This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

　　The European Challenger series concluded a few days ago with H2k-Gaming returning to the throne of Europe and ensuring a spot in the Promotion/Relegation tournament later this year in North America along with a consistent SK Gaming Prime and surprisingly, Unicorns of Love.

　　The latter were known as a decent challenger team with various top finishes in the European scene. Prior to the Challenger playoffs, UoL had to deal with starter jungler Dan's absence as he had academic obligations obstructing his participation. In his place, German jungler Berk 'Gillius' Demir was called to fill the void. Gillius came to prominence during the first inception of SK Gaming Prime. After a few top-tier finishes, the team disbanded and continued without Demir.

　　Im not going to play the lcs relegation with UOL , they decided to play with their main jungler :/

　　— Gilius (@Giliuus) August 9, 2014

　　Surprisingly, with the help of Gilius, UoL not only eliminated a heavily-favoured Gamers2, but also went the distance and almost upset H2k-Gaming in the semi-finals. Facing a disgruntled NiP in the 3rd/4th place match, the Unicorns outclassed Alex Ich and his boys to take the third and final seed for Promotion/Relegation, thus denying NiP a shot at LCS for the third time in a row.

　　Today, UoL announced their decision to keep Dan in the starting line-up despite the good performance by Gillius, a decision which sparked a heated discussion in the Challenger scene as many pros and fans disagreed with the decision. Finally, UoL AD Carry Pontus 'Vardags' Dahlblom released a statement justifying the decision which you can find below:

　　So, I'm UOL Vardags (the ADC for Unicorns Of Love) and i'm here to share my opinion on the situation, so basically Dan couldn't come to the CS-playoffs with us because of exam stuff etc. and prior to the event we were actually showing some really good results after yet again starting with Powerofevil as a midlaner, and we actually went out undefeaeted in the groups of BMC (which was with NIP and H2K) and the second one was the Faceit invitaional where we also went undefeated. When Dan couldn't come to CS-playoffs we had nutri as our main substitute but around 24 hours before our games against G2 we got a call from riot saying he couldn't play which led us to playing with Gilius. No matter what could have happened during this playoff-series we were gratefull that Gilius could be there to play with us, he did play really well and we ended up getting 3rd place and going 3-0 against NIP. This result however has more to do with the amount of teamwork in the games and not as much inidividual play IMO. Just because our substitute is playing well during a event like this isn't gonna justify us kicking Dan, which is a player that we have played with for quite some time and were having some really good results so there was never a reason for us to replace him from our main roster. If you guys want to think this is a bad decision then do so, but it is none the less our decision to make and hopefully we can show our fans that we are as scary with Dan or even more scary because of the amount of synergy we have built with him. Sorry for grammatical errors, but this is it from me. PEACE.

　　Unicorns of Love will be joining H2K-Gaming and SK Gaming Prime in Los Angeles later this year to face Copenhagen Wolves, Gambit Gaming and an undetermined team in order to try and qualify for the 2015 Season of the European LCS.

　　Unicorns of Love are:

　　Kiss 'Vizicsacsi' Tamas - Top

　　Daniel 'Dan' Hockley - Jungler

　　Trinstan 'PowerofEvil' Schrage - Mid laner

　　Pontus 'Vardags' Dahlblom - AD Carry

　　Zdravets 'Hylissang' Galabov - Support

　　Image courtesy of NationalESL.com