(Courtesy of OGN)
Coming into this series SKTelecom T1 were certainly the favorites to reach the next round. However, they were looking far from infallible and the Jin Air Green Wings possessed the necessary tools to defeat the defending World Champions. Yeo “Trace” Chang-dong definitely has the skill to hang with Lee “Duke” Ho-Seong in the top lane and even defeat the former OGN MVP, but Jin Air’s biggest strength this series would be in the Jungle.
SKT’s most inexperienced player Kang “Blank” Sun-gu has indeed looked solid since IEM Katowice, but he is still their weakest player. Park “Winged” Tae-jin however has been one of Jin Air’s bright spots this season and is making a case for being one of the league’s top Junglers. He was the player that really needed to perform for Jin Air if they wanted a chance at upsetting the perennial favorites.
Game 1
(Courtesy of OGN)
The series began with an interesting pick by SKT as they draft Zilean. As Monte mentioned on cast this pick was made to unsettle KT Rolster, as KT are really the only team running this kind of comp. Yet when looking closer at SKT’s draft you can see this is a standard comp for them. They love to run Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok on a utility champ, Duke on a tank and let Bae “Bang” Jun-sik go off on Sivir or Ezreal, and this comp is a similar yet slightly more complicated version than their usual setup.
Jin Air’s comp was looking strong as well. They had a nice mixture of damage, utility, CC and disengage. What this game would probably come down to is how SKT utilized the Kindred and Zilean ultimates. If they could properly stagger these ults to keep Bang alive it would most likely result #SKTwin.
Australian lanes led to a fair bit of farming with no separation between the teams. However, things exploded around the first dragon, which SKT took at the cost of some serious damage to Blank. Trace made a play reminiscent of his first half of the split form, diving and stunning Blank against the wall and ultimately leading to first blood. SKT tried to respond with a perplexing overpursuit by Faker, causing this extended fight to end 4-1 in Jin Air’s favor. At this point Trace was primed to be a huge factor in the outcome of this game.
Yet SKT kept it close by avoiding confrontation, and slowly reduced Jin Air’s lead. After a nice catch by SKT, they easily took the second dragon and cut the lead to 1k, continuing to find picks until an overzealous Jin Air forced a fight that really showcased the strengths of SKT’s comp. After timely ults by both Kindred and Zilean, Bang remained alive and poured out the damage resulting in a triple killl at the cost of just one man to SKT.
This led to a free Baron, and things were basically over for Jin Air. Jin Air started off this game so well, yet SKT were able to keep it relatively close despite their early misplays. SKT played this comp to its strengths and the result was a fairly controlled and classic SKT win.
Game 2
(Courtesy of JIN AIR GREENWINGS@JinAirGW)
Once again SKT introduced a new threat to their opponents, as Wolf brought his Tahm Kench out of retirement to create another classic Telecom comp, with heavy damage on Blank and Bang and Faker running a damage/utility hybrid champion. However, Jin Air have some fantastic siege and disengage in this comp. If they went ahead early with the likes of Azir and Nidalee they would be able to dictate the tempo of the game.
The teams decide to employ the gentlemen’s agreement that come with early lane swaps. However Jin Air was much quicker in executing theirs and as a result Blank fell behind early in the piece. A few small skirmishes led to nothing for either team before Trace was caught out and handed first blood to Bang, the best possible result for SKT. Yet even after a couple picks we saw the strength of Jin Air’s comp and the weakness of SKT’s, as it was nearly impossible for SKT to siege.
Jin Air caught SKT off-guard and took both Dragon and Baron in a matter of moments. Yet SKT made the necessary picks their comp excels at and ultimately lost nothing from the Jin Air Baron buff. From here things got a bit sloppy for both teams. Multiple players were caught out, teams overextended for almost no reason and just generally poor decision making was on display around the entire map.
All of this weird decision making led to more SKT picks before culminating in a 5th Dragon and a Baron, which looked like GG. Yet again Jin Air’s superior composition kept them in the game and repelled the buffed up SKT team. Jin Air finally found a fight they could win and at this late stage in the game, it was over. This was certainly not the cleanest, best-executed or even most exciting game, and the fans hoped Game 3 would be a return to better form for both teams.
Game 3
(Courtesy of JIN AIR GREENWINGS@JinAirGW)
Cassiopeia hypeeee. SKT coaxed Jin Air into a first pick Ryze and had Cass waiting in the wings as an apparent new counter. For Jin Air this comp is obviously all about farming. Locking in both Gangplank and Ryze was an incredibly risky endeavor as they opened themselves up to a potentially brutal early/mid game. If they could survive the early onslaught from SKT, Jin Air would definitely have the advantage in the late game.
Solo first blood for Blank’s Kindred was a good start for SKT and the exact opposite start to what Jin Air needed. Faker quickly showed that Cass is indeed strong in this matchup, opting for the early Swiftness Boots and a Tear, and utilizing his increased speed to bully Ryze and garner a substantial cs lead. Things were looking dire early for Jin Air as both Trace and Lee “Kuzan” Seong-hyeok fell to over 20 CS deficits. After a bit of a lull SKT pulled off an incredibly cheeky Baron as Cassiopeia absolutely shredded it.
Ther is not much to really say about this one. SKT never let Jin Air’s scaling comp get remotely close to coming online. SKT really dictated the flow of this game from start to finish. This was a dominant performance as SKT did not even die once.
Game 4
(Courtesy of OGN)
Jin Air understandably switched things up with their comp, putting Na “Pilot” Woo-Hyung on Corki and Kuzan on Lulu to focus more on the mid game. SKT again ran essentially the same exact comp, with Faker on another new champion.
Winged applied some great early pressure and after a Trace rotation Jin Air gained first blood. Winged continued to apply pressure and really ran the early game, showing why he is considered a top player in this league and running circles around the SKT rookie Jungler. Yet as the game progressed, it was looking increasingly like Game 1, as SKT hung tough and got a few picks to get back into the game.
Any team with Corki, Lulu and Trundle is going to be much better at sieging than teamfighting. Exactly like Game 1, SKT could only come back with picks and dives, and executed that plan masterfully. Eventually SKT found the right picks to win them both the game and the series.
(Courtesy of OGN)
SKT looked great in a few games today, yet may be far from unbeatable, essentially only using one type of comp and strategy this entire series. If KT are able to force SKT to alter their tactics it could really disrupt SKT’s strategy, although it may be possible that SKT have other comps prepared and just weren’t forced into showing their hand. With that said, a lot of tomorrow really hinges on which KT shows up. Over the course of the split they've shown arguably higher highs than SKT, but also a far less consistent average level. If “good” KT show up and SKT played like they did today, you have to think that KT are favorites to reach the Grand Finals.