The story of the legendary Martin “Rekkles” Larsson is a unique one in the world of esports. Rekkles is an AD (attack damage) Carry in League of Legends. His role in the game is to gather and deal the most possible damage to the opposing team. His job is to kill… as relentlessly as possible. And he’s damn good at it - one of the best. But the story of Rekkles is an intriguing one.
Rekkles started his professional career in esports in 2012, at the age of 16, playing for a number of small teams. However, a peculiar and wonderful thing happened in November of that year, when he joined Fnatic as their starting Marksman. He was a marvel. His role as ADC was to carry all the damage output, but in many cases he carried the team. On more than one occasion he dealt so many kills that he might as well have been playing solo. I mean, the kid was good. He was making money off the game at age 15, and made quite a bit more in subsequent years.
However, his role as AD Carry comes with a bargain. Even though he is carrying all the damage, he relies heavily on his team to cover other roles. Without them, he can’t do his job. From a viewer’s perspective, when performing well, the ADC seems to be doing all the work. Thus, he tends to get all the credit. However, when performing poorly, the ADC can also end up taking all the blame. This kind of pressure can get to a player as talented as Rekkles, and it can also have an effect on the ego. As a wise man once said: "With great power comes great responsibility" just at the hand of Rekkles. He was, admittedly, one of the finest killers in League of Legends history, but his job was useless if he didn’t have a solid team at his back. The truth was that with Rekkles in their arsenal, the team had amazing synergy.
Now this is where the story gets bizarre. Riot, the organization that runs esports like League of Legends, changed their age requirements during the process of making LoL a professional esport. Don’t get me wrong - this was a great move for the game as a whole, and the formation of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) would do great things for the game. But this meant that Rekkles was no longer old enough to play competitively. Fnatic’s most prized asset would be unable to play for a full year.
Despite the absence of their already legendary ADC, Fnatic did rather well in their 2013 season. But fans wanted to see Rekkles play. And when he rejoined the team in 2014, he did not disappoint. They won the first seven games in a row. But the game had changed in the year Rekkles was on the bench. One player could no longer carry the whole team. As good as he was, he could no longer single-handedly turn the tables as he had time and time again during his earlier days. This shook up Rekkles’ playstyle, and Fnatic as a whole ultimately suffered for it. Coincidentally, other members of the team were having their own doubts. Fnatic was falling apart, and their performance reflected it. After a strong start in 2014, they began to decline, and by the end of the season, they were hanging on by a thread.
Rekkles saw what was happening, and decided to make a move that fans would see as selfish, but was simply him adapting to a changing environment. He sought out the rival team, Alliance, and when several of his Fnatic teammates left, Rekkles made the switch. Fans vilified him, blaming him for Fnatic’s dramatic change, when in fact, he was no different from the other members who felt the need to leave the team.
Alliance was a veteran team, which was the reason Rekkles chose them. Unfortunately, shortly after he joined, Alliance underwent a drastic change and became a brand new team called Elements. What was once an established, well-built, and well-performing team, was now a brand new, undeveloped team. On top of all this, Rekkles couldn’t shake off the reputation he had unintentionally made for himself as a selfish, cold-blooded player, who only cared about winning.
Elements’ new structure was not playing out well, and one problem arose after another. Rekkles himself stated, "It felt like once we solved one thing together - because everyone was willing to solve it, from players to management - there was another issue right around the corner. It was never-ending.” It wasn’t any one person’s fault, but the team simply wasn’t working out.
Rekkles eventually just felt unhappy with Elements, and wanted to go back to Fnatic, a team that he actually played well with, and knew on a personal level. After all, any team works best when they are a team on and off the field. After reaching out to his former team halfway through 2015, Rekkles re-joined Fnatic.
It was a move that would change everything. Following Rekkles’ return to Fnatic, the team won every regular-season game that summer, and made it to the semifinals of the world championships. The key to the success of Rekkles’ return to Fnatic was his newfound humility and wisdom. He was no longer the god-among-men that could carry a game single-handedly, and he knew that now. He’d learned to play as a part of a team, and he’d evolved in the ever-changing game that is League of Legends. The meta shifts from time to time, and Rekkles had failed to see that for too long. Now that he’d grown and let the challenges shape him as a player, he could make his way back to the record books.
In the European playoffs, Rekkles landed a Pentakill, a rare feat in which a single player kills off the entire opposing team. He was still the legend he started out as, but he had to adapt to keep that title. In a monumental change, a player who was originally considered a one-man wrecking crew had learned how to play as an integral part of a team, and had truly become better for it.
