The Solar Scarabs
A Retrospective
oBoronic, the last remaining member of the original Solar Scarabs, announced his departure on Monday, November 14th. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
The Solar Scarabs have been fighting uphill battles since their inception. The Scarabs have been a strange team with a notably strange brand compared to the rest of the league, and their quirkiness and underdog spirit quickly made the Scarabs into fan favorites. With oBoronic’s untimely departure from the team following week 6 of phase 3, the last of the original Scarabs have now moved on from the franchise, and that includes even the two roster additions that the Scarabs made mid-season. Whomever the Scarabs find for mid will be joining an unprecedented and obviously difficult situation, and the league should consider making the decision as easy as possible for the Scarabs by letting their selection play the final week of phase 3 in absentia.
The Scarabs now join the Valkyries as just the second team in the franchise era to replace all of their inaugural members, though they already led the league in turnover rate for the last two seasons—now 133% with the loss of oBoronic, compared to the Valkyries’ 100%. Losing players is not necessarily a death sentence—the Titans have a turnover rate of 83%. However, the sheer gravity of a turnover rate higher than 100% is staggering. The Scarabs have had eight players leave the organization, and for the first time ever on Thursday, they will play with a six-man roster containing no original members. In light of this, I thought it made sense to look back at the brief history of the Solar Scarabs, the perplexing team that often reached heights it had no business reaching, and admire them for who they were—scrappy underdogs with a turbulent history.
First, let’s appreciate the strangeness of the founding roster:
Coach: sLainy, former coach of the season 7 runner-ups who would become the Jade Dragons
ADC: Zapman, then a two-time champion with a history of stellar underdog performances
Support: Inbowned, former World Champion in SMITE’s XBOX league, the SCL, and support for season 7 Obey, a team which was largely regarded as the worst team all season—Inbowned also led the league in deaths in season 7
Mid: oBoronic, a player with little competitive experience on PC, but a former SCL World Champion with Layers and oBoronic
Jungle: Layers, former teammate of Inbowned and oBoronic’s in the SCL and jungler for Mind the Gap—NA Wildcard representatives at the season 7 World Championships, largely regarded as one of the most promising rookies
Solo: SoloOrTroll, former jungler of the Bolts roster who spent the end of season 7 jungling, had a history of attitude problems and strong mechanical play
The roster was a hodge-podge of players who seemed to almost not belong. The duo lane consisted of a two-time world champion and a support many believed was the worst player in the league. The mid-laner was an unknown quantity entirely. In jungle, Layers was a promising rookie but would need time to grow in the SPL. And in solo, a disgraced third year who was forced to role swap for a third of the season due to attitude issues that resulted in his departure from the Renegades. Flat out, this team made no sense, and many were quick to predict that the Scarabs would be the worst team in the league. How did they respond? They went 2-5 in phase 1, but one of their two wins came in a remarkable upset over the dominant Jade Dragons, knocking the latter out of contention for the first seed. The Scarabs then somehow managed to upset the Camelot Kings in the group stage to secure the 6th seed at phase 1 playoffs. The Kings were an impressive 5-2 and were overwhelming favorites, but the Scarabs managed to sneak into playoffs where they were promptly first-rounded.
The Scarabs did not improve in phase 2. They finished a paltry 2-12, just one win better than the lowly Valhalla Valkyries who due to the pandemic were playing on ping from various parts of Europe. This phase saw their first roster changes. After SoloOrTroll was temporarily benched for failing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in advance of their first in-studio match, tempers flared and came to a head during a session of scrims where Layers went off on the team. He was promptly kicked and, in the aftermath, Zapman fled to the Atlantis Leviathans. The Scarabs immediately picked up Stuart as Zapman’s replacement, but a replacement for Layers would have to wait. Against the Valhalla Valkyries, the Scarabs tried Inbowned at jungle with sLainy filling in for support. After losing game 1, sLainy would try solo lane as SoT would attempt to jungle. They lost the set in two games. In another set, Cherryo, once-retired jungler and former coach of the Tartarus Titans, filled in against the Warriors. The Scarabs lost 2-0.
Enter Screammmmm.
Screammmmm with the Solar Scarabs before a pre-game interview, season 8 SWC. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
Fans who follow the league closer today than they did in season 8 may not properly understand the improbable rise of Screammmmm. Once a World Champion back in season 4, Screammmmm had bounced around the league to various teams until he found himself on a last-place EUnited team in season 7. When it came time to settle rosters for season 8, Screammmmm was left out of the league, and he would remain sidelined for most of the year. It sounds unthinkable now in season 9, where Screammmmm is one of the best junglers and indeed all-around players in the entire SPL.
It started with the Solar Scarabs. Granted, they took a while to find their footing, but the jungle-solo combo of Screammmmm and SoloOrTroll took the league by storm. The Scarabs finished just 1-6 in phase 3, but in individual games they were 6-13, a 32% win rate that was higher than the Warriors one place above them at 31% (5-11). The Scarabs took five of their seven sets to the maximum 3 games, a feat which illustrated their improvements despite losing four of those sets. Then, in the group stage to determine playoff seeding, the Scarabs bested the Oni Warriors 3 games to 2, clinching the 6th seed at the phase 3 playoffs.
