After the first week of group play at the 2016 League of Legends World Championships, the best European team isn't from the EU LCS.
Albus Nox Luna has been the story of the tournament so far, going 2-1 in its first three games to tie the highest amount of wins by any single wildcard region team at the World Championships. It capped off its nearly perfect first week with an upset (if you can call it one at this point) versus back-to-back European champion G2 Esports.
ESPN spoke to ANX's starting mid laner Mykhailo "Kira" Harmash following the positive results.
"It's pretty fun [to be atop of Europe]," said Kira. "In the last half of the year, we've only scrimmed an LCS team, at max, four times. We only scrimmed against [EU] CS teams, and usually lost to them. So we came here and beat the best EU LCS team. It's a pretty cool thing to be here and have more wins than the [entire continent] of Europe."
Why does Kira think Luna is doing so well?
"During our [domestic] league, we played too much," he said. "I think we played way too much. Before Worlds, we played a little. Almost didn't [even] play. When we came here, we were all relaxed and finally ready to fight."
"Everyone wants to play Faker," he admitted, answering which mid laners at the tournament he'd like to play against the most. "[I'd also like to challenge] Bjergsen. I don't care about the others. I played against Bjergsen in Europe in solo queue, and he was pretty good. He also beat me in the 1v1 tournament [at last year's All Stars] so I want revenge. And Faker is the best mid laner, and the one time I played against him, he trolled me. So that's why I killed him. I want to [play] versus [those two]."
Although Faker's SKT would lose later against the Flash Wolves, Kira said he believed the South Korean dynasty was the toughest team in the competition after the first week. And although his team was able to thwart G2 in their first of two meetings, Kira didn't want to speculate on how the CIS champion would do in a full season of the LCS. He admitted that it would be an entirely new system, region and player base the team would have to measure up over a course of an entire season.
"Thank you to Moscow 5," said Kira, talking about the former kings of the CIS, a team that was once an odds-on favorite to win the Summoner's Cup in 2012.
Now, four years later, Albus Nox Luna is trying to carry on the M5 legacy. "[Also thanks to] Gambit Gaming players because when I started playing professional League of Legends, I always watched all of their games. I now have experience, and I need to [win more] to be the same and to get first place to be even better. Thank you to those guys."