Missed all the intense action this past week? Let us catch you up on who rose to the top.
If you missed this week, you missed a prime week of competition between both the top and bottom of the pack in Europe. Top teams squared off to see who is truly superior, while bottom teams struggled to pull themselves over their peers. It made for a good number of hotly contested matches this week and here are a few great highlights from them:
Highlights
Unicorns of Love vs Fnatic
This was a rude wake-up call for the new players on both squads in this matchup. Unicorns of Love's Rudy "Rudy" Beltran had a really rough week after his successful debut last week and looked way too tenatitive and unsure in this match on Elise. And after his masterful Thresh game only the day before, Fnatic's Johan "Klaj" Olsson looked out of sorts, as he simply wasn't able to absorb enough punishment as Braum.
The deciding factor in this match wasn't these players though and ended up being Fnatic's overall lack of topside vision control and blue trinkets in their inventories, which led to a number of free Barons for Unicorns of Love. This led to a UOL stranglehold on the map and the former kings of Europe losing out hard.
Origen vs Team Vitality
Team Vitality really showed up in full force this week. They looked really smooth against G2 Esports and kept up that momentum in their match against the struggling Origen. After falling behind early, Origen simply had no way back in as Lucas "Cabochard" Simon-Meslet bullied their entire team on a fed Graves. And, if he ever got caught out of position, he had Erlend "Nukeduck" Holm's Zilean ultimates to revive him. And again, Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage cost his team by getting caught out alone in the mid lane.
H2K Gaming vs G2 Esports
Arguably, both G2 Esports' losses so far this season could be pointed towards some team drafting hiccups. You generally don't want to run an Udyr into H2K Gaming or give Vitality all of their comfort picks. But, when you give Mateusz "Kikis" Szkudlarek a Malphite against Andrei "Odoamne" Pascu's Quinn, you're doing some things right at least. In a very tightly contested match that featured an Ezreal Mystic Shot Baron steal by Kim "Emperor" Jin-Hyeon, G2 showed why they are still a team to be feared, even if you're the highly touted H2K. And why you don't ever give Glenn "Hybrid" Doornenbal an opportunity to play Braum.
