Faker vs. Faker Jr., who will come out on top?
Samsung Galaxy vs. SBENU Sonicboom
Pretty strange opening off the back of a double laneswap; typically the first tower from each side goes down, yeah? This time, both teams kept plowing through even the inner turrets. While even for a long while, SBENU showcased their newly acquired ability to controls objectives with several dragons and turrets over Samsung. However everything would come crashing down when pretty much the only damage and wave clear threat on SSB was sniped from SSG’s poke composition. That Sivir was the core of SBENU, without her the team fell apart. They lost an inner turret, a Baron, and significant map pressure. Then, all it took was a siege to end the game.
Much cleaner game by Samsung this time around. Right off the bat they made a few picks and took a few towers in several lanes. That was snowballed into a baron bait, baron, kills, and of course, sieging. Not even the miraculous SBENU baron steal could save them. Samsung held an iron grip on the map and eventually took the series.
CJ Entus vs. ROX Tigers
Pretty interesting set up, CJ is the up and comer looking to dethrone the king of the standings: the ROX Tigers. Game 1 was virtually over after a fantastic double TP play by ROX. The few kills off that gank would cultivate an insurmountable lead. By that point, it was just a repeating cycle: bait Baron, fight, take Baron, siege, and take the nexus.
In one of the cleanest games of the season, the ROX Tigers completely dominated the second match. CJ were just getting outplayed in a micro and macro sense. After 16 minutes the score was 10-0, a few minutes later ROX took an early Baron then destroyed CJ when they were found in the jungle. This entire season CJ has shown signs of genuine fierce competition for top 3, but, now I’m not so sure. It was pretty hard to watch.
Song "Mickey" Yeong-min on Yasuo just seems fitting. B-Team Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok loves the carry champs but, uh, not a great fit into this meta in general and their team comp in particular. This was a fairly messy game all said and done. Go "Score" Dong-bin made some plays early, a lead which would be muddied from multiple bloodbaths across the map. Towards the mid game, AF were desperately trying to climb their way back into contention, but were severely punished for their aggression with an ace for nothing. Both teams gave up poorly executed fights back and forth. Like I said, messy game. Eventually, after dozens of deaths, though, KT were able to finish the game.
Instead of Yasuo, Mickey pulled out a Twisted Fate pick, arguably his best champion. And we all know when Mickey gets on Twisted Fate, we are guaranteed at least a 50% win chance. AF played to their win condition extraordinarily well. Get picks, get money, get… game.
Just like Samsung and SBENU before them, both teams effectively agree to lose 3 turrets each in the double laneswap. After that early kerfuffle, the teams went back to Game 1 strats. Both teams suffered poor fights back and forth throughout the match. For example, KT won a team fight 4-1 off a hard engage and headed for Baron. However, AF caught in time to not only stop them, but get a 4-0 themselves. By the late game, Afreeca took their fifth dragon and chipped away at KT’s base, but they couldn't close. Typically teams in AF’s position would siege a turret, hard engage with something like Alistar and finish the game, but AF can’t find it. So instead, they chose to simply bleed Rolster out with super minions in a 20 minute war of attrition. This was a close, extremely high tension match.
Longzhu vs. SK Telecom
This series features another double laneswap for 6 turrets. SKT played an aggro game quite early with a hard push to take the last outer turret, but LZ were not having it. Their hard engage looked strong on paper, but SKT utilized their CC to kite out LZ, basically winning the game through this strategy. The rest of the match consisted of SKT finding picks, taking dragons, and sieging turrets practically uncontested. Longzhu looked really bad this game, surprising considering their strong engage composition. Just a few weeks ago they looked to fight for a top 3 spot. Now, now they’d be lucky just to make it to playoffs.
In Game 2, another laneswap into hard push resulted in SKT losing map pressure early, including a downed inhibitor. Losing the inhib is really bad, but SKT seemed unfazed as they played the rest of the match out incredibly cleanly. However, can it really be considered a clean game when the other team doesn’t even show up? They pretty much got everything they wanted for free, just like last game. I really hope this series was an anomaly for LZ. They have immense potential, and it would be a shame for it to go to waste at the middle of the pack.
Kongdoo Monster vs. ROX Tigers
You would think this would be a clean, fast series for ROX, no?
Game 1 certainly followed this pattern. WangHo "Peanut" Yun got the first two kills. Later, ROX pulled a double TP play as they have been known to do and wiped KDM off the face of the Earth (Runeterra?). They got baron, sieged hard, and won the game at 26 minutes.
