Winning the League of Legends World Championship makes you a living esports legend. One of the coolest ways Riot Games honors its champions (not considering the $1 million prize) is by creating in-game skins immortalizing their championship.
Yesterday Riot revealed a new slate of five skins for 2014 victors Samsung Galaxy White, making what might be the best five-man team ever to play the game a permanent part of the game they played.
Riot picked a signature champion for each of the five players and created a unique skin featuring Samsung’s white-and-blue colors. It’s also the perfect opportunity to throw in a few inside jokes for die hard fans of esports.
Riot Games
In the top lane, Jang “ Looper” Hyeong-seok gets his Singed skin. That’s an interesting choice considering that champion was never actually part of the competitive metagame during White’s 2014 run to the championship. But it makes sense considering Jang’s history as a superb Singed player, which led him to pulling out the pocket pick in a game against Team SoloMid at Worlds, the only appearance of the champion at the tournament. He put up a 5/1/18 KDA against Marcus “ Dyrus” Hill in a winning game.
Looper’s Singed skin features a trophy instead of a vat of poison on his back, but it doesn’t shoot confetti like one Reddit user suggests.
The most dangerous jungler in 2014 was Choi “DanDy” In-kyu, and his Rengar play was nearly unstoppable. His new Rengar skin, though, looks incredibly similar to the Sweeper Alistair skin, leading many fans to lament Riot’s tribute to the player called the best jungler in the world through 2014.
In the mid lane, Heo “PawN” Won-seok has emerged as one of the top players at that position since winning the World Championship, leading EDward Gaming to the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) title while playing through injury. The World Championship was PawN’s coming out party, the place where he showed he was more than just a support style carry player, and Talon was one of the champions that made him that way.
The skin also features a bit of fan service—Talon is wearing a Samsung jacket, the same lucky jacket Bae “Dade” Eo-jin, the Samsung Galaxy Blue mid laner, handed to PawN after he carried White to victory over Blue in the semifinals. Through Blue’s multiple championship runs in 2014 that jacket never left Dade’s torso, but after White’s win, he passed the torch to PawN. It was a touching moment at the event now forever immortalized inside League of Legends.
The most popular White player at Worlds, perhaps, was marksman Gu “imp” Seung-bin thanks to his personality and play style. Imp gets a Twitch skin he’d be proud of—the toxic little rat is replaced with a goblin, or imp-like, little beast, wearing the same Harry Potter style glasses that imp’s donned for most of his career and featuring the same snarky grin imp featured in his famous interview during Riot’s Road to Worlds feature.
Even better, the skins recall animation features Twitch rolling around on the grass—just like he did at Sangam Stadium.
Riot Games
“In all honesty, I just want to roll around on the grass,” imp told Joshua “Jatt” Leesman, talking about how it feels to be at such a massive stadium. Now he gets to do just that on Summoner’s Rift.
That leaves the support player and tournament MVP, Cho “Mata” Se-hyoung, who gets his own version of iconic support champion Thresh. It’s not the red tinged Thresh Mata supposedly wanted when he was honored, but it features a cool new recall animation where the ghostly shepherd raises a Sumoner’s Cup from the ground and then seizes it with his hook, just like Mata did thanks to his playmaking ability on the champion in Korea last year.
The new skins will set you back 750 RP except for the Twitch and Thresh skins which come in at a 975 RP price point, likely due to the new animations. The skins will be available for purchase starting May 14.
Samsung Galaxy White may be the best team to ever play League of Legends, and now they’ll have the skins so players on the Summoner’s Rift won’t forget that.
Image via Riot Games/Flickr
