The Rise of the Vietnamese Junglers

SofM was the first Vietnamese jungler that made his name outside of Vietnam. He started playing League of Legends at a young age and played at the highest level reaching Challenger Tier on the Korean servers, while playing from Vietnam on over 100 Ping. He was scouted very early on and joined Snakes Esports of the LPL as a trainee after MSI 2016. He has found moderate success after making his debut leading the Snakes into the LPL playoffs a few splits in a row. He is still considered one of the most mechanically gifted Vietnamese players and is looked up to by many other junglers.

If 2016 was the year SofM got introduced to the League world, 2017 was all about Levi. The GIGABYTE Marines showed up on the international stage in a big way. In 2017, Vietnam was still under the GPL region and so they fought their way through the other Southeast Asia teams to make it to MSI. Levi made a splash in the Play-In Group Stage playing a pace, super aggressive style. They finished 1st in groups and faced off against TSM, who did not get an auto-berth. In a crazy series that announced Levi's introduction to the international scene, they took TSM to 5 games. They eventually made it to the Main Event by beat Supermassive. In the Main Event, the GIGABYTE Marines showed some creativity and relentless aggression taking games off of G2 Esports, Team Solo Mid, and Team WE. They also made some noise at Worlds landing in a group with Longzhou, Fnatic, and Immortals. There was actually a chance for GIGABYTE to advance and with Longzhou dominating at 6-0, it setup a 3-way tie at 2-4 between the other 3 teams. The Marines ran into a streaking Fnatic team and lost in the last tiebreaker, finishing 9th-11th at Worlds. Levi eventually took his talents to North America and joined 100 Thieves Academy, where he is looking to break into the NA LCS.

YiJin is the newest Vietnamese jungler to be introduced to the international League of Legends world. Vietnam was identified as the 2nd largest region in terms of player population in the world and Riot recently recognized them as an independent region known as the Vietnamese Championship Series (VCS). This promoted the NA LCS to a major region and made VCS on a similar level to the LMS. The spring split champion of the VCS would be waiting in the 2nd round of the Play-In stage. Everyone expected the GIGABYTE Marines to return to MSI, but the majority of their team left and 2 of them actually joined EVOS Esports, Stark and Slay. The Spring Finals were heavily contested, but EVOS Esports came out victorious and represented the VCS. They drew Supermassive in the 2nd round of the Play-In stage with the winner advancing to the Main Event. If GIGABYTE was known for being relentlessly aggressive, then EVOS would be more calculated aggression. EVOS took care of Supermassive relatively easily and advanced, making their presence known in the main event. They forced others to play their bloody, brawling style and took a game off Team Liquid on Day 2. They took early leads in many of their matches, but they just couldn't close out, only winning 2 games in groups against both Western teams, Team Liquid and Fnatic. Time and time again, YiJin would show off his high skill level and wow the crowd; he even got comparisons to Levi and SofM, who came before him.

This is the inaugural season for the Vietnamese Championship Series (VCS) and from what it looks like, the region will continue to improve as more foreign investment comes in and more infrastructure is setup. The player / talent pool is there, but now it needs to be refined so that they can compete at the highest level. One other trend that we might start seeing is the Vietnamese import spreading across other regions. If they can improve their macro play and communication, then they can battle against anyone in the world.