The top SEA tournament for League of Legends has begun, and right off the bat we get to witness three explosive matches.
TPS started the game with a lane swap, harassing Prydz out of the lane multiple times. A succession of ganks followed suit, as bothNaz and Winds were consistently making plays around the map. TPS won the early game with strong sieges which took out all the outer turrets. Still, it was close due to ahq farming better and Westdoor's Twisted Fate, a rarity nowadays, getting a lot of gold from his passive.
However, once the big teamfights started, that's when ahq ramped it up and showed the true power of their all-in build. With a support Malphite from GreenTea, he was able to lockdown TPS just in time for Naz' Pantheon to mandrop. This quickly bursted down the Snipers, which was perfect for Twisted Fate, Rengar, and Lucian to clean up. From this, he secured more and more map control. Due to Westdoor and Naz' synergy with their quasi-global ultimates, ahq could splitpush effectively and still group up in time to fight.
With TPS getting a steadily higher gold deficit, they slowly got weaker in comparison to ahq, and were easily crushed every teamfight. Even the support Malphite built magic penetration to amp up the burst even further. While ahq had a hard time closing out the game due to TPS' strong defense, they eventually got the fight they needed to finally finish off the nexus.
The early game proved promising for BKT, as they forced a lot of summoner spells with their aggressive invade at SAJ's red buff jungle. They also got a first blood kill onto Archie, due to the heal baits from SKLz' Soraka. However, there were one factor that made them lost their lead: QTV. SAJ managed to mindgame BKT in champion select by making them believe that the Lee Sin would go jungle, baiting out the Trundle counter pick. But with him at top, the Troll King could do nothing to stop the Blind Monk's relentless early aggression.
As QTV slowly acquired an insane kill and cs lead over Warlock, it was Safety's turn to shine as his Pantheon led the way to some powerful ganks, comboed with Junie's lockdown with chains and flays, which helped snowball Archie's Jinx to epic proportions. The top and bottom lane fed, SAJ was able to splitpush with Lee Sin and still take down BKT in a 4v5. NdD's preferred Sejuani pick wasn't able to make much of an impact, and by the 20-minute mark top lane already had a naked inhibitor, and the gold lead by SAJ accumulated to 8k.
At this point, it was just a matter to pushing the lanes simultaneously, grouping up for baron or when decimating BKT. Once again, we are shown the power and potential of the Saigon Jokers, and their debut game looked promising enough for a good run this season.
Here we see the mid Lulu, which contrary to popular belief, was conceptualized in this region. The early game started out even, with Morning was winning his lane for TPA, while NL and REFRAIN were winning bot for YFW. The Flashwolves then managed to gain map control first, taking down all outer turrets before TPA. Unfortunately, due to Morning and Achie's mechanics, and the team's dragon control, they were still even in gold, and played defensively.
TPA' turtling paid dividends near the 30-minute mark, as it was the time to Jax and Jinx to truly shine as hypercarries. Suddenly, the tables were turned, and it was TPA on the attack. The Assassins became powerful enough to fight YFW 4v5 while Jax hammers away on another lane. With core items completed, they were able to melt anything, from baron to base to champions.
Losing all control of the game, YFW around the 35-minute mark were helpless as TPA systematically tore them apart. The discipline and patience that Bebe and his crew was instrumental in their victory, ending it with a quadra kill for him and an impressive start to their season.