Game 1 was a decisively strong performance from ROX. Game 2, however? Nauseating. For starters, they drafted a rare wave clear composition. What’s it do? Wave clear. They would wave clear directly into a team fight, picks, and other unfavorable circumstances. This game gave us multiple bloodbaths including a massive teamfight leaving five dead and five limping away, and another sloppy fight leaving seven dead. Towards the mid game, KDM even secured a quadra kill on Jhin. By the late game both teams had lost both of their nexus turrets. Though their performance was sloppy, ROX was able to secure a victory off of a botched nexus push by KDM. This might at a glance seem minor blip on the radar. Thing is, as the number one team in Korea, and by extension the world, they have to take every game serious. This match was honestly an embarrassment. ROX still secured a victory, but dropped the ball big time in a very sloppy, discouraging contest. Even though in a competitive sense this game was bad, however, it was still incredibly entertaining.
Samsung Galaxy vs. Jin Air Greenwings
The first game was pretty quiet. Both teams traded a bit, there’s a neat dragon steal, few more kills. Nothing major. And like a light switch, JAG goes dark. Poor positioning and bad target acquisition in a single team fight loses them the match. Surprisingly poor performance by Jin Air.
Then Jin Air got angry. SeongHyeok "Kuzan" Lee, on Lissandra, completely dumpstered the opposing Lulu. It wasn’t even close. They went on to take 5 dragons and 2 barons to extend this series. Pretty much a blowout even. This what JAG should’ve looked like last game. Well, I mean, it really helped that Samsung’s draft was pretty awful. Awful for them anyway, they took a protect the Lucian comp. In addition to having low damage in general, they don’t really have a true carry ADC. In other words, a team like SKT can pull it off because JunSik "Bang" Bae is easily one of the best attack damage carries in the world; this is pretty much what every team built around Ziharo "Uzi" Jian is funnily enough.
The Kuzan domination continues! His drive wins JAG back to back team fights to put themselves in the lead. For a while anyway. Somewhat similar to the first game, they flub an important team fight and lose the game. With only 2 kills, Samsung was able to take a dragon, baron, and siege. Even cooler is the stylish finish with a penta kill in the final team fight. Samsung. Samsung. Sam. Sung. They won earlier this week against SBENU, they won against the worlds hype train ROX Tigers, and now they won against #2 Jin Air. I didn’t think they would be this good, maybe it’s a fluke? Maybe not?
SK Telecom vs. CJ Entus
My personally most anticipated game of the week. How will Faker Jr. fare against the legend himself? He did, okay. Sort of. Basically, SKT sacrificed Faker so they could match on objectives, not a bad ploy. A sneaky baron later and the game ends without much trouble.
Faker on Fizz! He was pissed. Probably. Here he is, the king, and this phony thinks he runs things? Faker had to teach BoSeong "BDD" Gwak a lesson, by picking Fizz into Varus, ouch. The entire game is basically Faker going 100% agro. It was awesome. Thing is, that sounds like a terrible idea right? Fizz doesn’t really fit into the meta right now. However, the density of the pressure and gravitational pull was enough to create a black hole. CJ Entus were on full time protect BDD at any cost duty. As you can imagine, when the support and jungler are camping mid lane to protect their Vaurs, the rest of the map is free to do as they please. And as they please they did. Very interesting game in the dynamics of a solo carry pressure, even if the stat line isn’t good. Also awesome to watch was his mechanics on the fish thing, he was ducking and dodging all over the place. Too bad he couldn’t land an ult to literally save his life.
SBENU Sonicboom vs. Afreeca Freecs
Afreeca pulling a total ROX/SKT move here in Game 1. They didn’t give SBENU an inch! Er- I mean, a centimeter. They are metric after all, wouldn’t make sense to give an inch in any situation much less when describing a near blowout of a match. AF was pretty much allowed to do whatever they wanted, including getting Mickey on Twisted Fate – oh which was spectacular. Want to know how to team fight with the more pick orientated Twisted Fate? Watch this game. Watch Mickey.
Game 2… is a bit less pleasant. Mickey starts carrying early on Leblanc, as he does, until Afreeca slip up big time. They gave up both kills and baron. For a long time they struggle just to keep themselves in the game at all. Come late game they just don’t have the fighting power to combat SBENU.
With all the big swings or the complete lack thereof this final match is a bit strange. Afreeca start off with a questionable engage, namely a lot of their members were low health in addition to not having their Lulu, but somehow come out just ahead. And it’s not like they had a big lead either, SBENU didn’t have the confidence to all in this damaged team. A few more small engagements later, Afreeca limp away with another victory.
