Scouting Grounds 2018 has officially kicked off! After a couple days of irl scouting, NA LCS orgs came together to draft 4 teams and the players are now ready to take the stage and prove their worth. The teams each represent a different drake: Mountain, Ocean, Cloud, and, Infernal. Arguably the best team is Infernal, whose roster consists of MistyStumpey, SrKenji, Strompest, Tactical, Duoking and InvenGlobal! Yes, along with the five players, each dragon receives a media outlet, and InvenGlobal has partnered up with Team Infernal to showcase stories of these five guys throughout the event.

To find out more about this event, we spoke with Vulcan, Clutch Gaming Academy support, who was discovered at the 2017 Scouting Grounds. He explains how the players should take advantage of NASG, what it can mean for their professional career, and how his personal experience impacted his relevance and mental fortitude.

First, I’m curious as to your thoughts of the players on my team, Team Infernal, and if you feel like any of them are standout players that have a good shot at having a successful event.

(List of players - In order from top to support: MistyStumpey, Srkenji, Strompest, Tactical, Duoking)

Actually, I played some scrims recently with Tactical, and I think he is probably the best ADC coming to Scouting Grounds. His communication is very good for a rookie because he hasn’t played any what I would call “real competitive matches” or anything like that. So yeah, he was really good at communication. His laning phase was pretty good and mechanically he is very good as well. So he is probably the best ADC. Outside of that, Duoking is probably the best mechanical support at Scouting Grounds. He has a very high ceiling. But the thing is his champion pool is kind of limited for this meta. It’ll just be about whether he is able to adapt to tank supports and engage supports, this kind of stuff. And I’m not too good at judging other positions outside of bot.


What is a general mindset that these players should have with them as they go through scrims and matches over the next few days.

I tweeted about this, but just focus on your own gameplay. Your team is random and you might not get drafted with players you like, that kind of stuff. So you just have to play your game and don’t tilt. The coaches won’t really mind if you lose a couple games if you’re playing well. Your teammates can int and you might lose games but if you keep playing well the coaches will notice your mental and how strong you can be, so it’s definitely a good thing. Also, even if you want to show your mechanics and individual prowess and stuff like that, playing with your team can sometimes require you to sacrifice some stuff for your team to win. I think that’s a cool idea that some staff look into as well, the ability to actually play for your team.


Do you feel like anything stuck with you throughout your season on Academy? You had a different staff at Scouting Grounds so were you able to learn different things and hold on to lessons learned there?

Well, I do remember once [during NASG 2017] I was pretty pissed after a game where we were arguing during the game in the comms. I remember I was pretty mad and Akaadian was there and he told me, not rudely but forcefully, to just relax because I was mad for no reason and being mad doesn’t do anything during game reviews. There were a couple times during this split where I was getting mad. I just remember that, because of Akaadian and the way he said it, it makes sense that I shouldn’t get mad during reviews. So I try to put my emotions aside during the split and just focus on reviewing and improving the team.

Do you feel like you would have ended up on an LCS or Academy roster without Scouting Grounds last year, or was that crucial in you getting that position?

Honestly, I think it is mostly because of scouting grounds. Because Clutch saw that my communication was very good. The way I engage teamfights, the way I play around my teammates and stuff like that is what they liked in me. That is not something you can see with me just playing solo queue and watching how I lane and my mechanics and stuff like that. It’s just something that can happen when they coach players in scouting grounds and watch their games like that.


Do you think that is mainly what coaches and analysts are looking for in the players here - their ability to communicate?

I think there are two different ways they do that. Some teams will pick up raw mechanical talent and teach communication and teach how to play with teammates, how to play as a team. The other one is they want someone that has the ability to communicate correctly, because they might think it’s a thing you’re born with if that makes sense, that you can’t really develop that well. And they just think that if you play a lot of games, you’ll get better at the game. But I think most people are looking for raw mechanical talent that has some abilities to communicate, because I think that’s probably the easiest thing to help develop as a coach.


You got to play with Prismal last year, but he is back again this year. What is something he can prove now that he couldn’t last year?

Well, I kind of know how he played and I know what maybe went badly for him last year. Prismal is a very aggressive player which is good thing in a rookie, you don’t want young players to be scared play too passively. So he was playing very aggressive and up in people’s face and stuff like that. But sometimes that would backfire and he would be getting caught out of position, whereas we can just get Baron and buff minions and win the game. He would try to go too far up and deal too much damage and he’d just die. That happened a couple times, and if he is able to fix that, I think he would for sure be academy level and he can get picked up by a team.

Thanks for sharing all of that! Lastly, anything exciting for you this offseason?

I’m soon to come back from Korea, hopefully I’ll hit high challenger here. I don’t have anything after that, I’ll probably just relax. But I’m pretty excited to see all the roster moves because I think it’s going to be probably the the craziest offseason in the history of the LCS and EU LCS as well since they are also getting franchised. So I’m pretty hyped to see all those changes!