to play for teams that can promote. The other thing I should mention is, by the way, we are looking for takes on everything. So, please pay your takes into the PLEB calls and sub calls chat. We don't need to do the spiel this week because if you're paying attention to Hotline League on a night like this, then you're on a week like this, then you already know the deal. But please go fill up those topic chats because we need to pull folks for this evening. Sorry, Razz, we're going to say about the topic. Yeah, I mean, the first thing I'll just mention is like the UG news is something you can always bring back up because it only got worse for him. It's the most confusing thing. I can rant on that one. It's the most. Wait, go ahead. Go ahead and rant on it, Razz. Okay. I'll go into the other take afterwards, but I'll go into the UG thing. So, like, basically, UG could have been on Rogue, but he couldn't get a visa and apparently the visa would have taken like a year or something for him to get it because, obviously, even though he is tagged to be a part of Emia, he is Mongolian, which is in East Asia. He just doesn't have a region. Like, he doesn't have a region. It's wild as shit. So, even though, like, he got fucked earlier on because he thought that he would be like an NA resident, you know, agency shit. Unfortunately, his agency was not great. And then he goes into the next part is like, I guess I'm a part of Emia as Mongolian. So then for a player like him, he already, I've heard, had offers in a year old and everything. Yeah. But he had passed that down thinking that he was going to be an NA resident. That was not true. And then now he actually had an offer and he was going to get it. I'm sure he was going to get it with Rogue. But now he has to deal with visa shit because someone who's, like, born and worked, like, I'm not sure if he's born there, but, like, who is from Mongolia has to somehow get a visa for Europe. I don't know, man. That's the most confusing shit I've ever heard and it pisses me off. Yeah, it sucks. I mean, the most valuable prospects that have promoted to LCS within two years, the three of them have all one LCS and made top eight of worlds, which is pretty, like, funny to think about. In terms of Dilkal, Masu, and Buceo. And the criteria for what we set up for is who do we think is the best player two years out from now when we hand in that award. Uji was the first person to go back to back. He's always been in contention, like, for the award. He's always kind of been an honorable mention. Had the two splits where he was very deserving of it, especially this past summer. I voted for Surdian Spring. Uji was my vote summer. And, yeah, it's just really sad to see that circumstances are going to fuck him out of spots where teams were really interested in this player. From Europe, from NA, he would have been in LCS, could have potentially been an LAC, had other offers to really save him from there, and he's just going to be stuck, really just a victim of circumstances where he's from. It sucks. There's nothing good to say about it. It just sucks. Yeah. And on the point that we made mention on, which is like FlyQuest and Team Liquid no longer being a part of it, you mentioned that it's because they weren't going to be able to get the strongest talent. I said this for a lot of LCS teams prior when they had made the same decision. You can even make the same case for the LPL English going down. By the way, the best way to leverage large contracts and diminishing those contracts is having somebody that's underneath them, training them to be in the position in offseason. So you could have someone or like a team give them the resources. If you have a team with impact, you might want to like have a developmental coach and have them have constant vods with like, you know, just looking over the actual main team's games like they already can. And like build them up to be something that is worthwhile, worthwhile and like maybe they can challenge an ongoing contract that is, I'm not saying it's a million anymore, but it's going to be something larger. So it's just wild to me. If we're talking about money, I'm sure you'll save a lot of money by having alternatives that will challenge that internally, but I don't know. It worked for Evil Genius. I'll say that right now, but obviously that organization went boom. So maybe it didn't. All right. Well, so we are going to have just a general conversation about a lot of the stuff, but if you, if folks have, for instance, a thing they've been wanting to talk about on the show for a while, but news has kept us on other topics or other focuses. Please, you know, now's a good time to call in. We're looking for just all sorts of different conversations all over the place. So I know our cane has been dominating the news in the league space for a bit, but I think there's a lot of cool things that folks have been thinking about in a while that would be a good time to come into the show. So, Cubby, do you want to go grab the first caller? Yeah, but we got a first one's a fun one too. So we're going to dive into that excited. Thank you to cart. Mr. Oh, hi, Vega, Max revive, yeshua, hust bust, America, Vespucci, Glimmer Glen, P P Doc. Oh, P P Doc reset for three months, three months, but 20 months is it's so confusing sometimes to which use to do this thing where it would tell you how many months people are subscribing for x Adam Max thank you for the prime and then over on YouTube. Nothing so far, but I'm sure the YouTube viewers are having a good time and they're going to, they're going to bless us with the super chat soon. They're always popping over there. They're never a more active chat than the YouTube chat. I'm just kidding. All right, we got our first caller of the night, which is none other than Matt sucks who I believe subbed yesterday randomly in the middle of the day. Is that true Matt did you send a prime to my channel. Yeah, don't worry about it. I wasn't worried about it. I was appreciating it. Me. Yeah, wait, then what you're saying, you suck. Yeah. Hey, we need to change that name, Matt. Matt, where are you from? Indianapolis. Indianapolis. What do you want to talk about on the show? Yeah, so I posted on the r/ly legends Reddit. I reached out to every team in the LTA North by email and then I followed up by Discord, email, Twitter, Facebook. A couple of teams were a little bit more difficult to hold up and I asked them a couple of questions, told them a little bit about me. I'm a TSM homeless person who was then denial this past year, wanting a new team to support. The three questions that I asked were, why should I be a fan of your organization? Why should I support your team sponsors and what makes your org special? So I'm here to talk about that and whatever other questions you guys might have. Something that really was difficult was getting ahold of lions. I think it's just lion. There's no S or Z, I think, but because they don't speak English as their first language and they're still merging things. So that that was really interesting, but once I got ahold of him, he was really a sweetheart, honestly. Yeah, so I've gone ahead and pulled it up on screen right now. This is, we should say this is something that people have been doing. I feel like usually once a year, every couple of years, I'm sure you've seen the original one many years ago. I remember it. I actually didn't see it, but I saw your favorite hundred thieves fan posts, something on Twitter about it and decided to just go from there. Gotcha. Yeah, there used to be, somebody had done this a long time ago and it was interesting to see who replied and who didn't. And it looks like you got, I'm sorry to say that I've been running around today, so I haven't seen this post until just today, but I see, sorry until just now. But it looks like you posted it earlier today, so it's up on the subreddit and I will, I'll link it in. Oh, it looks like Cubby's already got it. Nice. But it looks like you got a reply from everyone. How long did it take to get replies? Yeah, so a couple of teams replied right away, you know, cloud nine, pretty much the teams that you would expect to, to, you know, that have that extra money to pay people to be full time marketing managers. And Joseph Jang from Yang Jang from, well, I can't, I don't know, from 100 of these he replied immediately. I said line was really difficult to get a hold of. I actually reached out to them on my Facebook page with mine, like my personal page. But you know, they, I think they deserve a lot of grace just because of how, how much they have to go through with their transition. It's a little bit more difficult to get a hold of as well as Shopify mostly because they have one primary email address. And a lot of the teams that you have to search for it, which I get that the community is relatively toxic, just kind of in general. So. But kind of interesting that I really hope this is a work cell phone number, but I. I censored it out of the picture, but he actually don't put his cell phone number in there. I'm sure it's just a standard signature because a lot of you, right. Well, good on you for censoring it. I'm glad that you did because I wouldn't have noticed that whatever I was pulling all these. That is funny as hell. Don't want to doc stoto. Okay. So, yeah, sorry, you said a little bit, but like when, just like her, I see, when did you send these emails? It looks like you sent them on November 8th. Yep, that was the first time that I sent the email a week later. I sent a follow up to each of the teams that didn't respond. I tried to send the follow up email to someone else, a different email address. So first, the first email, the TL, for example, went to Steve, a second one went to dodo. And as you can see, he said, you know, thanks for reaching out. And, you know, gave a lot more context and, you know, I kind of, again, I wanted to give a lot of grace and something that I actually talked about with my buddy that I have. A question about for you guys is whether or not you think the teams are or should be obligated to respond and answer these kinds of questions. Okay, so I think one, it's very difficult for everybody, like all the teams to be expected to write, because you can't send a like small email response to this and. Because if it does get posted somewhere, it looks not great when everybody else is going pretty hard on it. But yeah, I do. I think here's what I will say. I think teams should answer these questions for their audience, whether or not individualized emails are the best option for that. I think there's another question, especially during like this holiday time and all that stuff. But I do think that somewhere either in like Reddit AMAs or in interviews or this type of thing, the teams should be able to talk to fans and answer questions around like why you should support us, why you should root for us, why you should care about our sponsors, that type of stuff. So I, and like what makes your org special I see is your third question. