FlyQuest is on the road to what seems to be another championship, and their bot lane is a core part of what’s making the team so strong. HotSpawn sat down with Alan “Busio” Cwalina to chat about the series between FlyQuest and Shopify Rebellion, Fearless Draft, and more.
I’ve been a Busio fan since his first split on 100 Thieves, seeing a rookie support on a team with superstars like Soren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, and Peng “Doublelift” Yilang, locking in picks like Azir support before settling into looking good on engage supports was enough to ferry him to an All-Star ballot vote back then. It’s been many years since Busio was the untested rookie in red and black, and he’s now one of the best supports in the region, looking to continue a streak of victories. Sure, part of this is a brag that the player I saw as “Biofrost 2.0” has become more than worthy of that title, but it’s also to give the NA support his flowers as he approaches a favourable road to MSI. We sat down with Busio to talk about the series, the format, and how he’s feeling heading into finals.
FlyQuest Busio Interview
Nick James: Well, let’s start off with some well-deserved congratulations on your victory. We’ll start there and then talk about other stuff. How are you feeling about the series? Walk me through how you’re feeling about the games you just played.
Alan “Busio” Cwalina: “Thank you very much. The first game, I thought I played pretty bad in team fights. [In] one fight, I messed up my Alistar combo and then another fight, we’re already hitting someone in the front line and then I also combo’d and our whole team kind of funneled in and then Rell got a big flash combo. So, the first game, I didn’t really like how I played the first game. In the second game, I obviously didn’t play a perfect game, but I was pretty happy with how I played. It was definitely a close game, but we were getting objectives and executing our comp. The fights were a little wild, I would say, but I was satisfied with that one on my end. Then, game 3 was the Bard game, I think top [lane] had some ‘incidents’, but even with the top side ‘incidents’, we could still win the game.
I just think we just didn’t play our comp properly. We were just a bit too hasty and I found it hard to be useful with my champ. If both comps are just clashing, we’re gonna lose. [In] game 4, I also played bad, so at that point I’m like ‘damn, even though there’s some ‘incidents’ elsewhere like I could be doing way better than that’. In the dragon fight, Massu got a triple kill, but it could have been a 4-0 sweep. I think I just shielded too early and ran in a bit too early, trying to make sure they couldn’t escape. It was fine, and then after Massu was super strong, we just weren’t contesting bot hard enough, and they kept ganking Bwipo and getting a big lead top side, but I think we could have done way more bot and gave Bwipo an ult play and stuff like that.
[It’s] just should have been contesting bot way harder and not letting them get the waves in.
I was pretty unhappy with of how I played. Because we had a good opportunity, Bwipo was owning games 1 and 2, so when I’m in a good position in game 4, I really want to be able to help him out, and kind of counteract that. But I failed in that regard, so that’s why I’m pretty unhappy.
Then game 5 was pretty simple, we just had that dragon fight and then we were just in control. It’s just on us to choose when we want to fight, if we want to fight, if we want to keep letting Tristana do her little things in the side lane, because only Akali didn’t buy Merc Treads, so her team fighting is pretty weak. Akali was just useless in that game. I don’t know what she can do.”
“We have Lee Sin, Gragas, Leona, and she didn’t buy merc treads. It just felt very simple and it was a straightforward game. I think our game 5 draft was way better and we closed out with Bwipo finding a crazy little bomba on the Zeri to get the baron and eventually end the game. So, yeah, I think I played three games decently and then two games pretty bad.
Just to be honest, coming into today, it doesn’t really matter if we win or lose because, ultimately, if you’re going to win the championship, which is what we’re trying to do, you still have to beat every team. We still have another week of practice, so I wasn’t really… I was trying to win, but I didn’t care that much about winning today. I just wanted to play well, and I think I played okay, so I’m not that happy.”
Nick: Now that we’re deep into Bo5 Fearless proper, and we’re actually getting to see the format bear out. Now that you’ve had the chance to play “Fearless” Bo1s, Fearless Bo3s, and Fearless B05s on stage, how are you feeling about Fearless as a format?