At playoffs, they lost to the Kings in five games, but it seemed like the Scarabs had arrived at this point. A top team they were not, but they were undeniably competitive. At the Wildcard event, the Scarabs again bested the Warriors in five games but fell to the Leviathans with one of the four remaining Worlds spots at stake. The Dragons took the other spot, which set up two matches to decide the final two teams at the season 8 SMITE World Championships: The Bolts versus Sleekness—an SCC team—and the Scarabs and Warriors. This time, the Scarabs won 3-1, securing their place at Worlds.
Forget for a second how much of a wildcard, literally and figuratively, the Scarabs were at season 8 Worlds. Their quarterfinal opponents, the Jade Dragons, seemed equally difficult to predict going into this tournament. On one hand, the Dragons won phase 1, they were runners-up at the last two World Championships. They were the better team. Still, something seemed off about the Dragons. They had not been themselves all season. We could speculate all night about why that is, but the Dragons seemed vulnerable. When the Dragons dominated game 1 against the Scarabs, all of their fans let out a collective sigh of relief.
Enter SoloOrTroll’s Osiris.
In the next three games against the Dragons, SoT slashed an unfathomable 15/3/27 as Osiris, a KDA of 9.5. All 3 of his deaths came in an average game 4 performance where he went 6/3/6, meaning that in games 2 and 3, SoT’s Osiris has 9 kills, 0 deaths, and 21 assists. It’s unbelievable.
SoloOrTroll single-handedly fights three Titans at the end of game 1, SWC season 8 semifinals.
And he didn’t stop there, either. The Scarabs came out swinging against their semifinal opponents, the 1-seeded Titans. During a late phoenix siege, SoT was fighting three of the Titans’ damage dealers by himself and even managed to kill Cyclonespin before he ever got close to dying himself. He and the Scarabs improbably won game 1, and the Cinderella story continued. For the tournament, SoloOrTroll’s Osiris slashed 20/7/37 with four wins in five games. Unfortunately, after game 1 the clock struck midnight. The Titans returned to their dominant form and closed out the Scarabs in the next three games.
Take a moment to consider the run. During the regular season, the Scarabs won just 16 of their 66 played games—a win rate of only 24%. In group stage and playoff events, the Scarabs won 19 of their 45 games, a win rate of 42%, capping it off with a 4th-place finish at SWC. The Scarabs won more games in end-of-phase events and Worlds than they did during all of regular season play, despite playing a full 21 fewer matches. That is frankly unheard of, and it is time their run be properly enshrined as one of the strangest, most improbable underdog runs in the history of the SPL.
Then the wheels came off. It’s nobody’s fault. SMITE is a hard game, and it is hard to start winning when you’ve been losing. The Scarabs have shown flashes in season 9—like when they beat the Kings 2-0 in the kickoff LAN, or again in phase 2 when the Kings only had one loss. Ultimately, the Scarabs performed awfully at the two playoff events thus far, losing to an SCC team not once but twice. The Scarabs have put up impressive 3-game sets again in phase 3, like against the Leviathans and the Titans this past week, but wins still elude them. All of the players leaving has made it hard to find stability. I mean it when I say it’s nobody’s fault. Screammmmm reportedly had a chance to join the Dragons before the season started, but elected to bet on his boys and run it back with the team. SoloOrTroll accepted the Titans’ offer only because it came before the Scarabs decided to stay together, and he was worried about his chances of finding a spot in the SPL.
Once the losing kept happening, Screammmmm rightly decided it was time to join the Dragons after all. He had a meteoric rise back to the top of the SPL’s jungle ranks and had earned himself a shot to play on a top-seeded team. Inbowned had regressed and was no longer the best way forward for the team. Stuart and sLainly left amid a tumultuous start to phase 3, and oBoronic has now also stepped down. While many have pointed out that all of the original Scarab members from season 8 are now gone, it is worth mentioning that the Scarabs have just 1 remaining member, ScaryD, from the beginning of season 9. The new faces—Hurriwind, Jarcorrr, Sam4Soccer2—all have a history of winning to some degree, and ScaryD himself is a 2-time World Champion. Now, the SMITE world waits with bated breath to see who will join the Scarabs for the final push of season 9. Who knows—he might just be That Guy. It has happened before.
The Scarabs have a history of doing the impossible. Those five guys are gone now—doing other things. But perhaps that spirit remains in the franchise itself. Maybe the new starting five of the Scarabs can make their own magic in season 9. Sam and Scary have done it before, including twice together when they snagged a top-4 finish in season 5 and a championship in season 6, despite nobody thinking they had a snowball’s chance in hell either year. Jarcorrr has played three roles this season, and he was Worlds MVP a year ago on a Leviathans team that, when they joined the league in season 7, many thought would be a bottom team. Hurriwind found himself out of the league and learning a new role in season 9, but managed to work his way back into the SPL and bring the Scarabs their first win of phase 3 in his very first set as an SPL support. These Scarabs have a lot of fight in them, that much is undeniable. There remain only two questions: can they recapture the Scarabs’ magic? Do you believe?