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's really cool and it looks like just kind of, you know, obviously I'm hosting the show so I can't read everything here, but it looks like all the replies are pretty thorough and nice. Yeah. I'm kind of curious if orgs feel like they have to get back because this is something that does pop up throughout the year. I do think that it's also a unique way to reach folks so. And you are persistent about it. So I feel like if you are persistent, then there is more reasons who actually get back. I mean, I think that if you were an org, you should be. There's obviously business and things you have to take care of, but ultimately you are in service to your fans. The fans are the ones that still make. You know, we'll go round and keep everything running. So the fact that you did have orgs get back to you is cool. I would say, I kind of agree with Travis where we should know the answers to some of these questions and I feel like we don't. And that's something where teams can get better at selling themselves to fans because the ones that do that the best are likely the ones that will have more fans. So I got a question for you, Cubby. Yeah. Who should he be a fan of? Ooh. I think what is an organization right now that's positioned themselves in a way that makes it easier to like have. Yeah, Cubby, looking at all these emails that are screenshot here, do you think any of them stand out from the others? Do you think that any of the replies are particularly good? Or do you think they all equally are from talented individuals of similar talent? Well, you know, one, I actually have to shout out to one from Flyquest just because it mentioned the NCXT sponsor. Okay, gotcha, gotcha, which actually works on the sponsor of this show too. So anyway, good, good, good dodge there. Yeah. Okay. I would say just based off of like, we're just talking about a team that does a really good job in terms of outreach. God, Cloud9 is always a banger. They also have Sven, Vulcan, and Blabber. Like, I think those three players do a great job in carrying the fandom. And they're always like really open and honest. Sven specifically is actually probably the best pickup. And with social media stuff, there's probably the account that's the most playful with like people responding to them. So in terms of fandom, it's usually easiest to like latch on to Cloud9. So I feel like that would probably be my answer. Yeah, I laughed out loud when I read the response. We know how hard it is to be a TSM fan. This is painful. First line from from C9. Yes. There it is. It should have mentioned the championships, especially in like XY years when they took them down to that would have been fun. I think if I was just looking outright fan coming in at the moment, I already mentioned Cloud9. Shopify seems really interesting to me. You have five contract pop-offs. Like those three players I think are pretty fun. They're like a dark, a dark horse kind of if you don't want to be a bandwagoner. So I'm speaking about this from purely just being a weak fan. Yeah, I don't really consume e-sports outside of league except it's yeah, I need to escape work, you know. Well, I don't think Shopify as an org. I know Travis is going to share this sentiment with me. They haven't done a ton of really cool stuff in this space yet. And I don't find them to be super interesting, even if I actually find their roster for next year to be somewhat interesting build. One that a lot of fans are hopeful can be competitive for maybe pushing TL and FlyQuest out of the world slots as we go further and further throughout the year. Yeah, I don't know why I feel like they haven't done a great job of selling themselves yet to the fan base. What makes it hard is because I follow them on Twitter, but I follow them on blue sky as well. I used to follow them on Twitter. The problem is they don't have a dedicated account for league. Yeah, they're a multi-gaming organization similar to Dignitas, but Dig, I'm pretty sure, has a league specific account. And the problem for that is I do not care what happens to your Rocket League team or this or that. I just don't care. Oh, I see Valorant. I don't care. I don't want that on my timeline. So that makes it difficult for you to latch on to them as a team in the scene. Yeah, for sure. Honestly, if I was a league family stays, I would just be like, God, which teams are still going to be here next year? You know, and I don't say that because like, I think all these teams are going to leave, but there's so much volatility in the LTA or LCS, whatever you want to call it, like lineup where so many people become a fan of energy and then they're gone or so many fans become so many people become a fan of EG or all. And I think it is, you know, it's funny because for a long time, I beat the drum of like, oh, our players boomerang in and out of the league so often that how could you become a fan of any of them. Now I feel like, you know, it's almost as big of an issue and trying to become a fan of some of these other teams. And I don't, like, look, I'm excited about the promotion relegation stuff but it's only going to make it in a way more tough, right, where you have at least one team that is very likely to, to be in a situation where they're headed out every year so I, I mean, I look at C-dited and TL and I'm like, those are the safe refuge refugee refugee refugees, refuge, that's a safe refuge for a fan. I think Flyquists is probably pretty secure too. But those are maybe the most likely places where you can go and be, you know, confident that your team is going to be here a year later. Let's get back to the topic, though, Matt, you know, what of these answers, which team had the answers that you appreciated the most. Who won your heart over? Yeah. This is hotline love for, or, you know, ignore Travis being so grim. Yeah, so when I was, when I was thinking about why I was a TSM fan in the beginning, it was, it was Bjergsen, you know, the team was centered around him. He was the key figure that brought eyes for such a long time. You'll forget about all the stuff that happened when he left and all the other TSM stuff, but it was, it was Bjergsen. So I think that the same can be true for disguised. The other thing that I really appreciate about disguised is their transparency after TSM just lied to people basically saying they're going to another region and all of these things. And there's supposed to be some big announcement like last or the December before last and then there's always the big and that's what's going to be later. The big and that's what's going to be later. That was always the best. Oh, yeah. And by the end of the year. Oh, it's coming. Right. Oh, the person who said that is actually laid off. Oh, wait a minute. The, you know, the on the flip side disguised has their, like all of their salaries and financials publicly available at, you know, a fixed cost every month. Not to mention, you know, the fight to stay alive just would bring so much emotion. So I think that that's, I'm going to order some disguised merch after I leave the call. I do have a backup team just in case because, you know, they, they, they might have a choice and whether they are here the org might not have a choice whether they're here or not at the end. And that's TL. And TL mentioned transparency, always trying to do what's right. I care about sponsors. You know, I have a TSM verdict for the gear chair that I bought like five years ago that was $600. I want to support the team. I want to support, you know, the team, not just in league, but also their content creators. And, you know, they obviously are great with content with APA and I just, I also really appreciate. You know, I got, I have the general manager's cell phone number. So, have you ever called him yet? I have it. No. Give him a ring. Hey, man. You guys just lost. And I know that in the email, you said that you care about winning. So what's up with that? What are you doing for next next week? Hey, are you guys going to go after Double Lift or not? It might help your team a lot. Right. Matt here. We had that conversation and all. So like, I have a few pieces of advice to making your team a little better. Start that. Start that in the conversation. Yeah. I liked it. Are there any works who you feel didn't speak to you in this, in the sort of that you felt like you wish they had been maybe a little better in their response? No, Travis. We're, this is off season. We're being positive. I know. I'm just saying that. I'm not asking you to shit. Get his ass. This guy be like, Oh, I was talking about players boomerang and the Orgs are boomeranging to doom and gloom is on the horizon. The LCS. Oh, I mean the LTA, the soul of America is gone. That's funny. As funny as as C9's response was, though, I feel like the questions that I asked were ignored. And you know, they do have the money to have a, you know, the senior marketing manager responded senior marketing manager. So they have a whole marketing team. Didn't really answer questions. Didn't mention sponsors feel like they didn't really even mention why they're org is special. And in reality, they're obviously they're, they're one of the top orgs in the region as a whole. So I would have liked to hear more from them. Again, whether they are obligated or should feel obligated to respond is one thing, but I did feel like their response was lacking the most. Not just being the shortest, but also. Didn't answer pretty much any of the questions, really. Which org I missed that cloud nine. Oh, yeah. Okay. Damn. You know, you should have done. You should have been like whoever sends me the most free merch I'll pick. And then, you know, you just see, see what you get. True. Yeah. I mean, hey, I'm saying we'll send this to TSG to us on the show. If you're actually going to pick them, maybe they're able to send you something. Who'd help me? Maybe hold up. You know who's a great seller for DSG at this point. Like, whenever, whenever I'd watch an ACL. Oh, my God. Scary Jerry is so funny. Just like, he's, he's, he's pretty cocky. I like it. He's got Claire. Yeah, he does. Yeah. He has some flair between him and Axie, they'll have plenty of trippers on that team. They'll be able to. Sure. I'm going to buy his jersey. Scary Jerry. Hell yeah. Okay. I'm going to buy his jersey right now. Oh, there we go. I'm coming to talk about getting you merch and you're just going to do it. Okay. Well, congratulations, dig for the, the, or sorry, TSG for the sale that we just made. Is there anything that you would like to shout out here at the end, Matt? Yeah, shout out for all shout out to all the teams for responding. And shout out to my wife for proofreading everything. And just really excited for the new year. Shout out to you guys for hosting the show where fans get to have a voice and shout out to Razz for literally anything he does, breathing air, everything. He's, he's a perfect individual. Whoa, you know what? I'm going to rename you from Matt Sucks to we love Matt. It's okay. You forgot my name. It's okay, Razz. You're still perfect. Still perfect. No, look, I remember the Matt part, not the Sucks part. That's a good thing. All right, that's a good thing. Okay. All right, guys, have a good show. Have a good one. I love you, Razz. Love you. Love you. All right. Shout out to Matt, by the way, who kind of went back and forth with me about this idea. And I, he's, I asked if he'd call in. So he did. That was fun. Is that what just happened is that I'm trying to learn the Gen Z language. Is that called glazing? Yes. Okay. All right. He went from Matt Sucks to Razz Glazer, which is way funnier because my name is Matt. You know, huge. Yeah. Right. Like a donut, right? All right. Should we grab the next caller? The crispy cream special. Yes. Let's do it. All right. Shout out to over on YouTube. They did come through. We've got members. We've got icebreaker mints. Thank you for the nine months and one. Thank you for the 27 months. By the way, I did just post a members only video over on YouTube for the folks who are members. So please check that out if you haven't seen it yet. And if you would like to see it, you can become a member and then you get access to the back catalog of me talking