After becoming fan favourites across the globe with their fashionable pink jumpers, passionate displays of ceiling maintenance and fairy-tale journey to the finals of APEX Season 2, RunAway fell out of last season’s groups a shadow of their former selves. Kaiser had moved to Cloud9 and questionable role rotations were implemented in an attempt to fill the void. None were truly successful, and to compound their woes they also failed to secure a sponsor or funding. Fast forward to last week when they had just been drawn in a group with Lunatic-Hai and Meta Athena for Season 4 and the forecast appeared to be another season of hard luck for the boys in pink.
As the roster deadline drew closer they signed TiZi from Rhino Gaming Wings to fill the tank role and JJANU straight out of comp queue to learn Lucio, allowing Runner to focus more on the management of the organisation. With Cloud9 failing to qualify for contenders speculation began to swirl that The King would return. The hype built and it seemed inevitable that RunAway would be able to put back together their Season 2 finals roster and on Monday it was confirmed on Runner’s stream. Kaiser would make his return in the main tank role this season.
Kaiser’s return will give a massive boost to a team that seemed lost without him. It will also allow Bumper and Haksal to return to their preferred roles of DPS and flex tank respectively. The morale boost this close to the season and the ability to slot back into their comfort picks is huge for RunAway. Combine this with a recent interview with Runner where he stated they were nearing the successful acquisition of a team house and everything seems on the up and up for the people's champion.
Whether they can live up to the hype remains to be seen but there is something about the team reuniting despite more lucrative offers available to once again don the RunAway pink and do battle against the best team in the world that makes you believe in them.
RunAway’s eight man roster for APEX Season 4 will be:
- Lee "Stitch" Choong-hui (DPS)
- Kim "Haksal" Hyo-jong (DPS)
- Park "Bumper" Sang-beom (Flex)
- Ryu "Kaiser" Sang-hoon (Tank)
- Hwang"TiZi" Jang-hyeon (Tank)
- Kim "KoX" Min-soo (Support)
- Choi "JJANU" Hyeon-woo (Support)
- Yoon "Runner" Dae-hoon (Support)