(all photos courtesy of Riot eSports, flickr)
Game 1
The opening match started with both teams seemingly getting the champions they wanted. The H2k bottom lane took the lane dominant Kalista and Thresh into the notably weaker early laning of Ezreal and Trundle. Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu took Maokai to the top lane, being known as a strong tank player, with Fnatic stacking tank busters Trundle and Azir on support and mid lane. Both teams took strong marksmen to the jungle in Kindred for Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski and Graves for Lee “Spirit” Da-yoon and meta champions Ryze for the mid lane of H2k and tank Ekko for the top lane of Fnatic. H2k picked strong laners to win the laning phase and transition into tower pushes to get a gold and vision lead while Fnatic wanted to delay the game long enough for their teamfight composition to come online.
The game went as planned for both teams. H2k got their lead from the standard inverted laning phase, also called Australia lanes, and tower pushing, but could not further their lead with tower dives or baron baits. Fnatic were able to delay the game, holding on while being behind with safe plays and farming to their items before finally coming online as a teamfight composition. H2k even sneaked a Baron at 23 minutes to aid in their push, but the Fnatic waveclear with the Azir passive turret made pushing impossible for the short range of Kalista and Kindred. At the next baron, H2k suffered due to their lack of decisiveness in the mid game by allowing the teamfighting of Fnatic to take over. They got the Baron, but lost it on all their members but Odoamne as Fnatic took the fight four to three. H2k simply seemed lost in their communications and Fnatic aced them for the win in the ensuing teamfight.
Game 2
Game 2 was more of the same. Both teams went with the exact same compositions, H2k feeling that they misplayed in-game, but Fnatic got the lane swap, so H2k’s lane dominant style was nullified. Since H2k could not get the lead from their superior macro play, Fnatic’s better teamfighting took over the game, once again at a baron play that H2k started. Fnatic got the Baron and finished the game off it. The Rotterdam crowd went crazy as crowd favorite Netherlands native Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten and the Fnatic boys earned a lead 2 to 0 in the series.
Game 3
Game 3 saw H2k finally adapting to the Fnatic composition, banning out Noh “Gamsu” Yeong-Jin’s Ekko and Febiven’s Azir. Fnatic responded with a Ryze ban, feeling that with Azir off the table, they did not feel comfortable going up against that champion. The big difference was in the mid lane, as Fnatic banked on their uncanny ability to delay the game to pick Kassadin, the huge late game monster into Ryu “Ryu” Sang-wook’s Lissandra, a much earlier threat. Not only that, but Kassadin does not have safe waveclear abilities, leaving the mid lane in a dire situation against the patented H2k rotational game. That lack of waveclear proved fatal as H2k was able to pressure Fnatic from all sides to get their first win of the series.
Game 4
H2K kept the same bans in Game 4 as they did in Game 3, feeling no need to change anything, while Fnatic banned out the Lissandra, fearing it more than the Ryze. Fnatic then proceeded to flex out the support Trundle of Johan “Klaj” Olsson to the top lane of Gamsu, seeking a favorable matchup into the Maokai of Odoamne. They also stole away the Corki from Konstantinos “FORG1VENGRE” Tzortziou to try to put him on an uncomfortable champion, but he picked Sivir to be a strong teamfight presence. The most stunning moment came at the very end of champ select, when Febiven elected to go Cassiopeia into the Ryze, a champion that has seen very little play in the major regions since her nerfs on patches 5.6 and 5.10 and the meta going away from high sustained damage mid laners. With the resurgence of Azir for his tank busting abilities and Cassiopeia occupying a similar role, we could be seeing a lot more of her in the coming months. Standard lanes were again in the advantage of the H2k bottom lane, allowing them to pressure and granting them the first tower of the game. What followed was a very tight game, neither team gaining a definitive advantage before a dragon fight 25 minutes in went the way of H2k, netting them three kills, the baron and a three thousand gold lead. H2k made good on that lead and ended the game off the subsequent dragon fight.
Game 5
Game 5 went exactly as Games 1 and 2 went, with Fnatic picking the same bottom lane and jungler with the Orianna to even out the laning phase in mid and stealing away the Maokai from Odoamne for another strong scaling teamfight composition. H2k picked a big tank in the top lane in Poppy with more of the same picks in all other positions. The game played out in the exact same way as Game 1, with H2k taking towers all over the map, but never accruing the vision pressure necessary to gain more than a few thousand gold over their opponents. The Fnatic squad was allowed to reach a point in their itemization where they could beat H2k in a straight 5v5. An H2k miscall sealed their fate as Fnatic aced them 30 minutes into the game and took outer, inner, inhibitor and nexus turrets to close out the series.
FNATIC WIN SERIES: 3-2
All in all, this series was about H2k needing to close out the game before Fnatic was able to scale. If H2k were able to take towers, accrue a substantial gold lead and dive the Fnatic towers successfully, they could have ended games before Fnatic was of any threat to them, but if they let up the pressure, Fnatic would scale up and punish any mistakes made by H2k, using the gigantic death timers on this patch to gain a definitive advantage and push for the win.