about a bunch of random shit. All right. Our next caller is none other than big nonsense, big nonsense. Where are you calling from? I'm calling from Los Angeles, California, where you spent Thanksgiving. Yes. Friendsgiving, the host of the friends giving event. The gracious host. Yeah, drinking a mango cart right now. So, thank you. I had someone bring it over. They said, great. Well, would you say the mango cart is a little bit better than store bought pie? It's not a store. Apple pie is like an institution. Razz, no, you don't understand this apple pie is easily one of the best apple pies I've ever had in my life. Sorry, like I'm very happy you brought me. Don't get me wrong. But I to follow this bit with you is to besmirch apple pan and apple pan is like open in 1947 it's been open for 77 years. Razz, all right. You can't read it. You've not been. I've not. Okay. We got to get a burger sometime. It's dope. It's really what do you want to talk about the show? It's sort of a nice follow up to our previous caller. The razz glazers last Matt doesn't suck anymore. And if I were a person who goes into the LCS LTA next year and wants a team to root for that is an underdog with a really, really high chance of over performing. Even though we don't know their full roster, I'd go with Dignitas. Oh, we don't have another team yet. We don't. We don't. But I like there's enough pieces where I'm like, I'm kind of all in. What do we know about the lineup so far? So reported on. Yeah, reported on so far. And I had to look stuff up because people say things a lot and I don't know what's locked in. But I believe all that is currently reported on by sheep esport slash LCS EV and all of them is we have a 30 top. Keen mid. This is not the keen. A lot of people remember. This is a keen who was in Laddam for a bit. And I'm at Worlds this past. Right. And they're at World TFT. And he's putting on that leather jacket again. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Go. And then. And the 80 K a carry position is Tomo. And to me, the most important thing, if I were looking for an underdog team to share for, they have rig becoming in in the coaching position. Oh, I don't know if support has been reported on, but I was under contract, I believe. Okay. And like I like I also. So I would still be down for this roster if it does end up being aisles. But. But it was for me, the 30 Tomo Rigby, like trio kind of pushes me towards like, mmm, there's something here. I'm actually fucking down. And the main reason I'm down is because Rigby was given obviously there was a whole supporting staff that went into EG, but Rigby was very, very open about how coaching a very young. Team into a more cohesive, like scary unit was this recipe for success that turned into like the magic of EG winning. I don't think it's going to be a thing where you're like from week one, Dignitas is like, goaded. I do think it's going to end up being a thing where you're going to see incremental improvement from young talent. They're going to get more refined and they might upset some people. I like remembering that the EG that won in Houston was going into playoffs at like nine and nine. Like not really something impressive. Obviously, the JoJo hype is very, very important. Inspired hype was very, very important. But I think people were mostly low on Danny. I don't think that Danny hype really happened until, in my mind, until the Baron, but probably closer towards the beginning of playoffs. Cubby was the only, I remember Cubby, you were really excited about Danny and you were promoting him a lot, right? Yup, because he was an amateur. I think that was when I had you do the video that to hype up amateur players on my channel and you were talking about it. Well, people were pretty hyped about him because of the unofficial pendant that he had on Tristan. Oh, that's right. I did have a pretty big moment prior to that. I don't want to discredit the individuals too much, but what I rarely see out of rookies is they will have these pop off moments and then somehow the teams actually start playing around this young talent super well. And, like I said, Rigby was just one cog in what made that specific EG roster work. But with how open he was about the coaching process and, you know, for better and worse sometimes with his like colorful language, it makes me believe he is one of like the coaches to watch. And then when I see someone like Sirty, who is sufficiently hyped, Tomo, who actually really impressed in his revitalization of 100 thieves. I'm already like pretty excited about this roster purely from the perspective of, listen, I'm an OG CLG fan and the only reason I became a CLG fan was because TSM was winning and I hate, I love cheering for the people who are the rivals of the winners. Like I adore that. It is so much fun. And then buying the tickets and messages regarding being there and like after like three years of cheering them on was really, really rewarding. And if you have that kind of mindset, I think you want to pick Dignitas because I think the cash in can be crazy. So what's like that? It's like correction. I was currently not under contract with Dignitas. Okay. But it sounds as though he's going to join based off of everyone's wink wink notch that's happening on the show. LCS CV was said in the chat that it is aisles. That's important. Yeah, okay. I was also responding, or res anyway. Also another thing on top of that is, if I remember correctly, I mean the the in houses that are happening right now. I'm pretty sure Tomo and Aisles are playing together. Nice. And I'm also pretty sure Sirty and speaker are playing together. Yeah, and speaker is somebody that's been doing a little bit with Sirty throughout like just on stream and solo queue. So, in my mind, it's almost in my mind, it's almost certainly going to be speaker and aisles and I think it would be a good call. I think my worry about this team is that, yes, it's young. It's, I don't know how they're going to be able to convert some wins at times. I wonder what, like my biggest question is probably going to be, I remember it's Caney because they said it was Caney in Rainbow Seven, but maybe I'm just wrong. I have no idea. We're going to figure it out when he actually comes to LA to be fair, but I said Caney during those times. And he's really good individually, but that was, I don't know how he's going to actually be able to communicate, but also just like gel with the team as a whole. So, I'm, I think the hype is fair. I want to see what the team looks like overall. I think I'm a little bit more hyped on a team like Shopify. Mm, just because A, I think their top side is good. I think contracts, budge is an incredibly strong duo. I think Palifox, he had one bad year, but prior to that has just always been a pretty explosive player. And historically, somebody that's come up with a bad year and had that second chance, has like been able to put in a lot of work and change that. So I think he has a big chip on his shoulder. And the biggest question mark is like the Bevoi sales, but I actually think that should be great. The question for me is always going to be whether or not, like Bevoi was going to have a strong duo in lane at some point so they can actually start winning 2v2s consistently. And so this was the best Brazilian support. He was like the support player that was part of that championship winning roster is constantly with the loud before he found bigger and better money with Kaboom, I believe. And they had to downgrade to Redbird. So I actually think that it could be good. That's my, that's where I'm putting my chips. Yeah, for an underdog team, because I also aligned with you, the CLG underdog type of team that's always a line, like going up against the best team. I see that a little bit. And that's personal preference. I think if you're someone in the chat and you're just like, okay, no, this year, I do want to get hell into LTA and you want to, you know, cheer for your C9s, your flight quests for individual players, or you just like the brands or your team liquids, I think that's totally fine. This is definitely catered towards the person's like, I don't really like being a band wagoner. And so I think that argument, Razz, it's funny because maybe it's just because I've been in the, you know, I've talked to too many people in the scene for so long. But to me, I really am holding all, holding everything until I know who the staff is for any roster. And because I've seen rosters with incredible talent, and then there will be a coach that I know behind the scenes, people say, he doesn't really do anything. And then the team flounders and people are like, why couldn't this team pop off? It doesn't make any sense. And I was like, it's probably because they didn't have structure. And they all just kind of like did solo queue games and maybe stomp scrims and nobody ever analyzed why they were stomping scrims, you know, stuff like that. So I see somebody like Rigby and I get really excited. And it's, you know, maybe falsely because I'm obviously not in the rooms. But when I see like 100 thieves succeed, I go, I feel like the staff did a big part of that. You know, when I see team liquid stick with the same roster. And I can maintain excitement for that team because I know the staff is like refined. So that's that's sort of why I would put my chips in the digging toss side of things. You know, for all I know that. I really like Reverend quite a lot as a coach. I think he just had a first of all, Travis is just transformed in front of a solid guys. Oh, no, Travis is transforming. Hello. Hello, Travis. Are you alive? I believe I'm alive is a. Yeah. What first off, what was on string? Oh, I see. I was not seeing that on my end, but yeah, there was some crazy stuff happening. This is like, what is going on over there? Travis, he's trying to form into a monster. Yeah, I'm always like, I liked Reverend quite a bit. I think Reverend is pretty smart, a really smart coach. I think his biggest problem a lot of it, like his is the roster last year is not a winning roster. Yeah. So that's a great test to see how this roster works from. Sure. But yes, I think we're on the same kind of wavelength. Hitching a horse like basically are whatever it is on a horse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a dark horse. What about you, Cubby? Where are you feeling? The one thing that I feel like is interesting or I'd want to add is I think in the past when teams were required to have secondary teams. Sirty is the best rookie that Diggetoss has ever gotten their hands on. In the past, a player like Sirty would be jailed on 100 Thieves Academy or a TL Academy, right? And they wouldn't go to a team like Digg. So I think it's really good for the league and good for Diggetoss that they got their hands on a player like Sirty who I hold in very high regard. And I would not be surprised if it went through Diggetoss's history if this ended up being the best rookie that they've gotten their hands on. I think it's the best rookie I've seen perceived lower tier team get their hands on since Kenvey at Immortals, which I know some people will instantly give flag for, but Kenvey was a beast in the secondary league. Yeah, I agree. I know for a fact that Rigby was a big part of the reason that the Diggetoss project ended up being where Sirty landed. And I'm really excited to see what he ends up doing. I think for that reason, I'm kind of with you and this roster really is. It's hard to look at Diggetoss and not expect something to go wrong. They've at best always been a middle of the pack team and they've had so many different projects