FURIA Thinkcard: “I think our bot lane is incredibly underrated at this tournament”

Thomas “Thinkcard” Slotkin is a familiar face to LTA North fans, but this time he’s head coaching our southern brothers from the LTA Sul, the universal underdogs of FURIA. We spoke to Thinkcard about his team, why people aren’t putting enough respect on Ayu and Jojo, and why he’s excited to see Elise in the Noxus show.

The champions of LTA Sul have their work cut out for them, but they have the right man for the job. Thinkcard has been all over the LTA North, and the LCS before the rebrand. He’s repeatedly shown himself to be able to take grassroots talent and transform disparate elements into a cohesive team that can upset fan expectations on a dime. It’s exactly his past that FURIA will need, as their MSI begins today, fighting G2, GAM, and BLG for the Play-In slots.

Thinkcard believes FURIA is underrated at MSI 2025

Nick: First time meeting, though we’ve talked several times over the years.

Pitch this team to me. Who should we be excited about as our southern brethren, and what do you guys bring to the table that we can get pumped about as a fellow LTA representative?

Thomas “Thinkcard” Slotkin: Okay, so starting from the beginning of the year, we’ve kind of been known as being scrim demons and kind of like crushing everyone in scrims. And the question’s always been like, will this team be able to translate this to the stage? In Split 1, we were not. We fell short, we lost to PAIN in the beginning of playoffs, but we kept grinding, we scrimmed a lot of LTA North teams, and we still did pretty well in scrims. So we knew that it was just like we needed to translate it to the stage. And so by Split 2, we kept on working on it, kept working on it, and we were finally able to do it. We’re a very explosive team. You can see that we played Yasuo game three of the grand finals, Yasuo ADC. We have a lot of passion. We have players who like to stand up, like as we’re going down and killing the nexus, like yelling things, like really excited about FURIA.

So just in general, and we are the youngest team at MSI. We’re maybe, I don’t know if this is true, but [we are] one of the youngest teams, I think. Like, ever (at MSI). Maybe the youngest team to win a championship for like a major region. Our average age is 21 years old. We’re so young. We have two players who are 19, and they’re just absolutely cracked like mechanics out of this world. Our ADC, Ayu. When he bootcamped in Europe, he got to rank one in two weeks and that was during an international tournament that was going on. So they’re all the best players in the world. We’re there solo queuing and he’s still hit rank one. Yeah. So yeah, we’re just a really young group of players that are super passionate and we’re, you know, working on ourselves every day.”

Nick: Something that I’ve noted is you guys almost play more leaning into the meta than some NA teams. Your drafts are very traditional League of Legends, you’re going to set up your top laner for a fight, you’re almost certainly going to have an engage support, classic marksman, bar like some Yasuo, attacking that kind of stuff.

Did the style of sort of leaning into the meta come out during that process?

Thinkcard: Well, I think our players, for the most part, they just have a lot of trust in me. So if I have certain ideas and certain things I want to do, they’re usually down to do it or at least try it. vice versa as well. think we have a lot of creative drafts that we were able to pull out, like the Yasuo, we did a Zed mid into Taliyah, we have a lot of interesting things, and the players will come into the office and they’ll be like, yo, think this matchup’s actually good, we should try it. We played an Azir top game against Gwen. That’s just my players being really open, being really creative. They spam a ton of solo queue, so they have a ton of games and a ton of ideas, and they’re able to come to me with those ideas, and then I slide it into a draft and make it work. It’s definitely a combined effort.

Nick: You’ve got some really aggressive, incredible talents on this team.

As a coach, are there any matchups, just lane by lane, like do you want to see Ayu versus Guma, is there a particular player matchup that you’d love to see one of your players get the chance to prove themselves against somebody else?

