It’s surreal to wake up to Mondays like these. It happened to me only twice, to swipe up my phone screen and rush to Leaguepedia’s World Championship page and check if Sunday’s events were real, or if it was just the night’s charm.
But before I could do that, the browser loaded the Facebook page I didn’t close before falling asleep. It showed a funny post of a Polish League of Legends fan event: “Let’s wait for Jankos at the Warsaw Airport”.
“I need to go there” was the first thing that flitted across my mind, even before I checked the translation of the post or where is the airport and if it makes sense to go there. Then I asked myself, “Do I really want to go there? I’m probably just going to look stupid among hundreds of compatriots, wholeheartedly cheering for him. There’s his hardcore fanbase, and then there’s me. I’m not even Polish, just going because it’s close to where I live now.”
So why do I feel like I need to go there?
It started in 2013, when a little amateur Polish team entered the Promotion Tournament after changing their jungler. Kiedyś Miałem Team, “I Had a Team Once”, was nothing more than five friends having fun together, who casually got to play against the rising Copenhagen Wolves of Forgiven, Amazing and Youngbuck. It was barely believable for Ninjas in Pyjamas as well, whose titans Nukeduck, Zorozero, Freeze and Mithy got eliminated from EU LCS in a stunning 3–0. Roccat acquired the roster less than a week later, and that was when the young hatchling, Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski’s flight took off.
Nobody expects a rookie team to do much in its first split but try to cheese some wins here and there with surprise picks. And cheese Roccat did: on early game playmakers such as Lee Sin , the young jungler did all he knew and spread his wings fearlessly, his relentless ganks slowly forging his now famous title as the “First Blood King”. It didn’t look right until Roccat eliminated the now legendary lienup of Europe’s finest, the Russian stronghold of Diamondprox’s Gambit Esports, and sealing a 3rd place finish in their first split.
The magic this young squad weaved looked over when Summer split came around: a mere 6th place got them to playoffs with little hope. But the dream literally reset when, in game 4 of the semifinal against Fnatic, Jankos’s Kha’Zix and ADC Celaver’s Tristana, jump after jump, overcame a 7k gold deficit with a standout teamfight in the botlane.
There I screamed.
I was at a summer barbecue with friends, holding a plate over my head, waiting for my serving, but no, I was actually waiting for the miracle, the ultimate comeback, the rookie Polish team soaring above Europe and making it to Worlds off the back of their teamwork.
Alas, it did not happen. And I felt weird. I didn’t realize it until today, but that was the first time in my life I screamed for a team. It was the first time I believed, the first time I was there with my heart on the line. That was when I realized: I could not go on watching League if Jankos was not on the screen.
2015 was the year of harsh reality: Roccat needed more than friendship if they wanted to achieve results and compete with the best. They wanted to fly higher. Swapping midlaner Overpow to toplane to make room for veteran Nukeduck before it was cool and adding rookie ADC Woolite could not stop Unicorns of Love and Origen, who rampaged over Europe, just like Roccat was about to do a year earlier. Once again, Jankos was denied of his Worlds dream, his wings clipped. Everyone, including me, was caught in the wake of Unicorns’ magic and xPeke’s Royal Road, until this video was showed on Lolesport stream.
“Everyone would tell you that we want to go to Worlds, that we want to be the best, but it’s like about what you feel inside, you know. You may say it in front of cameras, you may say it to the people, you may say it to the organization, but… you may just lie. Maybe you will say it but you don’t really think about it.”
Until that moment I believed that all professional players were just incredibly skilled kids whose ego got inflated and they took advantage of it to make money or fame. It was these words who made me realize what it meant to strive for a dream, to fail, and still strive for that same dream once again. Jankos was not ready to land, not yet, and neither was I.
2016 put my faith to a test when Jankos changed nests to H2K. I was not ok with it, my brain was split: do I keep cheering for the team that almost made it twice, or for the player that made it all possible in the first place? In the end I decided to follow Jankos: this would be his year, I kept saying to myself, he’s the best jungler in Europe and his team has what it takes to make it. This time, he will fly higher than ever before.
But as we know, the talent pool of Europe is vast and competitive. The two newly promoted teams, G2 Esports and Splyce, were around the corner, along with several bitter disappointments in playoff that kept Jankos from making it until the very top, overshadowed by rookie superstar Trick. It was the only series win of the year, against a very messy Unicorns team, which awarded him, at long last, a hard-fought spot at the World Championship for the first time in three years.
