Wunder talks Splyce Worlds performance, top lane meta

European No. 3 seed Splyce was drawn into one of the toughest groups at Worlds, with North American No. 1 seed Team SoloMid, former Chinese champions Royal Never Give Up and Korean No. 3 seed Samsung Galaxy. After an 0-3 first week, Splyce took a game off RNG in Week 2 to finish the tournament 1-5.

The Rift Herald caught up with Splyce top laner Martin “Wunder” Hansen. A full transcript is below.

Christopher “chhopsky” Pollock: Hey everyone! Chris from Rift Herald here, otherwise known as chhopsky. I am here with Splyce top laner Wunder. Wunder, obviously not the end to your Worlds run that you would have hoped, but for the game that you did win, when they put you on the Jayce top, you went off. You did 27k damage, seven more than anyone else on your team. How did that game that you won differ from the other games today?

Martin “Wunder” Hansen: I think the game that we won, it was, we came into the second part of the group and we thought that we could actually pull off some wins because in scrims we have done well and we have practiced this Jayce-Elise thing where we go for early towers really much in scrims so I think we just played for the early game, which we normally fall a bit behind, and we got a lead, and I think with our champs it was really easy to just push lanes and to just go up and hit towers. We have the macro understanding, as a lot of teams have at Worlds, so we could just take the game home when we got the lead.

chhopsky: Yeah, it definitely looked like it. People that had watched you through the EU LCS regular split would kind of identify you as the late-game team that executes lane swaps well and then pushes the macro into the rest of the game, whereas obviously post-6.15 that lane swap option is pretty much gone. For you as a top laner, how has that affected your game and the way that you approach matchups?

Wunder: I think with lane swaps being gone, it’s a bit more like of course you pick for lane, like you can’t really lane swap and I feel like I’ve always been a player that I like to play lanes, so it’s not really a problem for me, and I’ve always played champs that I feel like I’m good in lane and I like the matchups, like that. I don’t necessarily want lane swaps, but I feel like it was a good addition to League of Legends and it brought some more strategy involved in the game. I still feel like the champs I play, like Jayce and Irelia and stuff like that, are good in lane and we can abuse that.

chhopsky: Yes, definitely. So in the regular split, I remember you being one of the first top laners to really want to bring Gnar back into the meta. So obviously, in one of the games today you had Irelia into Gnar. How did you feel about that matchup?

Wunder: I think we got in a bit of a trap in champion select where we had double AP, like AP jungler and AP mid laner, and then they picked the Gnar, so I couldn’t really pick anything AD, because I believe Jayce was banned, so Jayce was banned and they picked Gnar, so I had to kind of play a risky matchup, and as the game progressed we got kind of messed up in the mid lane and the jungle, I think Trashy died once or twice in the mid lane. Syndra got really fed and could pressure all the time, so they just roamed three top and dove me and the game was kind of over. It was definitely a risky pick, and we paired it with Elise so it should in theory work out if we play around it, but we got a bit behind in mid/jungle and they just kind of snowballed.

chhopsky: Yes, unfortunate. From the looks of things though, you guys have mentally recovered quite well from each of your losses and managed to stay positive. What’s your feeling about the whole of your Worlds campaign?

Wunder: I think the start of the Worlds was a bit tough for us, we are a new team and our scrims weren’t going all that well up to Worlds, like the starting week, the first three games. And my own performance was not that good, so I was a bit happy that I could at least redeem some of it today and I could show that I’m actually a player worthy of being here. Just in general, getting one win is fine for us and we can learn a lot from all the teams we played against, because we played against three really good teams.

Overall, we can be pretty happy, and I think nobody expected us to do anything at Worlds when we got drawn into the group we had. I think we can just go home, enjoy the offseason and just be happy with the experience that we got here.

chhopsky: Yeah, for a new team to even come this far is always incredibly impressive, especially when you look at the history of some of the other teams that have gotten here. With that in mind, we’ve actually got an award for you today, for basically hoisting your team on your back and outdamaging everyone else in the game by a huge order of magnitude, I think something like 30 percent. So I present to you the Rift Herald Titanium Spork, for getting fed.

Wunder: Holy moly! I got fed this game. I mean I didn’t really get fed but I did a lot of damage [laughs]. So I’m happy for this, this means a lot to me. I don’t know