LTA North — 100 Thieves: Young Guns and a Special Agent

100 Thieves was the surprise of the 2024 LCS season. Despite a very inexperienced roster, the thieves finished 3rd in the Summer Split - notably by eliminating Cloud9 in the playoffs - and thus qualified for the Worlds. For the inauguration of LTA North, the organization has decided to keep the same formula. Four players remain with the club: toplaner Rayan "Sniper" Shoura, jungler Kim "River" Dong-woo, midlaner Lim "Quid" Hyeon-seung, and support Bill "Eyla" Nguyen. 100T thus makes just one change, bringing back the man who led the club to its last title at Summer 2021, AD Carry Victor “FBI” Huang.

A choice justified by the need to bring more stability to the early game, as team General Manager Joseph “JungleJuice” Jang details. “In Spring, we were the bloodiest team in the World, more than all LPL teams,” he said. “It’s just a team of young guns that like to fight over everything. When you have that mindset, you're not scared to lose games or to look bad. We love that, that's the environment our players thrived in, but we also had the worst or the second-to-worst early game in the entire league. There were very few games where we had a gold lead at 15. It was ridiculous how behind we were every single game. We were down like 4K at 15 minutes and we somehow always found a way to win the game. It was insane, the number of upsets or comebacks we had that split. We always knew that our early game and our laning phase were a huge huge problem.”

The arrival of Frank “Tomo” Lam to replace Brandon “Meech” Choi - who had stepped aside to preserve his mental health - during the Summer Split had brought some of that sought-after stability. FBI's mission is to continue in this vein. “FBI is going to elevate the team,” JungleJuice considers.“He used to have one of the best laning phase in the league in 2020-2021. Combine that with his experience and his moments of brilliance that he's still able to demonstrate to this day, you have a very stable early game to work on.”

The returning AD Carry was, incidentally, a “no-brainer” for JungleJuice. According to the General Manager, most of the work had in fact been done a year ago during the previous offseason, before the 2024 season kicked off. The roster had been built with budget constraints in mind, forcing the staff to think differently about how to assemble the team. “The league is relatively ranked based on pay as, historically, we've seen teams that spend more perform better on average,” JungleJuice underlined. If we’d used the same approach, we'd probably have ended up like Immortals — Rest in peace”.

The gamble paid off for 100 Thieves. “In our eyes, Quid, Meech, and Sniper were super high-upside players,” the GM said “Quid and Sniper completely surpassed our expectations and River is kind of the cornerstone of the team”. However, Quid, who was named MVP of the Spring Split, could have been dislodged from his position in a far-fetched scenario. Like many Western teams, 100 Thieves took a keen interest in rising local star, former Cloud9 midlaner Joseph “Jojopyun” Pyun. “If you're a pro player that has played in North America and you faced JoJo in the midlane, you can't kind of explain into words the pressure or the level of play that you're experiencing,” JungleJuine assured.

So 100 Thieves asked Quid if he would agree to roleswap to become the team's AD Carry. “He had been open to it for a long time,” according to the GM. “To his credit, not giving him another chance to prove himself as one of North America's elite midlaners would have been a disservice to him. While we had ambitious plans to create an "Exodia" roster, in the end, we’re very excited about what we’ve put together.” The other change considered was for the support role. “We were exploring options and when we ran through support options there was quite a lot,” JungleJuice detailed. 100T was therefore interested in the profiles of Jonah “Isles” Rosario, Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam, and Choi “huhi” Jae-hyun - who won the title alongside FBI in Summer 2021.

The team has therefore finally decided to renew its confidence in its support. “We saw how much effort Bill was putting in and how much he struggled,” JungleJuice explained. “He was like, “This is the level I want to play at, but I’m not there yet. It was super frustrating for him, but he handled it with such poise that I was honestly impressed. I’ve worked with so many players over the years, and there are plenty of botlaners who would just complain about their lane partner. That often leads to changes in the bot lane. Bill went through a lot this year, and I think he was genuinely excited about playing with a fellow Australian who, frankly, has accomplished more than he has.”

In the end, JungleJuice claims to have had a “super easy offseason”. “I feel like if I pick someone from Reddit with zero experience and ask him to build a roster, I feel like he could have done it”, quips the GM. If its best elements could have attracted the interest of other teams, the fact that FlyQuest and Team Liquid retained their rosters enabled 100 Thieves to remain relatively serene, particularly in negotiations with River, whose contract had expired. Only the FBI case could have been problematic if Cloud9 had been interested in AD Carry, but the Blue Cloud quickly made the choice to bring back Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen.

One of the special things about 100 Thieves' offseason is that the team will be playing the 2025 season in a very special situation. The team has reached an agreement with Riot to change its status from an LCS partner to a 'Provisional Guest Partner' in the debut North Conference. This designation is ambiguous, and it's undecided what will happen with their spot in 2026 — however, unlike DSG, the first-ever NACL Guest team, they will not have to play in the promotion tournament at the end of the year. It remains unclear whether or not 100 Thieves will stay in the league past the 2025 season, and, even if they do, it's unknown what their continued participation in the space would look like. For now, the 'Provisional Guest Partner' title gives Riot and 100T time to negotiate and find a plan that works for both parties.

While the 2025 offseason was therefore not particularly disrupted, JungleJuice finds itself in uncertainty in the event of 100T retaining its slot next year. “It definitely made things more difficult,” the GM explained. “The players were on multi-year deals, most of which thankfully will end in 2025. So, it aligned with the provisional guest situation. But now we’re in this murky spot where none of our contracts extend beyond 2025. If Riot continues to work with us in the LTA—whether as a provisional guest partner, a permanent spot, or even a semi-permanent one—we’ll essentially be back at square one. That was my biggest concern.”