League of Legends news » Into the minds of: Super Duper Giant Truck Team

League is a game that revolves around the team synergy more than any other, something that The University of Exeter have shown time and again. Their first team making it to the finals is impressive but not only that, their second team have climbed there as well, with a convincing run of unpredictable and incredibly entertaining matches. Super Duper Giant Truck Team have shown that to get far in this game you really need to put aside individual skill and work as team (yes, even your 0/10 Yasuo can be helpful).
To put their synergy to the test we asked them a few simple questions. The catch? They had to answer for their teammates rather than themselves.

TOP: Matt "Whatley" Whatley
[by pinkteemo]

Favourite Champion: “Whatley has been known to play a vast amount of champions in previous seasons such as Singed, Singed and (who can forget) Singed! Although in recent times he has had an avid love for braindead tanks such as Mundo, Tahm and Shen as well as trolling our flex games with AP Tryndamere top. Despite his new and fresh picks I feel he will always fall back to his first love Singed as his favourite champion.”

Biggest Fear in League: “Whatley is known to be a bit of a whiny baby when it comes to both ganks and ranged top laners, although I feel ranged top laners definitely take the cake. His stubbornness to only play melee champions means his greatest fear is also his greatest weakness.”

Best Teammate: “Whatley has played NUEL for the past 4 years with a variety of players but the one player who he has played with from the very beginning is A Venomous Shrew. They have won together, lost together and even got kebabs together on a daily basis. Despite Whatley's urge to call his carry mid laner his best teammate, I don't think the bond formed by Whatley and A Venomous Shrew's kebab adventures can be broken.”

Jungle: Callum "Melvinizzle" Iles
[by A Venomous Shrew]

Favourite Champion: “Considering he has 2 accounts that I know of, which both contain the champions name in them, I'd have to say Ivern. He likes taking up quite a supportive role within the team, offering vision and protecting the adc and has generally found Ivern to be the best fit for such a role. Despite the fact that I outdamage him in the majority of our games (Ivern damage LUL), he has still managed to solo the enemy jungler in a lot of our games, leaving me dumbfounded. How do you let an Ivern solo kill you?”

Biggest Fear in League: “Other than Ivern being banned away or disappointing me, it's probably playing an engage heavy jungler. We don't have the most conventional team comps and as such we find that we often lack a proper frontline, or a proper engage. This leads to him often having to move off the more supportive style champs and instead being the engage for our team. It's a lot of pressure to perform on a style that isn't your strong suit.”

Best Teammate: “I would like to think that our jungle/support synergy would lead him to choose me. We have a system in place where if he gifts me a few kills, in return I'll try not to outdamage him every game. Realistically, I think he would say Daisy, just because it doesn't cry for ganks every other second. I'm just being honest, I mean it's never going to be the other guys.”

Mid: James "Pinkteemo" Hollyman
[by high on anxiety]

Favourite champion: “Although he does love the good old braindead AP Morgana waveclear, he prefers tickling people with Karthus Q's and having an out-play button: it resonates with his mentality of doing as little as possible whilst being as annoying as physically possible. So Karthus takes the bag on this one.”

Biggest Fear in League: “His biggest fear would be other people dying to his lane opponent. I have many fond memories of soloqueue with him and the line "our jungler just inted my lane wtf" still resonates through my mind daily. I feel it's fair to say he gets a little bit salty.”

Best Teammate: “When it comes to his best teammate, it's got to be me. Whenever I want mid farm or a kill, or even a cheeky bum slap he gives it to me without a moment’s notice (also because he knows I’ll make use of the gold better than him)”

Bot: Mark "high on anxiety" Johnson
[by Melvinizzle]

Favourite Champion: “The champion pool of our ADC is quite extensive to say the least – he made an effort to make sure to have Level 7 mastery on every marksman (including Teemo, Urgot, Kindred and Graves) so that he can at least have an idea as to what he’s doing on each of them. I’m sure if it were another time in League history he’d want to go back to Vayne (this is made even more obvious when he falls into the trap of playing frontline ADC) but his favourite to play is Jhin, specifically the crit builds when he can run as if he has a permanent ghost active and not require anyone to hold his hand vs the scary tanks.”

Biggest Fear in League:  “At some point it happens to every ADC, it’s kind of like a rite of passage when you can finally move from your humble lane phase beginnings to the wide world of wherever there is farm to be taken. Of course I’m referring to being 5 man dived – it can happen at any time but is particularly common at level 6 and again when ults are off cool down and again when ults are off cool down and again when… well I think you get the point.”

Best Teammate: "As someone who has never had the tragic life event that makes them want to main bot lane I can’t particularly see the appeal, however I can understand the appeal of having a babysitter going around the map with you. As the Jungler I act like an alarm for when something bad is probably going to happen but our support, A Venomous Shrew, is the one that saves everyone when I’m inevitably ignored. Given the ADC is the hardest to keep safe I would say he would always choose the support to be his partner in crime.”

Support: Shane "A Venomous Shrew" Shanahan
[by Whatley]

Favourite Champion: “He'd probably say Thresh. He played Thresh all the way through Season 6 despite having an abysmal winrate, something about the champion being fun to play since you can do everything. In reality, I think he likes Vel'Koz more. Vel'Koz lets him forget 4000 you're playing support since your damage is way more relevant than your dog ADC's.”

Biggest Fear in League: “100% it's Blitzcrank. If we're playing Flex Queue and they pick Blitz half of us mute Shane because of the incessant whining that's going to come from him for the remainder of the game, only our ADC is forced to listen. If any NUEL team had played a single game of Blitzcrank in their past 100 SoloQ games we were forced to ban it, which happened multiple times and made way more important bans slip through. I don't blame him though, I hate Blitz too.”

Best Teammate: “Deep down he knows I'm his best teammate by far, but the sacred bond between Support and ADC probably means he'd say Mark. They have good synergy bot and Shane will never roam to help anyone out if it means Mark would even miss a single CS. In fact, their synergy runs so deep they often even do the same damage by the end of the game, unless Shane's playing Vel'Koz.”

Super Duper Giant Truck Team will play Sponsored by Hyper-exe, LUL at NUEL Live to fight for the crown in this UK University Spring Championship. Don’t miss out on all the action, and make sure to tune into the NUEL Twitch stream at 10.30am on Sunday the 29^th April!