Lunatic-Hai: Overwatch’s Kings Of The Rematch

South Korea’s golden children, Lunatic-Hai, were easily one of the best teams to ever play the game. However, that doesn’t exempt them from early losses. Through both their title wins and their fall from grace in APEX Season 4, legendary South Korean team Lunatic-Hai never managed a perfect run. History will remember them as the only team to ever repeat title runs during OGN’s Overwatch APEX. Still, their championship reigns were far from flawless, and funnily enough, most of their runs came off redemptions from former losses. From the sentinels of silver to kings clad in gold, this is another angle of Overwatch’s kings of the rematch, Lunatic-Hai.

Things all started during the Overwatch APAC Premier 2016. This was during a time were the west only had a taste of what South Korea had to offer. Some teams braced themselves against the ping and attempted to play in North American events, but it was difficult to see past that giant asterisk. That's what made this event special. As one of the first international offline events, Lunatic-Hai and Afreeca Freecs Blue were the two South Korean teams invited to compete. 

Facing down the barrel of the favourited European team, Rogue, Lunatic-Hai suffered an early loss. With Lee "LEETAEJUN" Tae Jun favoured the Roadhog for aggressive picks outside, whereas Rogue was more focused on dumping their resources into Dylan "aKm" Bignet's Reaper to win team fights through superior ultimate rotations. What put Rogue ahead of their time was their call to avoid mirroring Lunatic-Hai's compositional switches and play at their own tempo. If Lunatic-Hai mirrored them on the Mei and the Reaper, Rogue would swap to Hanzo, which still maintained their power when it came to brute force team fights, but allowed them to pressure the enemy shields better and added a more long-range pick option to their style. 

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However, Lunatic-Hai would reunite with Rogue and end Group B toppling them, 2-0. Both teams made the playoffs and would end up on opposite sides of the bracket, but fate works in mysterious ways, and the two teams would settle the score in one final match in the grand finals. Fighting through technical pauses, Lunatic-Hai only managed one map win before being swept by the Europeans. The final was a continuation of the problems Lunatic-Hai battle through in their first encounter. The South Korean team continued to try and make Roadhog and Winston work, but it was constantly put under pressure by Rogue's stubborn close range composition of Reaper and Mei. That sour taste stained their play, and it would be a long time before Lunatic-Hai would suffer that same kind of familiar defeat.

Lunatic-Hai's next run would be during OGN's Overwatch APEX Season 2 early in 2017. The team would return as the giant's they were slated to be, dominating through the first round of group play, advancing undefeated as the first seed in Group B against the likes of LuxuryWatch Blue, Misfits and Afreeca Freecs Red. That said, the plucky underdogs, RunAway, got the best of Lunatic-Hai in the second phase of group play, advancing into the semifinals as the first seed from Group A. Battling through the heyday of the dive metagame, Lunatic-Hai was forced in the twenty-third hour to move towards a slower composition to push into Numbani's first point. RunAway would opt for a single support composition, using Torbjörn as a consistent damage threat as well as an armour dispensary. This threw Lunatic-Hai for a loop, and they would end in a full hold for RunAway. Against the odds, the team that was family first toppled one of the region's giants. An upset was putting this result lightly. 

However, Lunatic-Hai would find themselves sitting across the table from RunAway in the grand finals. There, they would cement themselves into Overwatch legend in their 4-3 victory over the team that beat them just weeks before. 

Both teams operated both styles incredibly well at the time. RunAway could play dive, but favoured a slower, more methodical approach to the game, leaning into their triple-tank composition which aimed to give their Soldier: 76 player, Lee "Stitch" Chung-hee, as much space as possible. On the opposite side sat Lunatic-Hai who took the more mobile approach with the dive archetype and allowed Genji prodigy Lee "WhoRU" Seung-jun to head the team's offensive threat whereas Kim "EscA" In-jae would play a more passive and poke oriented role, baiting out key cooldown and forcing ultimates when available. With the crowd at their backs and Ryu "ryujehong" Jehong's legendary Sleep Darts, the team would take narrowly take the rematch and become champions.