Busio: “I think it’s very fun, I think just Fearless in general is great for spectators, and it’s honestly fun to play. One thing personally that I could take away from it is like for example in the Kog’Maw + Braum game, I don’t know if you know Kog’maw + Braum [matchups], but as I said, we were fed, but I didn’t really know how to stop the Sivir from doing Sivir things. I really need to think about their champions, because that’s not a champ you see all the time every game, so I’m not as practiced versus it. It’s a good learning, but I should have learned that and realized that, in the game, how I can stop Sivir from pushing and then, therefore, relieving pressure off top, because we can actually play into bot.
I think for next week, I need to do a little more, just a little more deep thinking in the pregame about their champs. If it’s not a champ I’m used to all the time, because obviously they have strengths, but they also have clear weaknesses. I think the coaches know better [since] I’m not the one drafting. Maybe it’s just like a draft reason that wouldn’t be good to just like be banning fans of those champs. [We] just let them play the standard meta and we have answers to it. That was probably the game plan, but I’m not sure, to be honest. I wasn’t drafting, and I didn’t talk to the coaches about that part of the draft.”
You’ve punched your ticket to finals, you’ll get to play for the trophy. How are you feeling about the possible matchups? Certainly, I think most consider you’re favored to win above the other teams, but where are you at on the other teams left and how you stack up against them?
Busio: “I think we’re favored to win, but it doesn’t mean anything, you know, all the teams have another week of practice. I do think we [didn’t have] the greatest week of practice, but next week, for example, like just from a team perspective, maybe the fans don’t know this, but you can’t practice this next week. There’s no teams to scrim. You know, we can’t scrim C9, because we can face them in finals.
We can’t scrim TL or SR, whoever wins, because we can face them in the finals. And the team that gets eliminated, their season ends, and all the other teams, their season ends, so they’re not scrimming. So, you have nobody to scrim.
You have to get really creative with scrims. In this next week, teams can develop bad habits or not change, or maybe they scrim weird teams and get weird info.
Anything can happen in this next week of practice, but all I know is we had a pretty bad week of practice, including myself. I was pretty unhappy with my gameplay the past two days of scrims, and I mean, it showed on stage, like I just wasn’t playing that well.
It’s going to come down to who plays well on the finals weekend, but I’m confident we can win, because I think today, I didn’t have a great day. We had a lot of like early mistakes as well, and we still won. So, if we don’t do that, we’ll probably win. But, of course, maybe C9 had a bad day too. It’s just really hard to know.
But I would say we are favored and confident in ourselves. I think C9’s a good opponent because they’re very reserved and scripted. You know exactly what’s going to happen. If TL beats SR, which isn’t guaranteed at all, I think SR can win that for sure. TL actually plays the game more and goes for plays outside of objectives. That series would be a lot more mechanical and more like early fighting, stuff like that, for mid-game fighting. While C9 is ‘you’re all up to the objective and you fight’, you know? I don’t have a strong preference, but facing C9 again should be simple because we can just watch and review and do better next week.”
Nick: Alright, we’ll wrap it up with a question that has nothing to do with pro play. So, obviously Arcane is over, the Piltover and Zaun animated storyline has come to a close, and Riot has confirmed there will be another Fortiche-animated Runeterra show. If Riot and Fortiche came to you and said, ‘Busio, you get to decide which region, which champions, get the next animated show.’ Where are we going? Who do you want to see on the big screen?
Busio: “Wait, but isn’t it already Noxus, confirmed?”
Nick: Not quite. So the “Bite Marks” video that came out earlier this year was actually the year-start cinematic for the actual game, even though it was a canon cinematic animated by Fortiche that follows the events of Arcane. It’s the most likely one, but nothing has been confirmed officially.
Busio: “Oh, is it not confirmed? I do think Noxus is cool. Noxus has an aura to itself. I think visually, everything would be cool. The characters are all very cunning and stuff, you know? Noxus would be cool. Let’s see what else…”
Take your time, this is the important stuff.
Busio: “Freljord. I don’t know if there’s enough to do in Freljord, but there are a lot of champions from there. I think the coolest would be two locations where the lore connects, you know? Maybe like Ionia and Bilgewater if I’m not coping. Maybe they have some lore between them because I believe they’re close to each other. So, maybe some Ionia Bilgewater could be cool. Or some Noxus Demacia. Like, something like that. Something involved between two factions or locations would be the most interesting. Yeah. I’d say that.”
Thanks for the time, Busio! Best of luck in finals, MSI is happening in my hometown, so I hope you make it out here.
Busio: “Thank you very much. I hope we will be at MSI as well. Bye-bye.”
