Back from winning IEM Katowice and looking bright eyed and bushy tailed, is this the start of dominance for SK Telecom?
LZ started the day off with some pick and split while KDM went for the rather unusual ‘ball of death’ team fight composition. Excitingly, I believe this is the first instance of an LCK game with Jhin! We saw Martin "Rekkles" Larsson tear the opposition apart with it at IEM Katowice, but how will the Korean teams handle it? Spoiler: not well. In the early game Longzhu made it their mission to punish the Jhin pick hard. Crash and company constantly ganked, and subsequently killed, the low mobility ADC pick. Without the ‘death’ part in their ‘ball of death’, KDM slinked to the ground and faded away.
In the next game KDM did the exact opposite - instead of one hyper carry and 4 supports, how about 4 carries and 1 support? On the other hand, Longzhu continued to use the meta skirmishing comp. That is, they want small engagements around key objectives instead of full blown ‘ace or nothing’ team fights. Despite the change up in both teams' playstyles, the match itself performed the same as before: LZ dominated the early game and never let up.
Jin Air Greenwings vs. KT Rolster
Jin Air with that pick comp and KT with triple AD. As KT games usually go the early game is just something to slog through until around 20 minutes, then… the action will begin. However for them, everything came crashing down after the laning phase. A huge fight started by Jin Air handed them the lead by a landslide. They took kills, dragons, and even a baron. With JAG being such a top tier team there will be no throws here, they go on to dictate the pace of the match until it’s over.
Like KDM before them, KT try the ‘ball of death’. This time, however, it will be Draven instead of Jhin. Early on KT meagerly hold on to dear life not wanting to lose the series but, eventually, they get completely wrecked in a key team fight. Through the rest of the game they simply couldn’t catch a break, which of course leads to a series lost.
SBENU Sonicboom vs. ROX Tigers
Oh man. Poor SBENU... having the toughest rematch in the league so soon after their previous lost to the Tigers. Standard skirmish and pick comps respectively. I don’t know what it is about SBENU - they just have this ridiculous x factor that shines through every once in a while, and surprisingly, against only the best teams in the league. This game is a fantastic example of that, they actually contest a large portion of the match. In other words, when the ROX Tigers took a tower, they took a dragon. When ROX got a pick, they took a tower. Fantastic matching on objectives not often seen by lower tiered teams. Despite this, the ‘flip’ to win the game for ROX switched on and they won confidently soon after.
Well I’ll be! Even the Tigers are getting to the fun of the ‘ball of death’ team comp! And wouldn’t you know? It’s Jhin as well! Fun times. To make this match even more exciting we get YeonJun "Flawless" Seong on Lee Sin, quite possibly one of the best Lee Sin’s in the world. Every other jungle pick though? Garbage. Anyway, needless to say the ROX Tigers completely overwhelm SBENU. Not even the shining light in the darkness of Flawless on Lee Sin could save them, though he tried.
Both skirmishing! It’s a battle of the win conditions. Pretty quiet in the early game until a big team fight broke out in the mid lane hard engaged by SSG Maokai and Lulu’s wombo combo. They would just barely scrape by with blinking red health bars, but win that fight nonetheless. Despite this awesome lead early, Samsung lost their footing multiple times throughout the match. Every step of the way CJ Entus fought back. Finally however, Samsung were forced backwards into a choke which the devastating close quarters area-of-effect Azir and Kalista harshly punished and promptly obliderated.
Once Samsung with skirmish while CJ took siege. This is a long match filled to the brim with back and forth trading. We start with CJ having fell behind from a few minor mistakes, however they kept themselves in the game with dragon control. By the time they got 5 dragons they were still behind but with such a massive passive buff they steam rolled Samsung. Well, they did until they overstayed their welcome which Samsung punished. After a bit more back and forth, CJ split Samsung up at dragon and dismantled them for the win.
This is it! The series the teaser… teased! It must be fantastic right? Right? Not so much. Off into game 1 Afreeca took siege and poke while SKT the standard jugger Lucian. Jugger Lucian is pretty much like any ‘protect the hyper carry’ composition, they look to flex their muscles around objectives and fight if necessary. It’s deadly, but requires everyone on the team to be working in tandem in addition to the hyper carry being of high skill to take advantage of building an entire win condition around them. Needless to say, SKT can pull it off, it’s not especially pretty - but it works. Typical of SKT play they fell behind in the early game. More than usual even, Afreeca got a few picks early and pushed it hard. Sang-hyeok "Faker" Lee and company struggled to do anything, AF on the other hand played their win condition beautifully. Even sweeter for YeongMin "Mickey" Song, which on a previous interview noted Faker should practice more, went on to solo kill the SKT mid laner over and over again. Not even the comeback kings could rectify this situation.
