Photo by Riot Games
KIWOOM DRX player Kang “BeYN” Ha-bin was born in Busan. His birthday is on September 5. Somewhere between those two facts, BeYN and KRX have sketched out their own survival story. Ult Orb spoke with BeYN after KRX’s playoff loss to Global Esports, which sent the Korean side down to the lower bracket.
Should the team find a way to run the lower bracket gauntlet, the match that would decide its Champions Shanghai fate will fall on that exact date — a win-or-go-home match that would double as the best birthday present BeYN could ask for.
That’s not the full story, though. KRX’s Pacific Stage 2 campaign has been all sorts of up, down, and all around. In its opening match of the split, the team rolled out something seen straight out of ranked: a triple-Duelist comp.
“We tried something new that other teams weren’t doing, and it went pretty well in scrims, but I think we lacked proper execution on stage,” BeYN said. After beating DetonatioN FocusMe with the triple-Duelist approach, KRX shelved the concept after a loss to Team Secret.
After going 1-4 in the group stage, KRX had a resurgence of sorts, going 3-0 in the Play-Ins to qualify for the playoffs.
“We just decided, ‘Let’s follow the meta, let’s not do triple entry’,” he said. “And as we did that, in practice things were only working well when we did it our own way, so I think the meta aspect is probably a pretty big factor behind us finding our footing.”
That’s not all that’s changed for KRX and BeYN. The Initiator player took over in-game leader duties from MaKo earlier this year, but the team went back to MaKo in the IGL seat.
“It was suggested that we go back to the setup from Champions last year with Mako as IGL and me as secondary caller, so we tried it in scrims, and since it worked well, we decided to go with that,” BeYN shared. “Personally, since stepping back from IGLing, I’m now more focused on detail-oriented things rather than the big picture, paying more attention to my own individual stuff. I do feel noticeably more comfortable.”
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Stage 2’s finals weekend is being held in Busan, which happens to be BeYN’s hometown. He says that the prospect of playing in front of a true home crowd has been motivating him.
“Honestly, it’s motivating me a lot,” he said. “Since I’m the only Busan native player in Pacific, and if I get to play in Busan, I can compete in front of my friends, relatives, and family. That’s why I really want to play in Busan.”
BeYN’s path to Busan got cloudier with KRX’s loss to GE, but it has opened up the door to what could be a real storybook finish for him.
“Since we ended up losing, if we climb back up from the lower bracket now, the Champions qualifying match would land on my birthday. September 5th,” he said. “The Lower Final happens to be on that day, so I really want to win out and get that birthday present on my birthday.”
It’s easy to call KRX crazy for its attempt at an off-meta triple-Duelist look, but it wasn’t too long ago that KRX defined the global meta.
“Honestly, I think it’s not an exaggeration to say our team created the Yoru-Waylay meta,” BeYN said, but also shared that reverting to the approach hasn’t been quite as successful. “Back then, other teams’ counter-strats against it were pretty weak, but now there are a lot more teams running Yoru-Waylay. Since about a year has passed, I think other teams are countering it much better than they were back then.”
The first barrier between KRX and Busan is none other than T1. The last time the Korean derby was played, KRX fell 2-0, facing an average deficit of six rounds across both maps. In this matchup, BeYN is hopeful of a different result.
“That T1 match was before we changed to the current IGL system, and it was also a match where our morale was pretty down, so we lost pretty disappointingly,” he said. “This time, since we’re down to our last life, we won’t give up easily. I believe if we play our way and do well, T1 is definitely a team we can beat.”
BeYN and KRX will take on T1 in the second match on Friday, August 28, which is expected to begin around 8 p.m. KST.
