TSM Aims to Prove Vainglory Dominance at Worlds

This weekend Super Evil Megacorp will be hosting their first-ever Vainglory World Championship in the historic TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California. For the first time in the game's history, 12 of the best Vainglory teams from around the globe will compete to see who is the best organization in the world.

One of those teams will be Team SoloMid, one of the first professional organizations to dive into the Vainglory waters. Having won both the winter and summer North American Championships, TSM comes into Worlds as one of the strong favorites to win it all.

Captained by Michael "FlashX" Valore, TSM looks to leverage the 24-year-old's experience to anchor its relatively new roster of players. Flash has been part of all five of TSM's first-place finishes this year and seems to have weathered the organization's roster changes to continue to put in dominant roaming performances.

TSM also features former Gankstars Vega and Vertigo standout Raul "BestChuckNA" Montano-Chaidez in lane, who joined the team in June. BestChuckNA also has experience roaming from his time with Gankstars, making him a versatile player that understands the roles his teammates have to play as well as his own.

Rounding out the roster is arguably one of the best junglers in the world, Lechaun "VONC" Jiao. VONC was part of the Cinderella run of VON Menace during the autumn qualifiers, where his play took VONC all the way to the finals only to be stopped by the Ardent Alliance (the team that eventually became TSM). Undeterred, VONC helped his team to a first-place finish in the second autumn qualifier and solidified his position as a top Vainglory player.

TSM has so far lived up to the impressive resume, sweeping NA Summers in Seattle back in September. They enter Worlds with one of the easier group draws, facing Korea's spring champion Hack, who got in as the international wild card, and Evil 8 split winner Gankstars Cerberus.

The greater challenge lies outside of the group stages, where they are destined to run up against Europe's winter and spring champion, Team Secret. TSM was able to defeat Team Secret at the Battle of the Atlantic earlier this year. However, both teams' rosters look different than they did back in May.

It will be interesting to see how these new squads match up as we move through worlds and if TSM continues to surprise us with its more unconventional compositions and hero selections (jungle Phinn anyone?) The Vainglory World Championship takes place December 2-4 live on Twitch.