APEX Season 3 would see Lunatic-Hai return to defend their title against a fresh wave off opposers. Again, Lunatic-Hai would advance undefeated as the first seed in Group A, beating teams like KongDoo Panthera, Rogue, and Mighty AOD in the process. However, Lunatic-Hai never finished a spotless run, and it was their style to drop one game before showing up when it mattered the most. This time it would be against the reformed KongDoo Panthera who just had Kim "birdring" Ji-hyeok migrate over to fill a much need gap within the starting roster. There was no shame looking back in hindsight losing to such a strong team but at the time? This was once again a question mark for South Korea's golden children. Were they fit to defend the title? Was KongDoo the best team in the world?

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Fate once again would smile favourably on Lunatic-Hai as they coasted into the grand final against, you guessed it, KongDoo Panthera. In one of the strangest matches in Overwatch history, KongDoo Panthera narrowly missed unseating Lunatic-Hai. How did they get so close? They tied twice, on Temple of Anubis and Volskaya Industries, and beat Lunatic-Hai on a best-of-one Control map tie-breaker. Going into map six, KongDoo sat with a 3-2 lead over the defending champions, only besting them on Control maps. With that said, "narrowly" is the keyword and Lunatic-Hai, after losing countless Control maps beforehand, managed to break KongDoo's serve on Dorado and ended the series with a win on Numbani. 

This was the series where Moon "Gido" Gi-do and EscA would take control over the game. Gido filled in where EscA fell short as a more offensive Tracer threat whereas EscA embraced the metagame and showcased excellent Soldier: 76 and Sombra throughout the series. Gido as a rookie would win Finals MVP for his performance. This was even more impressive looking at how vital WhoRU was as an offensive threat on this roster just last season. Lunatic-Hai didn't need to rely on their Genji ace, and they could make do perfectly fine without him. With this victory, Lunatic-Hai would be the only team to both defend and win two APEX titles.

That familiar, sour taste of defeat would cloud their second attempt at a title defence during APEX Season 4 as GC Busan took the world by storm. This time, Lunatic-Hai suffered a shocking and uncharacteristic loss to MVP Space in the first group stage run. While they advanced as the first seed in Group A, the defending champions looked shaken. They didn't have the same edge as they once did and, in hindsight, many speculated that the team was focused more on the upcoming inaugural season of the Overwatch League. Going into the second pass of group play, Lunatic-Hai ran headfirst into the eventual champions, GC Busan. Headed by star duo, Park "Profit" Joon-yeong and Hong "Gesture" Jae-hee, GC Busan were a dominant rookie team whose signature dive duo was unmatched. 

On the other hand, Lunatic-Hai never properly found a secure fit when it came to their DPS rotation. Gido and WhoRU couldn't match Profit's flexibility and strength, whereas the team look considerable less coordinated without EscA in the lineup. This also overshadowed Ryujehong's deficiency when it came to his Zenyatta play, which saw the star support player look well past his prime. This would spell disaster as Lunatic-Hai were unceremoniously beaten, not once, but twice, 0-3. Overwatch's rematch kings were beaten. The title would be given to Profit, Gesture and the rest of GC Busan as they walked the royal road in an unforgettable match against RunAway in the grand finals. 

No team rivals the amount of attention-grabbing, all-star calibre rematches Lunatic-Hai put on and with their resume during OGN's Overwatch APEX, and you always had that small sliver of faith that they could pull through. If there was ever going to be a team to make the miracle come back story a reality, it was Lunatic-Hai. Twice they made our jaws drop, and our eyes tear up as they made the impossible possible. However, many times they missed, they still had that special feeling about them, and to this day, people look back fondly on the players that graced that team and wondered what made them so dynamic? What gave them the fortitude to push through and topple teams they just saw not weeks prior?

There were bumps all along the road, and not every rematch was won, but no one changed the channel when Lunatic-Hai asked for a runback. 

Images via Blizzard Entertainment