they've worked on throughout time. It's almost like they have to overcome just the past history and what the past has been at Diggetoss. They actually want to do something good. So I don't really know if it's a different group in there, so I think they'll be fine. They can shake it off. But from a fan perspective and sentiment, they're going to have to really convince the fans they have something going because Diggetoss, to be fair, tried to do that this past year with the roster they had in summer, and that crashed and burned. So, yeah. No, I definitely don't disagree with that. It is like, if I really, really want to like squeeze the juice out of this underdog story like fruit, the idea that there's this like Diggetoss curse is like pretty real. Like the way that like we just have this sentiment like Diggetoss is always kind of kind of have a way to like screwed up or throw. So that's always a fun narrative if you're chewing for underdogs because, you know, your team fucks up and then you commiserate online, you get really mad and then they fire your coach and then you're really happy about it. I think that happened to some sports team. I can't think of their name, but like, you know, that kind of stuff is fun. So I guess this is in a two part me pitching like, I think Diggetoss is going to be a interesting team slash fun team to cheer for through highs and lows. And I think it's going to make for an interesting year. And I agree to God that he doesn't turn into a Bradley Beals of the Washington Wizards. I pray to God that that doesn't happen. Yeah, I didn't win in November. That was pretty funny. I just, I just, this team can definitely be good. Yeah, I saw a chatter say this and I agree with them that what made E.G. really shine was they had this core that was super consistent. And like there is no replacing impact. And there is no replacing sort of inspired on that roster. So I don't disagree and then that that's what's kind of missing from this signature roster at the moment. But that's all I'm looking for. If I, if they do pick up a jungler that I'm like, Hell yeah, I know that guy can control an environment. Or, you know, it sounds like it's going to be aisles but there's also support who kind of plays that role. Then I will like cosign at 100%. But yeah, as of right now, it's the one I'm most tentatively excited about and I want to root for an underdog team. Testing audio. Is this okay? I think it was my focus right that broke and then just froze the whole exploit setup for a bit. I did not deliberately ignore Vulcan. That's on me. My bad. You're making a terrible decision to respond to. True. That's what I'm saying. It always makes, if you're ever listening to the show later and people just start saying things that don't make any sense to the people that are on the show. It's because they're responding to chatters. I think Dignitas is a scam. They've scammed me multiple times. This year I bought a Dignitas shirt because I really liked the roster and they were selling it outside and I thought it was a cool shirt. And once more they scammed me. They make everybody think that this is the time to root for them and then something goes horribly wrong and then they replace the entire roster again. So yeah. That is my biggest complaint. My biggest complaint with Dignitas is if you have a bad split, keep going on because the players will get better. Sure. But I feel like this. So I know Travis has coined the term, the analogy of a boomerang player or something like that. I mean this organization has had probably a million and one boomerang players. That's why I'm right now. My biggest concern is literally cany because we've had a bunch of med laners that have come in, dove, blew. I mean technically Jensen came in and then came out and then came back in and then came back in and then came out like they can't make their minds up on that front. You can probably continue to go on but it's like I just want them to find a player, hold on to that player, make that player their franchise player and see it through. But now I see them pick up 30 and I'm just asking myself how long is it going to take? I just want them to actually stick to a decision and that's probably my biggest concern about them because I think when they brought an exu, I was pretty happy. I was like he actually was, you know, angry somebody that you can champion. So I just want to see a little bit of patience and I think there is appetite for patience in the community. They were happy, obviously when it comes to succeeding organizations like Team Liquid and FlyQuest. But I didn't hear anything negative about 100 thieves keeping their players together. Sure, they went to Worlds. But generally speaking, if you have a reason to give withholding players that you see as, you know, valuable, there's appetite for that. So I just want them to remember that. I also like the dropping of exu and for me, I think having him have two Korean solo owners that the dignitas of mid games were not clean, like the engages and sometimes the sides they choose to play were not there. Swapping that to English speakers, I feel like that would have been a huge help to exu and they didn't keep actually with that project. I'm a little bit surprised though that they're keeping speaking, I was together. I didn't think that was the strongest duo, this past split. And I think that what you were talking about earlier with keeping the project going and it's funny because like SR for me is kind of doing that with some pieces, but also they swapped out like a lot. They just kind of stole other projects that were going on or places like Revan spend before with working with C9. Like I believe he was there when Fudge was there. I think they did a good job at holding it. Like for instance, last year, they kept thank God for a full year. I thought, yeah, even when people were saying we're making question marks and like midway through the split or going into summer, I was like, look, I can respect them committing to a player for a full year, even when the player isn't performing. Even though I look to see the market in place and say that licorice is still available when, of course, he was performing and all that, like a lot of top top laners were available, Sertie's hike was going, but they stuck to their top laners. So I think they did a good job at saying, hey, we just want to see that project through. They did. And then they moved on. And I thought that was fair. Yeah, I felt the same way about like Dokla. I thought energy would move on from Dokla going into summer and they did not. And that was fine. So, yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much, big nonsense for the call. Anything that you want to shout out here at the end. Shout out to my wife Danielle. Shout out to NZXT, Price Bix, Pagoda. Shout out to Raz's company and Travis for being the host of the most fun social group I have, which is my in person MTG Playgroup. It's very, very fun. So I appreciate you for that. Thanks so much for the call and we'll catch you next time. See ya. Take it easy. Raz, I didn't even know you had a company. No, he meant like my company, my, you know, when he said it at first, I was like, I have a company. Shout out to Raz's company. Okay. Shall we take a quick break? I think it's time for Cubby and I, speaking of sponsors, to watch a trailer for this special episode, we have a cool sponsor who's coming. This is actually, I think the first time we've ever had a game sponsor on Hotline League in all of its time. And that sponsor is Corpunk. So we're going to go ahead and take a look at their trailer. I'm going to switch over to that. Raz is going to refill his drink. And let's take a look. Folks, tell me if audio is too weird or anything like that, because obviously I'm peeling that video into the stream. So if I need to turn it down or up, let me know. Here we go. Welcome to the world of Corpunk, an MMORPG where magic meets science and interdimensional travelers become part of each other's stories as they explore, survive, and thrive in their new home. I like the visuals and brightness of this a lot. I'm sure you're probably a couple of minutes, but it looks pretty cool. There's actually a lot of clarity, which I find that this game lasts a lot. It reminds me of some other really cool game that I played in the past just visually. And it's supposed to have a mobile game player, like mobile combat, which is from an angle, and artifacts with unique properties. So for those that are watching this in our industry is in early access right now. It actually put into early access a short time ago. Use the fog of war to sneak up on your enemies. And fight them together to claim victory. Get a MOBA Act, part of this section in a while. Yeah. It's really cool to see a lot of people trying to kind of bring in like the combat from Obis into games like Sims. Waiting to be told, what were yours? It feels like kind of superbive, plus I assume Diablo Omen for like actually leveling. Yeah. Yeah. I also just like the kind of like fantasy aesthetic of it. So here's a couple, obviously we just watched the trailer and just because I know there are some podcast folks who will, I think I can just probably loop it here and then we'll talk about it a little bit well. What I've got the video on, but for those of you that are listening to the podcast and you couldn't see the visuals, here's a little bit of the key features. So has a unique visual style, which is an eclectic and immersive visual style combining steampunk, diesel punk, mana punk, cyberpunk, fantasy and more. Emphasis on some punk. The world's handcrafted with meticulous attention to detail. It has fog of war, so reminiscent of classic RTS and MOBA games, MOBA style combat. It's got open world exploration, a deep character progression, crafting system, narrative seasons and episodes, and group and solo play. So it's available now in early access, so folks can go check it out if they would like to. They also gave me or are going to give me keys that I can share with Cubby and Raz if he wants. Actually, yeah, I might actually take a key. Yeah, this looks fun. So it's just kind of neat to see folks figuring out how to kind of iterate on some of that MOBA style gameplay. And I assume that like for the folks who are watching this and have played League and that type of stuff, they are used to this type of perspective in a game and controlling a character like this. But obviously it looks like from the trailer, you get access to a lot more abilities than we're used to in more of the 5v5 type stuff. So pretty cool to see. And thank you so much to Corpunk for sponsoring this stream. I believe we have a link, which if Numi has not been sharing, oh, she has been awesome. And she shared it over on YouTube. Yeah, so there's a link in YouTube and Twitch if people want to take a look. Thank you so much to Corpunk for sponsoring this stream. All right, switching back to, oh, by the way, I should say that that link is also available in the YouTube description and the podcast description if you're looking and I think it's pinned comment on YouTube if you're watching the show after effect. All right, so Raz is still missing. We just see the door going into the abyss for him, but hopefully he'll be back soon. And then we can see what's going on. But honestly, Cubby, while we wait for Raz to return, because I don't want to pull a collar in and have him be gone. What are you, what do you look excited about in the soft season? Like what has struck you, especially in tier two, because I know obviously there's so much attention on tier one, but is there anything that's happening in tier