The two pre-tournament favourites couldn't have looked more different on the opening night of MSI.
The opening day of the Mid-Season Invitational has come and gone and predictably it was SKT who were the real winners. They had to work for their win over G2 in the opening game of the night, but their match against Gigabyte Marines was about as one-sided as you might expect. Peanut was rampant, ending the game 9/1/9 on Lee Sin and living up to the God Fist skin he was using in-game.
In the second game of the evening, World Elite took a somewhat surprising win from Flash Wolves. The LMS champions were many people’s favourite to finish second at MSI behind SKT, but the Chinese team clearly hadn’t bothered to read that script. Their top laner, 957, exploded with Kled and, despite his many kills, a daring escape from a 1v3 situation was arguably the highlight of the match.
If SKT doing SKT things was the main story of the night, the subplot was that teams who lost to them won their other game. Gigabyte Marines took sweet revenge for their loss against TSM last week, while G2 made an unlikely comeback against Flash Wolves. Europe’s hopefuls were behind for most of the game but with late game scaling in their favour, the entire match flipped on a single pick. MMD’s Gragas got caught out while pushing G2’s inhibitor, which allowed G2 to run down the mid lane and kill one for themselves. They backed off, spent their gold and went to baron. Two Flash Wolves players got picked off in the ensuing fight and G2 simply ran down mid lane again to end the game, despite being down by 5,000 gold.
The final match of the night saw 0-1 TSM take on 1-0 WE. The Chinese team got off to a good start but were unable to capitalise on their early kills. TSM played the map far better than their opponents and 957 - the hero of WE’s earlier game - was kept quiet throughout. 26 minutes in, TSM snuck a baron kill and from there the game was all but over. Six minutes later they took another, and though World Elite hung in for a while, Bjergsen’s excellent use of Taliyah’s ultimate made it nigh impossible for them to get a fair fight.
Opening night was kind to the tournament favourite but very unkind to the runners-up-elect. Flash Wolves still have time to turn things around but Gigabyte Marines have already shown that there are no easy games in this tournament. Meanwhile, both Western teams are in with a chance. Their meeting on Friday could be vitally important in the race for second in the group.
