OGN Recap Week 4

by Pieter "antdriote" Cnudde

Another week of OGN (or LCK, as Riot wants us to say) has passed. Short version: Wisdom smites IM to victory against Jin Air. Jin Air finds their strength again and walks all over SKT. GE Tigers continues to dominate and Samsung remains winless. Najin decides to put in Ohq first again and Duke carries Najin with a double MVP performance. If that doesn't sound exciting, I don’t know what does. My name is antdrioite and I’ll go over the highs and lows of this weeks' OGN champions.

The inconsistency of the Jin Air Greenwings keeps saddening me. They started the week against IM, who were considered the weaker opponent, but lost in a very close 2-1 series. The whole series seemed to revolve about which team picked Xerath. Korea is in a huge Xerath hype bubble at the moment. Teams will first pick or blind pick Xerath almost every time because they fear that late game poke and one-shot ability. Even less skilled Xerath players will lock him in to deny him from the enemy team. This keeps confusing me and many other analysts since counter-picking can be very effective against it. True his late game is dangerous, but you can still punish the pick hard.

The first game went complete snowball starting with Chei randomly getting caught in the river while warding and it escalated out of control from there. Constant invades and Lil4c building a botrk on Gnar to split push against Mundo totally shut down Jin Air. Wisdom and Tusin constantly roamed together and acquired kill after kill. The Xerath pick helped a lot; poking down Jin Air and controlling the objectives without any problems. IM won the first game in one of the biggest stomps of this split. Jin Air’s lack of vision really punished them hard, showing again why keeping your vision up every game is very important in high level play.

Game 2 went way better for Jin Air. They kept their vision up and realized that if Tusin was gone, he was somewhere ganking with Wisdom. GBM showed once again why his Xerath should be feared and is worth picking up early in the draft to secure it. Slight mistakes in their midgame cost them two kills and a baron but they were still able to close out the game without too many problems. This is a reoccurring trend from Jin Air, getting great control in vision early but lacking a bit of smart shot-calling or the right wards. Then they slip up and give their opponents a chance for the comeback.

The last game was a thriller where Wisdom made a great baron steal that kept IM in the game, eventually leading to their 2-1 victory. IM picked away Xerath from GBM, but he showed a strong response with Ahri this time. Both teams traded objectives primarily losing some kills to a gank here and there, but some big dragon teamfights really got Jin Air rolling. Everything seemed to go Jin Air’s way until that one baron steal. IM was able to take two inhibitors and eventually close out the game against a 5 dragon-buffed Jin Air. The great late game of Lulu and Xerath broke Jin Air; Lil4c tried on Gnar but was just not as effective as a Wildgrowth Corki who flies into your team and wreaks havoc.

Friday was the least interesting day of the week. Two quick 2-0 stomps made it a rather short day for Monte and Doa, but it was good to see consistency from the two top teams in the league. Samsung still wasn't able to pull out a victory against CJ who styled on them pretty easily with the “Cocodin.” They tried late game in Game 1 with Cassiopeia, Mundo and Ezreal, but CJ never gave them a chance. Cocodin got rolling and CJ grew a huge gold lead by destroying tower after tower and ended the game very cleanly.

They went back to an early game strat in Game 2 which suited them better. Cuvee on Irelia was able to get some kills and be a threat but, in the end, nobody could stop Coco. Space pulled out Kalista again but was once again a null factor in the game; it was the Cocodin who carried CJ to their first Kalista win. It seems Space might want to watch NA LCS to learn a thing or two. CJ looked on top of their game again while Samsung hung behind with a poor draft phase and poor strategic play.

GE Tigers showed off against KT Rolster with their tank’maw comp. Smeb on Lulu and Pray on Kog’Maw gave all the fans a great show, proving that you don’t need to be afraid of Gnarvan with a Lulu behind your back. Pray got MVP in Game 1 and then let Kuro have his moment in the spotlight during Game 2. A great Icebourn Ezreal performance kept KT at bay and gave GE another 2-0 victory, securing their first spot in OGN.

Saturday was the day Jin Air wanted to bounce back from their defeat earlier in the week while IM had a chance to keep Najin at the bottom of the table. Once again SKT refused to put in Faker during their first game, meaning Jin Air banned away everything from Marin and picked up their signature Morgana for Trace. Jin Air learned from their mistakes against IM and had much better vision control in this game, giving them a few early kills and a dragon advantage. Marin played really well on Renekton but the strength of Jin Air’s comp and Pilot’s play gave IM the baron and win after a teamfight win at dragon.

Faker got his chance in Game 2 but SKT decided to first pick Xerath away from GBM. He responded with Ahri as usual. Another failed draft for SKT because of the Xerath hype. Chaser had great early pressure with Jarvan, resulting in kills and dragons. Jin Air was never pressured by the Xerath and steamrolled over SKT with Corki. Bengi had no impact in this game and really has to step up his game if he wants to keep competing with junglers like Chaser or Lee.

The last series of the week was all about the toplane. Duke was able to solokill Lil4c multiple times in both games, showing Gnar should probably be banned away from him. Ohq also proved that he deserves more playtime in the booth with a great Tristana performance in Game 1. Putting in Ohq/Cain and Faker in Game 1 of every series should be an obvious choice for both Najin and SKT, which isn't the case so far. Najin displayed great form in this series and I hope we can see more of that in the coming weeks.

Thanks for reading if you have questions or comments leave them below or on twitter.

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 by Pieter "antdriote" Cnudde