Game 1
Alex Incoming! Strong play from Gambit turns a bad fight around.
The early laning stage was rather quiet, with both teams carefully sizing each other up. Xpeke began to carve out a strong early advantage over AlexIch, but repeated ganks from Diamondprox were a constant thorn in xPeke’s side. Despite this, xPeke’s farm began to reach insane levels, climbing well over 50 cs ahead of Alex in the early portion of the game.
However, not all lanes were going so well for Fnatic, with Darien taking a commanding lead in his match-up against sOAZ. He became a split-pushing nightmare for Fnatic, not only securing first blood for himself with Genja’s help, but successfully taking down several towers. Darien’s constant pressure and massive farm advantage created enough space for the rest of Gambit to come out of the laning stage with a decent gold lead.
Entering the mid-game, tension was high. With only 3 kills on the board at 23 minutes into the game, Gambit was ahead by a margin of 5k gold thanks to superior objective control. Xpeke, however, was fast approaching 300 cs, and his Ziggs was looking strong. The breaking point came when Fnatic looked to have the upper hand in a skirmish in the jungle, but fantastic ultimates from Alex and EdWard turned the fight around, leading to a 3 for 1 in favor of Gambit.
Goodnight Rekkles: AlexIch eliminates Rekkles and xPeke looks on helplessly.
From there Gambit cemented their lead, taking a two-man Baron right under Fnatic’s nose. What sealed the deal, though, was AlexIch’s AP Malphite who turned Rekkles into a non-factor. Every fight his combo of Unstoppable Force and Deathfire Grasp eliminated Fnatic’s main carry in the blink of an eye. Not even xPeke’s mind-blowing farm could compete with the raw damage coming out of Gambit.
Without their main carry, Fnatic lost several engages in a row, and Gambit stormed through their base, leading to a Fnatic surrender at 33 minutes.
Game 2
Diamond ganked early and often, terrorizing Fnatic all across the map.
Looking to bounce back from game one, Fnatic got off to a good start, picking off Diamondprox only moments into the game. Despite the early death however, Diamond’s blue elixir start paid for itself: was a terror all across the map, securing multiple kills in bottom lane and middle. As the kills began to pour in for Gambit, Fnatic looked more and more rattled, and they could not deal with Diamond’s repeated ganks. Fnatic’s bottom lane in particular took the brunt of Diamond’s wrath, and Rekkles and YellowStar had a combined 8 deaths before 12 minutes.
With such a fantastic start, it was only a matter of time before Gambit seized control, and by 20 minutes they had five times as many kills as Fnatic, and a 12k gold lead to show for it. From there, it was all over, as Gambit’s aggression spiraled out of Fnatics’ control: the game was a rout for Gambit, with Diamond going 11-1-10 in a tremendous performance.
Gambit, in convincing fashion, dismantled Fnatic to claim the top prize at IEM Cologne.
Tournament Results