In game 2 SKT take pretty much the exact same team comp with the exception of Fiora in the top lane. I feel this is a lot better since there will always be that pressure in a side lane that the rest of the team can exploit instead of hoping they can win a team fight around an objective. On the other side, AF took a skirmishing win condition. Just like last time, Afreeca pull ahead in the laning phase, except this time SK Telecom shut the operation down with a painful 4-0. SKT is not without their mistakes. They pushed their lead for 2 inhibitors but AF fought back with a 4-0 of their own. One last bloody team fight later Duke and Faker take down AF’s last line of defense for the win.
3rd time in a row for the jugger Lucian on SKT, I imagine they practiced this composition with SeonGu "Blank" Gang and look to only use it while he’s subbed in. Afreeca took a strange mix resulting in skirmish, despite the classification they really didn’t have a clear win condition. Much cleaner game all around. Instead of giving up the early lead, SKT took it for themselves. Then, over a large remainder of the match, they bleed out Afreeca Freecs – slowly, but surely. Finally, after a baron bait into a won team fight, SKT go home with the win.
Jin Air Greenwings vs. Kongdoo Monster
Pretty quick and an uneventful series as a whole. Game 1 had Jin Air going team fight and Kongdoo siege/skirmish. JAG performed a few well executed tower dives across the map and snowballed that lead into a clean win. KDM didn’t even have room to breathe.
Similar game 2, KDM went for siege again and JAG took a split n’ skirmish comp with Vayne – a not often seen pick. But yeah, total domination by Jin Air. Did not give an inch. They even got a 23 minute baron with scaling carries, ouch.
KT Rolster vs. Longzhu
Surprisingly KT took a ‘protect the Vayne’ composition, they typically don’t go for the more gimmicky win conditions. Longzhu went for standard skirmish. Double surprisingly for KT, in addition to the gimmick comp, they even took the early game. Handily even. They went on to snowball hard with a nearly perfect win. Very impressive.
Game 2 had LZ on a similar win condition with team fight and KT with another gimmick comp, this time a split and kite composition. Despite their stellar performance last game, KT return to their modis operandi, that is, they lose the early game and win late. Longzhu outplay in the lanes which lead to a few picks. Even more picks later they start to dictate the pace of the match. So much so, they took a baron and looked to close the match, however, KT had a problem with that. After Longzhu lost their footing, KT were able to make a few picks of their own which lead to a very close win.
What a train wreck of a series. You may be thinking, ‘for Samsung amiright?’ I wish it were the case. We start off Game 1 with a classic ROX Tigers maneuver. They took skirmishing while Samsung went for split push. WangHo "Peanut" Yun of course is all over the map and made those trademark aggressive tower dives for early kills. ROX snowballs this lead into a confident win. Looked like a predicated, easy, 2-0.
HOWEVER, in Game 2 the Tigers took a really strange draft with Peanut on Gragas, not a typical champion for him, and a Varus ADC. Varus isn’t usually seen ‘bot lane’ because of the long lanes and losing trades. He’s better mid where the only job is to wave clear and poke as needed. Otherwise, Samsung on an average team fight comp. This match gets started with Peanut getting caught… at his own blue. 2 early kills went over to SSG. It’s not GG though! Except that ChanYong "Ambition" Gang pulls a Peanut, funny how that happens. Ambition went on to be everywhere at once, he got picks and applied pressure beautifully. They lost their lead at one point but ROX just couldn’t accelerate at any point. A baron later, Samsung siege for the win.
Game 3, ROX learned their lesson right? BZZZT. Wrong. They went for another strange composition with picks all over the place, what were they thinking? Samsung kept it quant with split and skirmish. Just like last game, Ambition made his presence known all over the map. Samsung just played ROX like a fiddle. One point in particular had a teleport bait. SSG looked to tower dive and called a TP, as you do, ROX respond with their own to stop it. But, what they didn’t expect was SSG to call another teleport in the same area after the Graves, whose TP was baited, recalled and headed bot. After this expert shot calling and puppeteering, Samsung were able to spin a huge lead off the kills. For heaven’s sake there was a 10k gold lead by 17 minutes! The ROX Tigers… got a taste of their own medicine. Also really cool to watch was the devourer Kindred be sated by around 13 minutes, terrifying. Anyway, Samsung steam rolled the rest of the game no problem. This series brings up something interesting, if you throw ROX off their game can they forced to go on tilt? Worth considering, oh yeah, it’s their first loss of the season too. Bummer.
