Nightmare start for Targamas in LEC Winter 2024

Just a few seasons ago, Raphael “Targamas” Crabbe was winning LEC Spring 2022 and was finishing 3^rd – 4^th at MSI 2022 with G2 Esports. Then he moved to Excel Esports and had the worst possible season start. The team finished 10^th in LEC Winter 2023 and then 10^th again in the next split, but Targamas was no longer there to see the whole story.

In May 2023, he moved to Karmine Corp and helped them win LFL Summer 2023 (a B-tier competition) as well as EMEA Masters Summer 2023 (an A-tier competition).

Now he’s playing in LEC but this league seems a bit too strong for Karmine Corp. In the first four matches of the 2024 season, Targamas and his squad lost against Fnatic, G2 Esports, MAD Lions KOI, and GIANTX.

For the first two of these losses, we can’t really blame Karmine. These are legendary teams that won numerous splits and even Worlds in the case of Fnatic. So everyone was expecting Targamas to lose. But the next two defeats indicate that Karmine are not good enough to do anything in this league.

Ideally, they could finish 8^th if they get their act together and find a winning formula against some of the weaker opponents they’ll face in the coming weeks. But it might be hard to mentally recover from the first four losses.

Toujours pas.

GGWP @GIANTXENG pic.twitter.com/W6izShqa0K

— Karmine Corp (@KarmineCorp) January 20, 2024

The defeats

Karmine Corp’s first match was against Fnatic. Their draft looked solid on paper, with champions like Jax, Azir, and Lucian. But Fnatic picked Akali and Aphelios, which proved problematic for Targamas’ team. Both sides faced challenges and the battle lasted for nearly 40 minutes, which is way above the average duration of a LoL game.

In the second match, Karmine encountered G2 and tried winning with Lucian again. Only this time, their lineup was focused a lot more on ranged combat. Meanwhile, G2 picked Kennen, Viego, LeBlanc, Aphelios and Nautilus.

This draft worked well, but needed around 20 minutes to fully come online. After that, the game ended relatively quickly. By minute 24, G2 were already 7000 gold ahead.

The next match was against MAD Lions. The Azir plus Jax combo was utilized again, but MAD Lions knew exactly what they needed to do to counter it. In the first 20 minutes, Karmine looked capable of winning and were ahead in gold, but soon the power dynamic shifted and they lost in less than 35 minutes.

The last match, against GX, was another struggle against Akali, and another attempt to make Azir work. The strategy proved to be decent but insufficient.

Header: Riot Games