two that you're really excited about? Maybe the luminosity stuff or otherwise? Yeah, I think luminosity coming in is good because DSG was really big for a poll, but it's so weird because we won't start the formal, like, ten man league or competition until March. So this play in tournament to decide the three teams that are going to join the rest of NACL is going to be really interesting, actually. I like how Raz just showed cheeky face on stream and then we'll dip back in, but there's going to, I don't know what the info is going to be. I'm kind of waiting for an announcement or to get contacted for it myself, but it's kind of reminding me Travis of the tournament where teams had to play into LCS in season three. And I think that we're just going to have some really fun discovery and a lot of players get fast tracked into the league that may or may not have already, like, it may have taken a more time to get there, but the three teams that make it in, that's going to be really big for everyone. And I'm really curious to see what that tournament looks like. I think that's going to be really exciting for tier two. Besides that, though, I can say that a lot of the game for the next season leaked and I'm honestly pretty excited about that and just the changes that are to come for a season 15. Yeah, yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I think they realize that they have to keep pushing the game. So I'm excited to see what they do. I wasn't just as a random side as Raz sitting down. I've been playing a ton of TFT. I should have meant to mention that the start, but I've been really liking the set. I played one game yesterday because I had so many people at the magic event yesterday say that the set was so good for TFT. Yeah. And I hit a level three timer. So I won my first game. Oh, yeah, that is. Yeah, that was over. Yeah, I'm reading your script. All right, Raz is back. So let's grab the next caller. Hello, Raz. Did you, what did you make? Did you make tea? Oh, why can't I hear Raz? Raz, did you mute? Oh, I'm muted myself. Cubby, you can go grab the next caller. I did get tea. And also I found cheesy bread. I didn't know I bought that yesterday. I forgot about that. Oh, that's big time save. Big time. Huge. That's a humongous. Nice. Glad to hear. We were just talking about things that we were excited about in the off season or news that we were excited about in the off season. Was there anything that you're excited about? Ooh, a lot of dirty reality TV shows or let's just say there's some. We were talking more about the context of like tier two moves or stuff like that. But I'm glad you're enjoying dirty reality TV. Trespasser is here at Trespasser. Where are you calling from? Trespasser. Hi, Raz. I'm calling from Downey, California. Downey, California. What do you want to talk about on the show? Hi. So I don't really have a take, but a question for Cubby. So I wanted to ask Cubby about scary jury because he's promoting from tier two. I'm really excited about that. But as someone who doesn't really pay attention to about tier two, I want to run down on him. Like his weaknesses, his strengths and all that. Yeah. A question about scary jerry promoting from tier two. So yeah, what's the story with scary jerry? Where is he headed first, Cubby? I can give the spiel, but it's also nice to be at Raz here because I know Raz keeps up with any sale and mentions scary jury earlier. So he'll be able to chip into. Yeah, so the report is that he's headed to disguise to be their 80 and round out that roster. He was the 80 for Maryville slash Dragon Steel this past year. And they he was first team all pro and both seasons for NACL. Scary jerry, it's interesting because I've been thinking about this more and more. Obviously now that he's rumored to be up playing at the next level. He's a interesting story because he wasn't good in the first split of NACL with Maryville. It was a different roster, but in summer of 22 Maryville or no summer of 23 Maryville promoted. And he did not play well. I thought he was one of the weaker 80s that was in the league. He was always a getting leads in lane and then it was just kind of expecting him to make mistakes later on. That would take the game out of his hands and out of Maryville's hands. He really rounded himself out like the reason why I find it so interesting his climb is because I think 80s been kind of figure out in terms of scouting. People look for how well you can play fights, how good you're spacing. Can you hit abilities during the fights and if you can do that and play 80 at the highest level where you need the reaction times and the ability to, you know, space at the highest level, we can kind of teach you the rest. We can fill in the gaps when it comes to learning how to play map and make sure you're getting resources and get everything else. Scaryj here for me was very much the opposite of that where he was a strong laner, always was a strong laner off the bat, but then wasn't playing fights well enough. And he works really hard this past year to really round himself out and be someone where if he had a lead, I felt like he could carry it home. He's someone that I think really had to work hard. I think that his strength in NACL, it was landing. The 80 pool was a lot weaker this year for me. Scaryjeri ended up being at the top of it with Sajed. I think Tomo was a little bit stronger before he ended up going to 100 Thieves, but it was a decent barometer for where Jerry was at. And yeah, there's a lot of other stuff behind the scenes. I think that being at Maryville really helped Jerry. I know that he was climbing a lot. Everyone at the Maryville camp said that he's a really, really hard worker. As Raz said, he's one of the chirp, which I find fun. So I was pleasantly surprised, I'll say, at Jerry's promotion. And I think the best comparison that I have for him is probably yawned because I was expecting Masu. I wasn't expecting from Masu to do as well as he did this past year, but I thought the Masu would be good. I was very confident that Masu was going to be good when he won an LCS. I'm not as confident with Jerry. I think that yawned when he first promoted, yawned was a really good dainer and had to round out some teamfight mistakes that it was his rookie woes. And he had actually having to play the game less, I think, in a second year compared to his first year, which kind of helped him add clarity and focus to the games that he was playing. I don't know if Jerry's going to be the same path, but I think the skill set is similar that Jerry brings in terms of just being a little bit better at landing and the earlier stages of the games. It's not like he struggles later, but he had to work really hard on making sure that wasn't the case. I don't have Jerry's raw talent like Masu. I think that Jerry was someone that really had to work to get where he was at, and he was willing to do that, and he got himself there. It was really cool seeing him just continue to improve throughout his time in Maryville. I do not have much to add. He pretty much said the steal. I think what I loved out of him is that he makes it very clear and he proves. I don't know how he does it, probably just personal going through his own vods or someone. I know that with Maryville, they have a great system in improving players. But he definitely improved individually, and he's the type of player that's willing to pull out Callista, and he's quite good on the Callista. There's a lot of picks that he's great at. He just improved dramatically individually, and you're right, he's a chirper. Maybe I'm wrong that he's not usually the one that starts the chirping. What I usually see is if someone else is chirping on the enemy team, he's going to respond. He's going to respond, and that makes shit exciting. Yeah, that's true. We definitely have a lot more chirpers in the week, too, as it's kind of been encouraged, and people have hopped in. Yeah, I'll be interested to see how he does. Again, I don't have him as high regard as I did Masu, but I held yawn on the higher regard as well. But I think that in terms of skill set and what to look for, I think that's probably the best pro comparison I can think of for Jerry, and I'll be rooting for him. He's a really hard worker and a good kid, and I feel like he, whenever he's had doubts, he's always been very motivated to shut me up about them, which I appreciate, too. So, yeah, that's been fun in the past. I was going to ask, do you all have any concern about him being on this roster? Because when I think about teams and orgs that are able to develop talent, especially new talent, I'm worried that the newly assembled DSG thrown into this league as a promotion spot situation, it might be difficult for him to find success. I mean, I can use this to talk about how good I think Maryville runs their system out in St. Louis, and how I think they're actually pretty far ahead of what some LTA teams are even doing in their own house. But what I mean is your team out of that system and you're putting them into disguise, which is not necessarily... I don't want to say anything right away from disguise, it's just a will see, because we haven't seen anything from them at this level, right? We don't know what their operation is going to look like for next year. I can say something then, because two things that gave me a little faith. First, I worked with who he was in Academy for whatever reason, I mean, that guy was definitely not an Academy player, he was definitely an LCS player at that time, and he immediately proved that within a split. But he was with us, and he was with Gorka at the time, and I saw how he worked in that dynamic, and I saw him also work with some other young players as well. He's something that's really open about giving feedback, and after every vaud, he's a great team player, he's a great glue to a team, and I think really good in being able to work with a new player. No one's ever disliked playing with who he is. Exactly. And he's not the type of person that will think that he's above feedback, he will always try and make you feel as comfortable as possible to give feedback to him as well. So I think that actually makes it very easy, and another thing to note is, I like the coach mash. I think mash is a coach. Of course, he came in as players coach, he worked with the TL like challengers team as their head coach, but in general, if you talk to players, they give a lot of respect to mash because he is a really good bot lane coach. He has always been strong in terms of being able to tell you what you did right and wrong bot lane, and so in general, he is a great players coach. So I think they put him in a really good situation. We have a really solid players coach coming in in the head coaching position, and I think he is also going to do a really good job in being able to hold him down. So I actually think it's a good situation to be in. That's my theory. I have a lot. I think mash will be of great health. I think this is a good pairing. I just, I have trouble because I don't know everything that happened with TLC this past year, but when your team has a worse win rate when you're ahead at 15, then overall, I feel like there's a problem. And that was TLC the entire, just the entirety of last year, right? And for me, that's like mash, and that team, they just were not able to solve the problem. So obviously it's a new team you set up, I think if mash is going to have any rookie, you're having one of the role where he played at a really high level and always gets his flowers from players is good. So that that'll definitely help the Jerry for sure. So yeah, yeah, this