Thinkcard: I honestly want to see our bot lane play against all the bot lanes here. I think our bot lane is really talented and I think it’s also one of our big reasons why I do like our odds against G2. They’re really good players. JoJo is one of the most experienced and just smartest supports that I’ve worked with. And you can see with his map movements, he’s always in the right spot and he’s calming really good things. I think our bot lane is incredibly underrated at this tournament and they’re going to surprise a lot of people.

Nick: We’ll pivot a little bit to some lighthearted stuff not at all related to pro play. Riot is doing these themed seasons where right now we’re in Ionia, we went to Noxus before. Let’s say Riot comes to you and they’re like, “Thinkcard, we’re running out of ideas, we need a theme for a season.” So they’ve said it could be a region of the world. Or it could be like a skin line that’s not even canon, like project or pool party or whatever.

If you’re in charge, where are we going for a season? Where are we going to make over Summoner’s Rift? What’s the Thinkcard season?

Thinkcard: Ooh, that’s a good question. If we had to do a country, I think a Japan theme would be pretty cool. Big fan of… a friend who recently went to Japan, showed me a bunch of pictures. It’s such a beautiful country. So Japan is always down. And then skin line? I’m not sure. I have to come back to that one.

Nick: Arcane’s over, a new season is going to come from Fortiche at some point. New champions, new region. Do you have any champions that you’d like to see get an animated show, like to see get that time on the big screen?

Is there anybody that you kind of want to see get that fleshed out?

Thinkcard: Honestly, I’m a pretty big fan of Elise. I know Elise is going to be the next one. So I’m pretty happy about that. Elise is one of like my first mains, especially when I was climbing like in 2013, 2014. So I’m pretty excited to see Elise on the screen.

Nick: As an Elise fan, what was that Bite Marks fight scene getting to see one of your favorite characters animated, throwing down with Katarina in front of the noble?

Thinkcard: It was cool, honestly. It was cool. I’ve obviously never seen that skin before, so the skin was kind of surprising to me. But I’m excited to see just what type of adaptation they do with the Elise character, because it’s such an interesting character that they can take you in a bunch of different directions.

Nick: At the start of the year, Fearless was planned to be the unique thing for Split 1. And now here we are at MSI, and it’s going to be the whole way through. How are you as a coach, as somebody who has to coordinate your players through this brave new world?

How have you been finding Fearless and what are your opinions on it?

Thinkcard: So I love fearless. Something that, in the beginning, I honestly thought was just going to be, you know, like complete coach diff, like whichever coaches are better, just going to kind of like do really well. But something I kind of learned is that like, say I had really good prep going to game one and it wasn’t fearless, then say and we out draft someone, then the enemy team, they’re like, oh shit, but they don’t have to worry about any of those champions anymore. So like, right, like. We don’t have worry about that anymore. Say we take our series against G2 in 2023. They had to ban Senna game 2 because game 1, we obviously did really well with it. So stuff like that is a little bit different, which I kind of underestimated, but overall I think it’s an incredible change. I think it really rewards quick problem solving, which is something that I find really fun. And think the fans like Fearless for sure a lot better.

Nick: I had an interesting conversation with LS, where he said Fearless isn’t enough, despite being one of the people who popularized Fearless. He thinks we should go to bans carry through “Ironman”, as he’s calling it, where bans stick through every game.

As somebody who enjoys Fearless, is that a step too far in theory?

Thinkcard: I think it’s too far. Just take ADC. There are some games, especially us versus Pain, where there are six ADC bands that we lock. You still have to lock in two ADCs. What are they? No ADCs for game two? I like the idea, don’t get me wrong. Maybe it’s only champions you ban four-five, or something like that. There are 10 bands per game that go through a five-game series. It’ll be fun to watch, but it’s going to be… That’s insane. That’s really insane.

Anything you want to say to LTA Sul fans for watching and cheering for you?

Thinkcard: Of course. We’re trying really hard to make you guys proud. And thank you for the support. You guys have said a bunch of kind words to us and supported us really well throughout this entire split. And yeah, we’re trying to do this for you guys.