What happened there, it’s not easy to tell. Everyone who was watching Europe has their book filled with H2K’s top 4 finish; but only those who watched Jankos remember that clutch Elder Dragon steal against the Chinese dreadnought of Clearlove’s Edward Gaming, the very win which skyrocketed them to first seed.
And this time it was Jankos who screamed.
At the top of his lungs, he finally had a chance to show the world his worth, to stand tall next to Clearlove’s legacy and even fly over him. It took too long, three years in the making, but it was happening, and it was all let loose in that single, emotional scream.
Then it was over, all of a sudden.
Ambition tore off Jankos’s feathers and 2017 had nothing for him, despite his constant improvements and efforts to reach for the sky. H2K was marred by synergy issues and an uncertain future in the European landscape, and they plummeted. It might have looked like Jankos had peaked already, a jungler that kept playing at the highest level and yet still failed to touch the clouds. On the other side of the World LCK fans were crying for Score, when Jankos was just behind him in the most barren of the paths.
In 2018, H2K severely cut their investment, thus forcing Jankos to look for a different nest once again. It happened before, but I knew what to do now: there was no doubt I was going to be in Jankos’s wake again. Unexpectedly, it was G2 Esports that welcomed him: after two years with multi-MVP award winner Trick, they put all their money on Jankos’s experience and legacy to pilot their team.
And it failed.
Again.
And it hurt so much more, because it was so close, finally getting to EU LCS Spring Finals after four years of competition, only to have Fnatic’s young superstar Broxah overfly him. And then again in Summer split, being slapped out of playoffs by Misfits. It looked as if his wings couldn’t open anymore, and any more attempts to fly higher would prove futile. Even G2, the only team that could challenge Fnatic in their European reign, could not find a sky fit for Jankos.
In hindsight, it was probably the Regional Qualifier who made everything possible, that made G2 take off again, one win at a time. First against Splyce, then against finalists Schalke 04. And then Supermassive, Infinity Esports, Phong Vu Buffalo, Flash Wolves, Afreeca Freecs! The ride looked like it could never stop, even the Korean storm could not crash G2, until they met Royal Never Give Up.
It was at that moment, 1–2 down in the Quarterfinals, that the “First Blood King” made a stunning return. First on Nocturne then on Olaf, Jankos managed to dominate the early games, allowing Perkz and Wunder to take over the game and effectively ending MLXG’s career. Chinese junglers, who preferably revolved around botlane, never had a chance of rivaling Jankos’s uncanny ability of adapting on the fly.
G2’s unlikely cruise halted in semifinals, but it wasn’t an ending. Instead, it was just the beginning. With the most daring roleswap (since, well, Overpow!), G2 propelled themselves to a whole new level, dominating Europe’s newly rebranded LEC with no contestants.
One thousand, nine hundred and forty six days after his debut in Europe, four hundred and sixty four competitive games played, Jankos lifted his first trophy. The First Blood King finally had a crown, and the starry sky over Europe was nobody’s but his. This time it was he who finally cast a great shadow over Europe under his victorious wings.
And the journey was not meant to stop there.
Now riding an all-time high, G2 moved on to dominate MSI as well, where not even the golden wings of SKT T1 could fly as high as them, and no Pegasus could hope to chase their glory.
Four years after that video, after that “lying to himself”, after doubting his own skills in competing with the best in the world, he had finally made it.
I’m not going to tell you about fresh memories. You and me, we all know what came next: the Summer Split, the rivalry with Fnatic and, eventually, his first MVP title, wearing Polish pride on his own shoulders. The national eagle spread its wings on his own jersey’s white and red fabric, turning Jankos into his homeland’s legendary winged hussar.
The best part about such stories, perhaps, is that they are not over. They never are. Despite the ups and downs, the air gaps, the shattered hopes, this flight, his flight, has been nothing short of a xianxia novel, where the main character starts from humble beginnings and over the years grows stronger and wiser, until he eventually conquers the whole China.
And indeed, there still is one pair of wings flying higher than Jankos, one more opponent to overfly, one last challenge on the way to the very first Grand Slam: Funplus Phoenix’s Tian from the LPL. Year after year, rookie junglers showed up seemingly out of nowhere to put one more “no” on Jankos’s achievements. It is now his chance, and the greatest he ever had, to be the one who clips wings.
I can’t know this part of the story; it’s too early to tell. Nobody knows how it’s going to end, nobody knows when it’s going to end, nobody knows if there will be any fans waiting for him at the Warsaw airport.
I hope Jankos’s flight will never end; but if he ever lands, I want to be there, just to see him take off again.
