The sixth place Korean team absolutely smashes the first place Chinese team. How did this happen? Read on to find out.
IEM Katowice has been cited as an odd tournament, because each region is represented generally by teams that are in the middle of the standings. Counter Logic Gaming and Team SoloMid from North America are 2nd and 4th, respectively; Fnatic and Origen from Europe are 5th and 6th, respectively; SK Telecom T1 is 6th in Korea, while ESC Ever is only a challenger team. Indeed, the only teams that are the best in their region are from China: Royal Never Give Up and Qiao Gu Reapers, both of whom are first place in their respective conferences. This has meant high expectations for the Chinese squads, especially after China’s dismal performance at worlds and IEM San Jose. With RNG already securing their semifinal berth, all eyes were on QG to secure theirs. Having already beaten Fnatic in the first round, all that stood between them and a semifinal berth was the former world champs. How hard could it be?
The Lineup:
SKT: Fiora, Gragas, LeBlanc, Kalista, Bard
QG: Poppy, Graves, Lissandra, Lucian, Alistar
The Game:
Having, presumably, already read the blurb at the top of the article, you know that SKT solidly smashed QG. The reasons for this are twofold: the first was macro misplays by QG, which left Bo “V” Bao’s Poppy absolutely famished for farm. Forced to inefficiently farm jungle camps, SKT’s HoSeong “Duke” Lee, on Fiora, was doubling V’s farm at all stages of the game. It was easy to see how lost QG seemed, faltering in teamfights with a Poppy that was too vastly underfarmed to tank, allowing SKT to run roughshot over their opponents.
The second reason was simply beautiful play from all of SKT, though the one who particularly deserve the spotlight this game is JaeWan “Wolf” Lee on Bard. Whilst JunSik “Bang” Bae on Kalista and Sang-hyeok “Faker” Lee on his signature LeBlanc were incredible in teamfights, positioning well and blowing up enemy carries before they had a chance to deal damage, it was Wolf that enabled all of it. In particular, his Magical Journeys opened up beautiful avenues of play for his teammates, enabling chases and teamfights that otherwise would have failed. In addition, his Cosmic Bindings very consistently landed stuns on priority targets that enabled pick after pick on QG. He ended the game 3-2-23, 100% kill participation on his team.
QG played hard, but they couldn’t keep up with SKT’s play. Fight after fight they would pick off TaeSang "Doinb" Kim’s Lissandra before she could meaningfully contribute, and then rolled over the rest of QG in a 4v5. Bleeding objectives left and right, the Reapers rolled over after 35 minutes, 6 kills to their name (SKT had 26), giving the reigning world champions a berth straight through to the semifinals.