is, I think, I mean, getting outside of this Jerry conversation around more around this guys, even though I have them place like six of the eight teams. I think they're roster building was smart, bringing exu is a great decision, I think having who he would work previously without the daga, but also can make castle comfortable and communicating with him as well. I know castle already speaks English, that's not a problem whatsoever, but I think it makes it so that level of comfort is always going to be really needed, especially if you don't have a lot of staff members. It's just going to be mash and then maybe one person, then you need like an in game leader. So I actually do think they, they're built to rise, but I mean, right now I'm pretty low on them, I have them six plays. Um, as like a follow up question to a cubby and razz, do you guys think that like I'm 30 and scary Jerry like the only two people being promoted from tier two, is that enough, or do you think there could be more? I think it was tough to this year, just given, um, like the, the teams narrowed. Yes, we still have eight teams, but the talent pool got narrowed with LA and pretty much being dissolved. Um, when I was asked on stream, who should be promoted or not, I said that. 30 shade in XU and UG would all make good pros tomorrow. And then after that, I probably mentioned Jerry next and said that toasty needed a little bit more time, but he's a player I'm still really excited about. Um, I don't think to, I mean, personally, I don't know if twos enough or not, just. It's a weird off season. I know if you just didn't get like, just fucked from galaxies away, then he probably would have been a third in the league because he had offers. Um, so I will say it's not enough, just in honor of UG, just getting just incredibly done dirty. So yeah. Another thing to note too, is even though you're right on the UG point, uh, doubling back on the point around line, people often, and will forget continue to forget that like, they just have a different import rule because they are an LA team. Yeah, like that is always going to be a point because now you have luminosity that have players that people are going to be like, you should be in the LTA. Insanity is a great example of that. Um, like that, you know, people are going to be right now on the outside looking into, there's just not a lot of space. I am a big believer that you can do 10 teams, but we're far away from that. Um, because I think there is talent. There's just not a lot of space, which makes it hard. It's not a lot of money. I think it's a big... That's also another one too. Yeah. You'd be a broke ass org like this guys. All right, get more broke ass orgs in here. Um, for what it's worth, I think that, especially with... Winter, uh, being a split where there isn't going to be formal NACL competition outside of the whatever they're going to do to find the next three orgs, which I assume is going to be a tournament or a qualifier, some sort. I believe that was in the announcement. I wouldn't be surprised if you end up with a few younger players being in a trainee scenario or given a lot of access to what the LTA North teams will be doing. Uh, just to get them into house before they actually start competing in this upcoming split. I don't have anything where it's like, that's going to formally happen, but I know that there are teams that are looking to still get their hands on talent, even if it doesn't mean running, uh, like a five man team in NACL. So I really hope that we have teams that still want to bring in. I don't even think that solbs are the best because like you can't do loans, but just trainees situation where they get access to everything, including their coaching. I think it would help out a lot. Uh, thank you so much. Trust pastor for the call. Anything you want to shut up? Uh, yeah, sure. Um, shout out to NZXT, of course. Um, the Basil Cafe ran by Numi. Uh, that was super fun to go to. Uh, yeah. Blabber, there's always my NA goat, you know, he just needs four more of those. Um, making the rounds by Karen Moser and Emily Rand, that's always a good listen. And, um, last, uh, I hope Jamada and America find a job sincerely. Yeah. There's a lot of underemployed people right now. Thank you so much. Trust pastor for the call. Okay. Raz, are you helping Jamada get a job? Uh, look, I've given him a job as my servant, but, uh, you know, if he wants to take it. No, that's a serious. Yeah. You know what? No, I, I'm literally, I can't do anything Travis. Wait a minute. Travis, you've been asking me to be a third party on the show. You have the money. Uh, make them the third person. Do I have the money? Your money bags, Travis. That's what they call you. I think if they called me that, it should have been in 2022. That was when I had three sponsors and was doing a big road show and all that stuff. Uh, I, my, my, I never reached the money that pro players, you know, but, uh, I think I followed a similar arc with the TGI business. You know, we went from the big bucks to, to DSG money, you know. The TSM trajectory. But I'm happy to have a job right now. So I'm not complaining. All right. We have a final caller of the evening. You want to go grab them? Uh, yeah. I got it. Thank you to. 30 more minutes, Travis. What? Nothing. Continue. Well, I, I specifically, I told Cubby earlier and then the before the show started, like, we might just do a shorter show because there's just less to talk about. And I never, I'd rather do a shorter show that feels better than like just draw it out. You know? Yeah, that's fair. So especially because like, it would have been easy to skip this week because we were coming out of the holiday. But I, you know, people like listening to the show every week and I don't want to, don't want to screw them out. So we've got director donut here though, director donut. What do you got for us? Or where are you calling from? Hi, my name is Cedric Hofstadter. I'm calling from Houston, Texas. My take is given DSG's rumored roster. I don't think the promotion or relegation system is going to get quote dream teams or exciting young talent to the LCS any more than traditional LCS teams. All right. Why do you feel that way? Well, as you guys touched on the last call, their rumored roster is Castle, XU, Abadog, a scary Jerry and who he, which is technically three imports and two native players with obviously who he's been here for a while. He's a staple in the LCS at this point, but it's still only two native or academy type players, which is basically what we've seen on most LCS teams. For the last several years. And on top of that, none of the players are carryovers from their team last year, which obviously there's a caveat, I think, when they didn't actually win a promotion match or didn't actually win NACL. So clearly their team probably needed to make some upgrades, but not a single player carrying over is a little unfortunate, in my opinion. But as you guys touched on the last call, they're obviously in certain positions may not have been that deep of a pool to choose from. So it does make some sense that they might need to pull from imports. What I haven't heard yet. I don't know if it's been discussed. I apologize if it's somewhere. Maybe you've heard. Okay, they didn't do an actual promotion tournament, and they were just like, all right, toast, you can have the spot, which is I'm excited. Toes is in the league. I do fight it ironic. Time to give us the right call from a marketing standpoint. Yes, yeah. But what I haven't heard yet is how they're planning on like, if five players qualify in at the end of next year, are all five of those guaranteed spots in the starting lineup the next year. Are any of the players guaranteed spots in the starting lineup next year? No, because that's the irony. Good question. Whenever team liquid, because this shit used to happen in the old days of promotion relegation. And that's why I find it funny that team liquid and fly quests use the excuse of, well, that we won't be able to get players because they'll want to promote is I'm like, I don't think promoting is a guarantee that you get to stay on the team. Like oftentimes what happens is off season occurs and they're like, oh shit, we can get, you know, I don't know some crazy player like Masu right now. Okay, we're going to do that. So I know that for promoting into NACL, I believe that we have a four out of seven rule. The seven would mean two subs. And I think that's it. But pretty much you can change the three players in the main roster as long as you keep your two subs. But I know that wasn't a rule like that instituted in the back half of the promotion relegation. I think it's something that's necessary. I think a three out of five rule is actually healthy. Or at least a two out of five owners will push for it to be zero. I think there should be some requirement. And if that's not the case, then I will be disappointed because I think that that is necessary to. Just make sure or ensure that the people that got you there can actually compete in the league. If the or get the spot and they farm the entire team, I think that's bullshit. So I would like there for there to be a ruling place. But I'm not sure if one's been formally announced. I'm just a fan of the fans hailing shit at the team. If it happens, I don't think it's needed personally. You might have a team co-situation where that's kind of the example where they just sack the entire team to like take up Korean players, you know, that might happen. I think right now, and then a I don't think there's ever been a time like this where there's so much appetite for just having. Like homegrown players come in that people will get flame the shit from just even going for even it being rumored that you're looking for an import. Yeah, I was amazed at the Jerry reaction, honestly. Like people just want to see people promoted internally because again, I don't want to take anything away from Jerry. For me, Jerry, it's not like I'm also getting promoted, right? It's not like this astronomical talent that I expect to be a top 80, which is the fact that I did expect Jerry to be a top 80 at some point. Like, yeah, no, that's definitely not it. I'm just being honest about the player. And to defend this guy here, even though I know no one in the organization at all, just me from the outside looking in. Like, scary Jerry makes sense. Thumbs up. XU makes sense. Thumbs up. In fact, they're not even fucking vindictive about this. The fact that XU made the post, I think there was XU that got ignored by this guy in the first time around. Post money. That was hilarious. If that was like a regional situation, that brother's going to get mad and just have an ego about it. No, like he's the best option out there. They picked up XU. I know you mentioned who he has an import. I just not at all for me. No, I just blank it. No, the man's as American is going to get at the moment. Yeah. So, like, and the Abadaga pickup makes sense to me because that was the one position that I was kind of wondering if they even had, like, strong enough mid laners in NACL for me. I think it just needs some time. Obviously, there are some players. Some of them are not interested in coming back to full competitive. I'm not going to name names because then, you know, throw names out there. But some of them were great that it's like weren't willing to get back in. Like, you know, I'm sad about coffee too. Yeah. So, like, there are some great players out there that is just not available. And for a while, top lane from my understanding was a toss up between another homegrown player. And they, yeah, last second decision, they went with Castle, but at least they're considering it. And I think they had it in mind. Which I would like. If there's an org that does win through, let's just say, Luminosity ends up winning, takes down disguise. And everybody, welcome to LCK Luminosity. Like, that everyone would fucking hate the organization. And I don't think they want that. I think they want you to buy the merch because it's a guest slot. So, I think right now we're in a pretty good atmosphere. Yeah. Yeah. Are said Janacity or Castle? That's also what I heard. So, like, they made the effort. Janacity was in the mix. Yeah. Do you mind if I jump in? