One of my favourite things to witness this year were the resurgences of penny and mada.
I don’t remember much of mada in 2022 and before but I do remember penny. Penny played at the first international lan and while I don’t remember specifics he must’ve been a pretty good player to do so, even beating liquid with scream.
In 2022 v1 fell off and in 2023 he joined g2. He played initiator roles and was lowkey completely dogshit, you can look at the stats they were horrible. However, he played very well in the few games they put him on duelist alongside oxy. This year he ran it back with yfp in open quals and dominated ever since, now back on the duelist role.
Penny is currently the 4th highest rated player in challengers na, only behind mada, brawk and furbsa in that order.
As for mada, he had a very similar 2023. He was also stuck on initiator roles but for Shopify rebellion in tier 2 na, same league as penny. Madas stats were not as bad as penny’s, but they were definitely not representative of his true ability. He was looking like one of the worse players on a struggling team. After the season, Shopify merged with moist moguls to create mxs, choosing 5 of the original 10 players to make the new team. Many were surprised that mada, the struggling initiator, was picked over duelists SR bdog and Mxm sym. Mada hasn’t even played duelist since 2022 and he hasn’t been at the level of bdog or sym, so why did he get brought to mxs? Well clearly mxs tried it all out, as mada has had an amazing resurgence on the duelist role in 2024, now performing at new heights and having the highest rating in all of challengers na.
The good news for mada didn’t mean bad for bdog and sym though, bdog is currently on the best team in challengers and sym has had amazing performances for tsm, notably his 32-8 first duel match against penny and yfp.
All and all I’m glad to see these players make a comeback and not be spat out for an uncomfortable and disappointing year.
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