LSO is a new face to me since I played myth last year and he gets a lot of hate, is it justified? Well he combines Elfoid style enthusiasm with Father Xmas' insistence that he's actually a 3 baller and that the myth elitists are biased against him.Sometimes you random and get lord scary owl on your team, so in essence you are down a player already
But is he really wasted units? Is he really so bad to warrant the abuse? Well knowing very little about him (except some stats from MWC when he capped a terrible team) I decided to quickly look at his week 1 performance.
Game 1 Acts
He is given 8 souls and a ghol, his ghol picks up small pus from popped wights and goes mid as instructed. Pretty good so far! After some fighting on the flanks he's left on his own middle and pushes Asmo away from mid flag but loses his ghol to morts for no benefit. He loses a soul to a mort while getting a couple of hits in, then Chron's FG come down and hits a couple of his units while only being hit by one spear. shadow starts rushing but Adren hangs back with his zerks while LSO is busy throwing spears at Chron's FG. shadow and Adrens zerks get picked off one by one by the FG, now with only a friendly red health FG nearby LSO gets cleaned up by Chrons healthy FG.
Did LSO get blamed this game? Yes
Did LSO deserve the blame? No he played fine, one of the players blaming him played far worse.
Game 2 Lichen
He gets 4 archs and 10 thrall. He goes to the south temple and doesn't leave any thrall on the flag. With toxyn (combined 26%) they face off against slate (14%), for some goddamn reason slate rushes and his first pus kills tox's dwarf, he then joins tox's melee and engages slate, tox pusses virtually all the warriors (including his own) and slate is overwhelmed by thrall and dies. Right after this shadow comes to LSO with Chron chasing him, after tox and shadow give him warning he starts shooting Chron and sets his melee up to join shadow and fight Chron (chron has 7 warriors vs shadows 4 warriors and LSO's 5 thrall). LSO engages while shadow continues running and only turns to help after 2 thrall have been killed, LSO dies in the melee while shadow gets off 4-5 melee hits and runs away.
Did LSO get blamed this game? No he played well but he shouldn't take sole credit for killing slate as he was with tox and they had virtually 2x the units.
Game 3 Mjilahdositpoilfuckitphobia
LSO gets a lock some melee and home defence mauls. He follows Adren south and gets a really sweet lock shot on nitro/slate killing a fetch and wounding a lot of melee. Adren has like no melee left after trading melee with slate and runs off on his own while LSO stays closer to the team as a southern extension of their mid force. Adren predictably gets rushed while LSO doesn't even fire a shot to help (although if he did a fetch could've blocked it). Toxyn starts rushing the flag without anyone his team communicating and LSO is left behind, he then goes to rush after Toxyn is dead and loses his 4 zerks pointlessly, his lock is chased down by melee.
Did LSO get blamed this game? Yes
Did LSO deserve the blame? No. Adren pushed up without melee support and was dead the second the other team realized he could be easily rushed. Even in the best case scenario of LSO's lock getting an uninterrupted fireball off Adren was still toast. LSO was a little slow in reacting to Toxyn's rush but since no-one ordered a rush he can be easily forgiven for not going at the same time. His loss of zerks afterwards was a poor decision though as its possible his team might have been able to win with that melee plus his lock alive.
Game 4 Calm
The planning time chat mostly consists of his team blaming him for past games. He wrongfully takes credit for game 2 but continues to get abuse for others mistakes in other games (seriously Adren rewatch game 3, that was 100% your fault). Anyway he gets a dwarf, 4 warriors, a pus ghol and some thrall. Adren overextends south immediately and is very lucky with pus duds on his dorf while LSO comes around to support him. Le lands a good dwarf shot on Gekko's warriors and Adren cleans them up. LSO goes west to help shadow and lands an excellent pus on multiple warriors and a dorf, his dwarf lands a bomb that's heavily damages or kills the warriors while killing the dwarf. An enemy pus ghol is blocked off by his warriors (whether by accident or design who knows). His dwarf is then killed from 2 pus being thrown at it. He supports a failed rush a little later and keeps 3 warriors alive which split up, 1 goes tagging west while the other 2 join up with his mid thrall who are under assault by heron(s?). After letting a heron pick up multiple roots off the ground he kills one which dawdles too long before his thrall get bombed by a friendly dwarf. LSO holds mid flag the rest of the game while his warrior gets a flag and some time on another flag.
Did LSO get blamed this game? No. His pus and dorf shot west helped his team enormously and his deaths weren't too bad. He did let an enemy heron pick up roots middle which could have been prevented though.
Game 5 Hvergelgimopffuckitmir
LSO is given 10 souls, a mort and 3 mauls which are put on home flag as ordered. He spends the first part of the game shadowing trow as ordered. Crun runs far south where LSO can't follow so he stays mid and loses some souls to a mort. He then goes to aid Cruns trow who are running away but this is a mistake as he + Crun can't fight the Trow and melee and he dies while doing a small amount of damage to myrks. His remaining 3 home mauls are killed by 4 myrks at the end of the game.
Did LSO get blamed this game? No. He had a thankless job and performed alright, he did lose some souls to a mort and then get rushed trying to help Crun which was inadvisable as he needed to backup onto the water before the melee got to him.
Overall LSO performed reasonably during this series and was made a scapegoat for others failures in this match. He generally had the fewest units and since he got souls and thrall whenever those units were available, he got some pretty bad ratios. He always followed orders and communicated with his team. There were some occasions where he made judgement errors which can be excused by him simply not having played as much Myth 2 multiplayer as everyone else and with more tournament experience he should be able to reduce those mistakes.