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I definitely don't want to take anything away from, like, who he and how long he's been around. But on the other hand, I think that is something, one of the reasons why I'm not excited to see him is I don't think he's had a great last at least year and a half. And he's somebody who we've seen for a long time. We've seen, like, his peeks where he's had some good, really good splits and other times he's looked not great at all. And so, like, picking him up right now, especially, like, you made a good point where, like, he can make the other player look good and he worked really well with Scary Jury and helped him perform really well. But I also think, like, I mean, they're, I mean, when it's similar to, honestly, Abu Dhabi, where I don't, to my understanding, watching not every LSE game, but a lot of them, when he was on, was he on Giant X or what was the team he was on? On Excel, he was quite good. Excel. He was. Okay. But was that, that was that last year? Is that the split before? I cannot remember. Time goes by too quickly for me. Yeah, I've got lost on LSE recently. But I don't know. I just, I haven't, they don't excite me individually on their own. If they, like you said, you think that they might bounce each other well? I think that's, that'd be great. And I hope that's how it works out for them. But, like, I think they're, like, for example, like Insanity, who ended up on the Monacity, I think he would have been a cool one to have potentially on this team. Or, or like I was really hoping Tenacity was going to end up staying on Disguised. And while Castle is a player that they, people have said, and players and everyone talk him up a lot as a mechanics, we saw some of that last year. I think that's exciting. I think also, Tenacity getting another shot would have also been really cool. I would have liked that, actually, because I don't think Tenacity has his best summer, but for me, Disguised was a bad team in Spring, and I had Tenacity as my second best top laner. I thought he was playing really, really well in Spring. I would have loved to see Tenacity actually get another shot. I do love the examples you're putting out there, because I think that's often times what's lost in this conversation. It's like talking about who you could have gotten, because I was, I was pretty frustrated that Insanity didn't find a team. I think I would like to see Tenacity on a team, but like, yeah, it is, it is what it is. I would personally love it. The only one that I would challenge you on is this, I think the support pool generally is pretty weak. I actually do, I know I have, I have a favor towards who he, I like who he quite a bit. I know what he brings on a team, even though it's been rough for a little bit. I also just also, I just also believe there isn't a strong, well-known support right now, but I'm interested in hearing alternatives. So I'm with you on that a little bit, Raz, because a lot of the supports that we're topping the week have been there for a while, and I think I would have liked to see Chime in a spot, Chime decided to do other stuff. I thought Chime was playing really well this past year, but shout out actually to CIDO and Parth, who has the combine going on right now, the supports in there. I'll cryogen and mixture. I said that those are the two supports I take bets on, and mixture I actually got into apply, and he made top 10, so I was really happy for him. But those kids don't have experience yet, and they need experience, and support is definitely a role that scales with experience. I think looking at Buceo is a great example. If you make a mistake as support, you die. And that takes some time to figure out, and also, I think for fans, it just looks bad. And fans don't really get that at times. I think they're a little bit hard on young supports. But yeah, I was telling people to ask Insanity to see if you're one of the role swap to support, because, yeah, I agree, I don't think the support pool is great, but there are a couple kids that are coming up that I think need time. But I'm actually really hopeful for both cryogen and mixture. They have good hands and good engaged sense, so I'm hoping that they continue to scale. What I think is really relevant to the caller's initial or director donuts initial take here, which is, you know, will the current LTA promotion/relevation rules promote people to LCS? I was going to get into that, but yeah, go. Yeah. I've been trying to say something forever. Clear. I think it will. Okay, listen. Here's the here's why director donut is correct. Director donuts whole take is like, Hey, this is the theory is that this is supposed to promote people into the LCS. I think that it is less likely to because it will, I hope, do a good job of swapping out organizations, which are not doing a good job of maintaining a competitive roster in the LCS or LTA and replacing them with hopefully an organization or a team of players that are better and it will sort of leave a threat. Now, obviously, it's for only one slot, but you know, on the other hand, what it won't do is be like, Oh, here's the great way in which we're going to finally have a wave of rookies like crush veterans and push all these veterans out because the thing is that teams historically, who have been looking to promote, they go get good, established talent has been around for a while, and they put them on their lineup. These are not usually the best players because they're going to be on the best players are going to be on the best teams that are already in there, but they can find these veteran may stays that can crush rookie talent to get their way in. And then once you're in there, you now have the threat of getting relegated. So you oftentimes fill your roster with again veteran established talent because you can't take a risk, right? I know everybody sits on franchising. One of the goals of franchising was to allow teams to be able to take more risky plays with their lineups. They didn't end up doing that most of the time, or at least when they did, we all thought that those risky plays sucked because they didn't pan out or something. But that was the main goal, right, or one of the main goals was to create an environment in which player teams didn't have to constantly worry about getting, you know, the standard talent that you know can at least get you fit their six because you're afraid of finishing 738 or 9th or 10th or whatever. So I agree with this. I think we're going to see a lot of teams, you know, if we do see teams promote, it will be because they have these like veterans and mainstays in the mix. And if you see teams that are in there, stay in, it will be because they are probably taking a lot of players that people expect to do well. I very much disagree. It might happen. It really depends on obviously the org that comes in. But the idea that you're, you're saying that the promotion system is there to promote players. It's there to promote teams. Like there are going to be some teams that are just like, I'm not going to name a team because it could be different this year. They're just sitting on their ass making bad decisions and there has to be like, in this case it's obviously, this guys are the only team that are a guest lot, which I hope there are more guest lots in the future. Because I like the idea of a promotion tournament. I like the idea of saying, hey, you made a bad decision. You now your ass is on the line. I love that process. The stakes are high. And in this case, like if a team promotes into the league, they should have the right to be able to make adjustments. Now, I remember when I was like an assistant coach for Dignitas Europe, and that was a team with Wonder Trash. I mean, actually, it was Nizbeth, Kobe, Senkook's, Obvious and Wonder. And we were promoted. I moved on. But they made adjustments. They got trashy in that role, slash cold. Like they thought that they get, they can get better by adding a few more pieces and later on they got Mickey X. I think a team should be able to do that. Because guess what? There is more interest now in joining a team that is in the Premier League in a tier one league. So I think if a team does make a really shitty decision of saying we're going to import three roles or we're going to bring a veteran that not people are not fans of. Guess what? There is now a large appetite for just people. GM's just want the fans to be listened to. And if the fans are saying keep the players that you have because we love them, they will do that. Maybe make some adjustments. Do you think GM's will just keep the players there? There are some players that are still in the league because the fans were literally yapping about that. And the GM's listen to it. Otherwise, they will not happen. I think that used to be the case. But for the most part, I think for a long time, there's been an appetite to promote players from tier two. And GM's don't do that because GM's incentives are to create a stable performing roster not to take long-term bets because they will lose their job if their team underperforms. Can I hop in here? A couple different gems. Yes. So you're right. And this is where some of the teams that actually used NACL well were able to cultivate talent that went through. I mean, when TL put out their announcement, I know for a fact, that was a huge part of their system and the team they had now. They were able to take long-term bets given the fact that they had a second team. My concern and why it's not going to promote it is the teams that are trying to promote into NACL are not going to take those bets. Look at luminosity gaming. That's all the evidence that you need. And I think that the kids that are actually probably need the hands on coaching and need the exposure to having someone like Whippo on your protein and getting access to those vods and those comms where you have all this information from some of the smartest players in the world that you now have access to, that's not going to happen anymore. And like, that's my big concern is, there isn't going to be a safety net to actually take long-term bets. And even like, like taking Mossu on their NACL team or taking the Sajeb like they did this past year. That's just not going to happen with the teams that are making decisions now. So, I think that, yes, there is an appetite for actually promoting these players, but long term in the change of the system. I don't think we help these players at all with adding promotion and relegation back in. It's just going to go, hey, go win and earn it, which they can do. But I think that a lot of the players that might have that upside are not going to be given the resources that they need to actually reach it earlier on in their career and I'm concerned about that. That is a fair credit, like fear. The fear is fair. The main point when you use the Luminosity as an example, I think it would be a fair example if they promoted and then they shipped those players out. That would be the