The reigning World champions play the reigning NA LCS champions. The results are as expected.
Of course, there’s much more to the story than that. After winning worlds last year, SK Telecom T1 have struggled. Following the loss of their star toplaner, Gyeong-Hwan “MaRin” Jang, SKT faced a surprise loss in the KeSPA Cup to Korean challenger team, ESC Ever. They now languish in a very meager sixth place spot in the LCK, hardly befitting the stature of two-time world champions.
For Counter Logic Gaming, the story is much different. Last year saw CLG take first place in the NA LCS summer split, but failing to make top eight at worlds. Before the spring split, they restructured, losing star ADC Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng and midlaner Eugene “Pobelter” Park, they brought in Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes and JayHyeon “Huhi” Choi to replace them. Now they’re currently second place in the North American standings, and are the first team to have taken down the seemingly undefeatable Immortals.
The Lineup:
SKT: Trundle, Nidalee, Lulu, Ezreal, Braum
CLG: Poppy, Gragas, Lux, Lucian, Thresh
The Game:
While it would be easy to look at this game and blithely refer to it as “one-sided,” that belies the performance of both teams this game. On the side of CLG, they picked a team comp that didn’t necessarily play to their strengths; namely, the choice of Poppy for Darshan “Darshan” Upadhyaha, which goes against his general style. Darshan is famous for his focus on splitpushing in the toplane, a strategy that is not only unique amongst North American toplaners, but has also earned them several victories that could have otherwise easily been defeats. While hardly a one-trick pony, it was easy to see that Darshan felt distinctly uncomfortable on Poppy, making a bizarre play early on that gave first blood to JunSik "Bang” Bae’s Ezreal in a 1v1 scenario.
Meanwhile, SKT had problems of their own. Their choice to bring substitute jungler SeonGu “Blank” Gang rather than starting jungler Seong-Ung “Bengi” Bae has been criticzed, and while Blank did not play poorly, he struggled to pressure or gank for his lanes early on, choosing instead to focus on early Dragons/Void Heralds. JaeWan “Wolf” Lee too, had difficulty making his presence known on Braum, missing important skillshots that could have led to easy kills.
Overall, it is hard to criticize SKT’s performance; their general macro skill enabled them to outplay CLG, a team famous for their macro skill and cohesion. all across the map. Bang especially came up big for his team this game, nailing two trueshot barrages that secured kills onto Stixxay, and in general using the harass of blue build Ezreal to make life hell for his enemies. On the other side, it is important to note that while his team may have lost, Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black was a monster on Thresh, pressuring lanes well and landing incredible hooks that got his team the only 3 kills they could secure. While CLG managed to hold their own in the early game (though it was far from what anyone would call clean), SKT surprised them 30 minutes into the game, following a pick onto Sang-hyeok "Faker" Lee’s Lulu with a vicious series of outplays that netted them a 4v5 ace and a quick victory, securing them a spot in the Group B Winner’s bracket.
