As soon as all of them had teleported back into the gray room they’d been using to meet, Rayne looked directly at her. “So. First thing I want to hear is how you think that game went, Jade.”

Part of her wanted to play up her team’s strengths, but Rayne was there to help them, not hype them up.

“It went about as well as it could possibly have gone. Some things didn’t break in our favor– I wasn’t able to find a solo kill, Emma had a bit of lost farm from the need to be more present than is comfortable, Nathan and Jess were against opponents who actually respected their early lethality– but our plans overwhelmingly worked out due to overconfidence on the other team’s part.

“Playing into the fact that Jeremy’s rank made him look like the weak side was the right decision, but I really don’t think it’d work twice. Second game would be mine to call more than Nathan’s.”

Jeremy raised his hand slightly, then shook his head and put it down. “Wwwhat exactly does that change? Far as I could tell, you both agreed on everything?”

Nathan tapped the table a couple of times, not moving his palm from where it was, then answered. “Of the two of us, I’m better at offense, she’s better at defense. There are other differences as well, but it’s mostly not going to be a huge thing; that game we were in total agreement because we didn’t actually have much in the way of options.”

To her surprise, it was Quince that spoke up in their favor. “I don’t think it was just overconfidence that won that. Overconfidence got us the Northlane lead, sure, but the real benefit we had over them was teamwide mobility and that was just well-used. I think it worked out because we just… well, we never outright challenged them, just got everywhere first.”

There was silence around the table for a few seconds, and a measure of discomfort settled over Jade when Rayne didn’t speak at first, calmly looking across the table. Eventually, she followed their coach’s gaze to Emma fidgeting uncomfortably.

Something to keep in mind.

She didn’t think she was the right choice for this, but Nathaniel’s body language and Ryane’s silence told her that she wouldn’t be getting bailed out, either. “Emma, can you tell us what’s up?”

There was another second or two of silence, but the other girl did eventually speak, quiet enough that Jade might have had to strain to hear it if the room didn’t have corrections in place for that sort of thing.

“They… well, at least northlane… she wasn’t what. Well, I wouldn’t call her overconfident. She uh. Straight-up ran, both of the first two times. We just. Caught her?”

“And that’s what you both missed,” Rayne said, intensely. “You guys have lower stats, sure, but you’ve got a very good skill level for anyone, let alone a bunch of, what? Late high school, early college kids? You weren’t going to win the numbers game, but literally all of your indirect confrontations came out in your favor, and you didn’t leverage that nearly enough.”

“My fault,” Jade said, immediately. She didn’t think it was entirely her fault, but she was in the best position to have noticed that. “But, uh. What do you mean by not overconfident?”

“She was playing back since before your first gank, and never went forward any more than necessary to keep up in farm. Jeremy. Why were you still able to get kills?”

He looked thoughtful, then nodded. “It was the protecting thing I was doing, I think. Her set couldn’t farm behind me, and as a bruiser she couldn’t afford to get behind too far in credits. It still seems overconfident–”

“She’s in Master, you’re in Ruby. It was a generally reasonable assumption that happened to be wrong with the specific matchup, not a bad one overall. Next. Quince. What would you have done if the midlaner had had anything that could break your pillars regularly?”

“Changed my build, for one.” A small laugh went around the table at that. “But otherwise it’s mostly the same deal, I just need to play back around my base.”

Jade made a pained face at that, and she could see Nathan’s duplicate the response a second later. “Not just. I didn’t realize it changed your neutral position that much. That would’ve… Ugh. I… Well, thanks for fixing that first misconception, Rayne.”

She got a nod for that, followed by a smirk and a motion to go on.

“That would’ve broken our whole strategy, actually. Not enough that I think that they would have won, knowing what I do now about north, but we would’ve lost at least all of our outside bases, and maybe the tier twos.”

Her brother cut in, “And it would have taken a lot longer, too. Jess would have outscaled the other carry in the long haul, and Jeremy’s basically untouchable to anything but a hypercarry or focusfire mid in the late game, but we’d have to get there first.”

“Assume you’re up against the same team in another game. What’s the play?”

Both she and her brother had the same answer, basically immediately. “Southside triangle.”

Quince and Emma gave her strange looks, but Emma’s was followed by a quick widening of her eyes and a tiny laugh hidden behind her hand.

“The hell is that?” Quince asked.

Rayne nodded at him, then added “and tell me why it would help.”

“We’d swap me into the support slot, Nathan into the carry slot– that set you saw in the first game– and Jess into the ranger slot. Helpful because, frankly, it has a more even power scaling and it leans more heavily into the strength we already had, head-on engaging much more effectively, turn the split-push into a death ball.”

“Not helpful in that we lose the team-wide mobility my support set offers,” Nathan said, cleaning up after her again. “But it’s worth it, because it would strengthen the north side even further.”

Rayne raised an eyebrow. “Jade’s finalized her support set?”

She smirked at that. “I have. And we should really get everyone on board for the other triangle, because I want us to practice all four lineups as soon as we can.”