actual example I would say. So, even though they're taking their bet, they're bad at saying, okay, these are all LCS players. We just want veterans or we just want like no names. That is, yeah, sucks, but it would be even shittier if they actually made it through. And they said, guys, here comes duck, the Korean LCK player coming in for one year, you know, he was on T1 challengers or something like that. That would be fucking ass. But so I don't think that's like an apt comparison. And I think what is fair is like, Masu got brought in because there was an appetite for taking a chance on a great prospect. Same, like even APA stayed as long as he did, even off of like the poor split quote unquote, because fans are rabid on like, we love his personality. If you just dump him after a split or after a year, we will be mad. I personally have heard that the fact that the fans were on his side gave him a chance to be there longer. Yeah. So, those are obviously, but that's separate from promotion relegation, right, Rez? That again, that's that's separate from the promotion relegation system. We don't have a promotion example because back in the day, when promotion and relegation did exist, there was no appetite for like, in fact, players constantly said there's no talent down there because they didn't fucking want competition. Yes, but that's my point is that like Team Liquid can't afford to so so assuming that it is correct that APA is there because of fan sentiment. Team Liquid can't afford to take those risks in a way that promotion relegation can't, right? And so to the callers point, promotion relegation is not going to help. Like promote new talent into league because of that exact reason, right, where like, the GMs are going to be incentivized to defend the spot or to earn the spot. And whereas Team Liquid can be like, okay, we'll give APA another another split. You know, the next split doesn't matter. Anyway, so let's let's see how it goes. Like, the thing for me that I think is actually going to help promotion relegation, Rez's poverty. Honestly, that helped a lot in the past couple of years, sadly. So, I mean, like, it's, it's teams will no longer be able to afford. No more buyouts. Yeah, like buyouts bring players over from other regions, paying people a premium to come do this. Like the veterans are going to retire because they're like, fuck, I was making 450 K last year and now I'm getting offered 75 and I've been doing this long enough. I was going to go to college, like, I think that's the thing that's going to do it. I agree with you, but you're supporting my point because I think, yes, both the wages of the guests team coming in, but also, yes, there's like the fans do want an NACL player, especially if the player is at the end of the year holding a trophy, winning that split, and is not going to be seen the next split. People are going to ask why, so I think it's a combination of both. Sure. Yeah, I do. I mean, I am very curious for when we see something like that. But all this assumes that toast and disguise get relegated this year or next year, which I don't know if that's going to happen or not, we'll have to see. Also, I'm going to hold my hands up. I don't want to be clip farmed because I know that it's a case by case basis. And if a random ass team decides to do it, like, if team coast comes back with the slands, then guess what? Like, hey, that's not me. Hell yeah, it can happen. Well, it's a hypothetical. I'm already clipped at what you said before, and I'm setting a Google calendar invite for myself for a year from now, so that if it happens, I just stick that in there. All right. You know how clip farming works. Like, you don't, what you say before and after the clip doesn't matter. You can't un-part. I'm going to clip this part to combat the other clip. What happens? All right, Director Doda, thanks so much for the call. Anything you want to say or shout out here at the end? Yeah, I just would like to thank you guys for hosting the show every week and tell Raz how much I appreciate him and that I always really like him when he's on the broadcast. And then also thanks to the sponsors NZXT and Corpong. Thank you so much for coming out. You're just saying that because you forget that the other person earlier thanked you for breathing air. I'm at the topic. We had an argument in the topic. That's what the show is about. I'm pretty sure you said this is the best call because you appreciated how he, I don't know what is up with all our callers lately. There's no thank you Travis, you know, thank you Cubby. Thanks Hotline League. It's just like, thanks Raz. Wow, Raz is so cool. They're thanking your sponsors. Isn't that more than enough? If these people saw what I saw on your close friends on Instagram last night, they wouldn't be saying that. They would be. No, they would love it. Oh wait, DME, which one Travis? DME, which one? I had a couple in mind. Raz was, are you, I love to say what you were, Raz was, I opened close friends and Raz is just out there filming literal physical fights that are occurring in the street. No, that was bigger. I asked you where that was. There's a group of people that are sitting on, and I won't say the roads. I'm not going to say the roads, but there's like, I don't think Raz, by any means, lives in like a bad area. Now, this is the point where all of the idiots have never visited L.A. or going to be like, L.A. is a hellscape, but like, very strange, like just rows of people on the sidelines of the street. And in the middle of the street, there's just fist fights occurring. Raz is recording all of it. There's a second clip that comes up and he's like, I almost, somebody threw a phone at me and I almost got involved. Like, I don't know what was going on. It was insane though. It was insane. It was great. I was scared. It was like next to my favorite watering hole because Raz does not know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know. I'm not, but, you know, anyway. Oh my God, it's a concept. I watched that. It was wild. The benefit storytelling time. The benefit of living near bars is when it gets pretty late. People are drunk fighting. It happens. I've had numerous phone, like, I'm a journalist at the end of the day, much like you, Travis, I get out on the street. And if I see conflict, I am there recording that conflict. He's uploading this. You could get a membership to his private fight club. What happened was, I was getting her. I was like, I was out with friends, you know, we're having a good time. And then I got, you know, my friend was like, Oh yeah, I'm going to, you know, get the Uber. I was like, OK, that's fine. Sounds good. I'm not paying for the Uber. That's all good. He gets a Waymo car. I was like, Waymo? Oh God, I'm going to die tonight for people that don't know Waymo. It's an unmanned car. It's like an AI driven car. So there's no one in the driver's seat. In fact, if you get in the driver's seat, support will call you and be like, Why are you in the driver's seat? So I was like, I'm going to die tonight. Do you know that because you got in the driver's seat? No. My friend got in the driver's seat. So I have to explain it. I have to explain it to the support team. I was like, Oh yeah, they were actually getting in the driver's seat to leave the car. That was at the stop. He was like, OK, because we also detect you're the only one in the car too. So that's, you're good to go. And I was like, All right, perfect. So then I get up. By the way, we're driving past the fight because the fight is on the streets. So the Waymo car is probably confused as fuck because it's trying to weave past people that are in the streets. And I could see them beating down on one guy that's probably said something really unfortunate when he was in a drunk state of mind. And so when I get dropped off, I took out my phone. I'm in action. And so the multi... I didn't even know the Waymo part. The way the fact that the street was filled with people fighting and you're in a Waymo approaching it is even crazier. I know I just shit on people who make fun of LA, but this is the most LA story I've ever heard. It's like cyberpunk. It literally is cyberpunk. I'm this corporal trash bastard just realizing there are people out there fighting each other. You're driving by an AI driven car as there are physical altercations occurring in the middle of the street. And I use them for content even worse. I didn't put it on my main story. I put it in my friends only list. It was good content. I wish I could Waymo to LAX tomorrow. It's so pricey. Don't do Waymo, please. No, I would use Waymo. Okay, so the day before I got the Waymo car trip, the day before this, I was crossing the street and there was a Waymo car blinking like he's going to turn right to my lane. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to walk a little faster so he doesn't hit me because I've seen some scary images." But he's not using the blinker to get through the intersection. No, no, no, no. He drives into incoming traffic to then go into a parking lot. And I was like, "You're going to kill some passengers. You're going to get to incoming traffic." But he got a way he's got free. So maybe the AI really is smart. So, okay. Well, anyway, quick shout out because I haven't had a chance to for a little bit. Thank you to Leo the Chosen, Ray Lam, Don Nardo, Guide in TV, Guide in for 69 months. Nice. Immortal Scrub for two years, Bowen with the 500 bits, Vora with the 62 months, Bob and George gifted a membership over on YouTube. And so, and, and Sorrows, Sorrows, hopefully I'm saying that right, is a member for 16 months, 504 Caesar with the $20 Super Chat. Thank you, everybody, for the help. I really do appreciate it. Let's do a round of shout outs here at the end of the show. Cubby, what do you want to shout out on plug? Not much this week. I had fun joining your magic group yesterday, Travis, making one of my rare appearances. So, appreciate you and that group. Always meet a lot of fun people there. And yeah, shout out to any women's tuning in while it's still a lot of downtime in the week space and watching Hotline League. And yeah, thanks. Appreciate it. Razz, what do you want to shout out plug? Shout out to Waymo, giving me great content. Shout out to you guys. Love you every time I watch the show. And I'm just shit talking in Twitch chat or YouTube chat. Sometimes I mix it up. Sometimes I mix it up. You know, it's always fun. The topics are always good. So, I always enjoy it. Yeah. I'm glad you were able to come on. I know you'd been begging me and that friends giving you showed up just to try to get me on. So, I'm glad we were able to make this work. I'm going to be at Dragonsteel Nexus this week on Thursday and Friday. Come see my panels. This should be pretty cool. Doing one on monetizing content and then I'm moderating one on building RPG worlds. So, that'll be cool. And then, and then after you've done, you're done seeing me in Salt Lake City at Dragonsteel Nexus, fly to Houston and see me at the Laughing Dragon events. We can play Magic the Gathering. It'll be fun. Go do that. And then when you're done with that, tune into Hotline League on Monday because it'll be Monday and you'll need to tune into Hotline League. Thanks so much to everybody who watched, really appreciate it. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday break and that you're saying warm in these cold, cold environments of December. Tomorrow it's going to get down to 68 degrees here in Los Angeles. So, I'm really hoping we can make it through this. Anyway, see you all next week.
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