Nico, Nautilus, Nilah, Nocturne and Nunu turn the latest stretch of the A-Z challenge into a surprisingly varied examination of what happens when champions are pushed into top lane regardless of whether they naturally belong there. The results range from a dominant Nico performance to a miserable early Nunu matchup, but the format works because the creator is willing to improvise builds, learn unfamiliar mechanics in real time and admit when he has little idea what he is doing.
Nico provides the cleanest opening demonstration. Against Fiora, an early lead rapidly becomes a 6-kill advantage, while mechanics such as firing abilities through minions and experimenting with Dusk and Dawn are explained amid the usual trash talk. The match is entertainingly one-sided in lane without becoming completely trivial, since the rest of the map is struggling enough to keep the outcome uncertain. That tension gives the unusual build room to matter beyond simply bullying an already-behind opponent.
Nautilus is arguably the most convincing discovery. The creator explains why support champions with meaningful wave clear can function more comfortably in top lane than picks such as Leona or Braum, then demonstrates the point through priority, AP scaling, roaming and disruptive teamfights. There are useful smaller observations too, including the warning about allowing Shen to drag his blade through an opponent and the value of Nautilus absorbing attention while threatening carries. Calling the pick “S plus” is plainly his enthusiastic assessment rather than a rigorously established ranking, but the match gives viewers a clear reason for that enthusiasm.
Nilah is far less comfortable, and that struggle improves the experiment. Early damage feels negligible, the lane is awkward, and several deaths come from positioning or uncertainty about what the champion can realistically accomplish. Once the game moves into larger fights, however, Nilah's scaling becomes much more apparent, culminating in enormous damage and a late pentakill during an extremely messy comeback. The contrast supports the creator's eventual summary of a terrible lane followed by powerful post-laning performance, at least within this particular match.
Nocturne produces a more familiar carry pattern. Despite an early jungle gank and repeated moments of greed, the creator builds toward lethality, emphasizes fighting around Q for its AD benefit and eventually reaches the point where isolated targets can be deleted rapidly. His previous experience with the champion is obvious compared with Nilah or Nunu, although that familiarity also makes this section less exploratory. Much of its entertainment instead comes from the increasingly absurd inability of either side to finish what appears to be an ending position.
Nunu is the roughest and perhaps funniest test because Yorick repeatedly exposes how little familiarity the creator has with the matchup and champion. Attempts to consume Yorick's summons, sustain through Q and find useful ultimate timings gradually replace the initial panic, while several mistakes are acknowledged immediately rather than disguised as strategic choices. The eventual conclusion that Nunu top “actually seems good” is much less persuasive than the Nautilus verdict, because the match itself is chaotic and the creator openly recognizes that his execution needs practice.
Across all five games, the stream-style presentation is both the attraction and the limitation. Build debates with chat, cannon-minion jokes, exaggerated self-criticism and abrupt tactical observations create an energetic sense of live experimentation, while genuinely useful comments about wave states, overstaying for inhibitors, objective decisions and champion mechanics appear throughout. Yet the same format produces constant profanity, repeated jokes, merch and cosplay tangents, frantic shouting and long stretches of improvised commentary that could be substantially tightened. The concept is strong enough to survive that disorder, but viewers looking for a systematic guide to unconventional top-lane picks will find entertainment taking priority over controlled comparison.
Pros
- Nautilus emerges as a genuinely interesting unconventional top-lane experiment, with wave clear, scaling and teamfight utility demonstrated in practice.
- The contrasting performances across Nico, Nilah, Nocturne and Nunu prevent the challenge from feeling like a sequence of identical matches.
- Frequent explanations of matchup mechanics, wave management, builds and objective decisions add useful strategic observations to the comedy.
- Mistakes and unfamiliarity are openly acknowledged, making the weaker experiments informative rather than pretending every pick succeeds cleanly.
- Nilah's difficult lane and dramatic late-game turnaround provide an especially effective demonstration of how dramatically a champion's usefulness can change as a match develops.
Cons
- Stream-of-consciousness shouting, repeated jokes and unrelated tangents make several matches considerably more drawn out than necessary.
- Conclusions about how good individual top-lane picks are sometimes rest on one extremely chaotic game rather than enough evidence to establish their broader reliability.
- Build experimentation is entertaining but frequently improvised through chat, limiting the video's usefulness as a reproducible strategy guide.
- Heavy profanity and deliberately abrasive trash talk will narrow the presentation's appeal.
Unconventional champion choices make this A-Z installment more interesting than a simple sequence of ranked matches, particularly when Nautilus unexpectedly thrives and Nunu becomes an exercise in improvisational survival. The loose live-stream presentation sacrifices analytical rigor and pacing, but the combination of mechanical insight, self-aware mistakes and wildly different games makes the experiment consistently entertaining.
