Black Shrew Esport is perhaps one of the best Honor of Kings esports teams in the world right now.
The Malaysian powerhouse made the home crowd proud, winning the Honor of Kings Invitational Season 2 title in Kuala Lumpur, before finishing as runners-up at the recent Honor of Kings Invitational Midseason 2024 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
It was an impressive run for Black Shrew Esport, who were undefeated until they went up against the formidable KPL Dream Team in the Grand Final, where they lost 3-0.
Despite the loss, they held off the champions for 18 minutes—the longest match that KPL Dream Team had played in the tournament.
Watch the showdown at the finals
And fans can expect a good show from BSE at the upcoming 2024 Honor of Kings Championship taking place in Jakarta, Indonesia in October.
“We will come back stronger,” Jimmy Tan Tien Meng, Black Shrew Esport’s jungler, told Level Infinite in an interview.
“The other teams were easy for us to beat, as we had more experience compared to them and had trained together for much longer,” added Chan “MusangKing” Tat Yann, Black Shrew Esport’s other jungler.
(Read more: What you missed: LGD Gaming Malaysia comes out tops at the Honor of Kings Invitational Season 2 tournament)
The relatively young team, who have played Honor of Kings professionally together for about a year now, are showing a massive show of confidence.
The squad was formed in July 2023 by their Head Coach, Lai “Joker” Kok Kiong. They partnered with Chinese esports organization, LGD Gaming, and were known as LGD Gaming Malaysia before rebranding back to Black Shrew Esport.
Creating a world-class team
Joker, a former competitive HoK player himself, had been working with AG Super Play in China. There, he coached players such as Xu “YiNuo” Bicheng (who also played at the Midseason for KPL Dream Team).
After a year, he decided to return to Malaysia to see if he could create a world champion team with Malaysians.
“I had reached out to the UCKPL champion team and asked if they were keen on working together and told them I had just come back from KPL and had some KPL resources they could tap on, such as high level scrim training.”
From there, two of its players, Chan “MusangKing” Tat Yann, and Ryan “JR” Na Jie Rong decided to join his upcoming squad.
“We were all from different teams before joining Black Shrew Esport, then Joker formed us into a team, but we were still considered a small club as there was no professional league in Malaysia like in China’s KPL,” said Jimmy.
Joker said he ultimately decided to assemble the team under LGD Gaming to leverage the esports organization’s experience with Honor of Kings.
Not resting on laurels
As head coach, Joker has global ambition for his players.
“They like to tell me ‘I am the best in Malaysia’ but I would tell them that they cannot stay within this bubble forever. They have to break out of their comfort zone,” he said.
“They have to break out of their comfort zone.”
Meanwhile, MusangKing and Jimmy are planning to put their earnings in the bank. With their first place finish for S2 and their runner-up status for the Midseason, MusangKing has earned around US$150,000 while Jimmy has made US$80,000.
“I’ll put it in a bank and maybe buy a PS5,” said MusangKing.
With the Honor of Kings Invitational Midseason over, Black Shrew Esport is already looking to the upcoming 2024 Honor of Kings Championship, where 16 of the best teams in the world will be converging in Jakarta, Indonesia. Up for grabs—the world champion title and a share of the US$1 million prize pool.
One thing we know for sure, it’s going to be epic. And we’ll have the action for you right here.
