Gambit Gaming vs CJ Entus Frost : Coming Full Circle

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis 

It’s been two years since the original match-up and now everything is coming full circle. Two years ago on March 8th, 2013, Gambit Gaming took on CJ Entus Frost in the IEM World Championship. A lot has changed over the years between both teams, and while they may not sit in as high a throne as they did previously, they are starting make their way back to the top. IEM Katowice could take either of these teams back towards their former glory.

Two years ago the IEM World Championships during Season 3 were held. At the time Gambit and CJ Frost were some of the most highly touted teams. Gambit were dominating at the end of Season 2, having all of the original members of M5: Darien, Diamond, Alex Ich, Genja, and Edward. Frost had a legendary lineup including current CJ stars Madlife and Shy along with Woong, Rapidstar, and CloudTemplar.

While times have changed, I think there’s a few things that we can pull from the previous match-up that might still hold true. First off, Diamond is still Diamond. What I mean by that is, Diamond still wants to innovate in the jungle and bring in unexpected strategies and picks. Just this past week we saw Diamond pull out Evelynn probably the first time since her nerfs. It didn't work out too well, but it still shows that Diamond will pull out anything regardless of what is considered meta at the time.

Second, while Gambit’s lineup has changed quite a bit, they still have the same “See Hero, Kill Hero” mentality. Gambit has always and still does thrive when the game is put into pure chaos. As soon as a team loses control of a situation, Gambit will get rolling and it’s hard to stop them.

CJ knows how to counter this pretty well though as they showed. In 2013, CJ tried to beat Gambit at their own game and swapped their bottom lane into the mid lane in order to starve out Alex Ich on Kha’Zix. The combination of Lulu and Ezreal zoned Kha’Zix out from getting any kind of farm. Similarly to how lane swaps work in today’s meta. The difference here being, no one had really tried doing this, it was completely new and out of the blue and caught Gambit by surprise. CJ gave Rapidstar (on Gragas) blue buff to start and sent him bottom to just grab what farm he could with barrels while they zoned out Kha mid.

Looking towards this years match-up, Gambit lacks a lot of the star power they used to have. Alex Ich left and Gambit have yet to find anyone that can replace him consistently. P1noy has been doing well and so has Cabochard, but it’s pretty apparent that Gambit is still adjusting in some ways. Diamond is going to have to really pressure the map well in their game.

CJ, on the other hand has been a dark horse that came bursting out of the pre-season hot. Both CoCo and Shy have been having MVP like seasons and with Space finally getting his act together, and Madlife looking like he’s heading back to his old self, they've shown that they are no longer just a shell of their former selves.

I think the early game will play a huge part in what this game ultimately turns into. CJ has a much more in-depth strategic mind that shows in their games, but they have the tendency to fall apart if their early game goes south. Space can tilt and Ambition has his games where he doesn't do a whole lot. If Gambit can take advantage of these weaknesses they might pull an upset.

On the other side of the coin you have two of the strongest solo laners in the scene at the moment in Shy and CoCo. Both are having MVP seasons and while Cabochard has been doing well in his own right, I’m not sure if he can handle Shy on his own, and I can say pretty confidently that I think Betsy will be having his on issues in the mid lane. CJ needs to play up the fact that their top and mid are incredibly strong by comparison and have Space and Ambition just play supporting roles as CoCo and Shy carry.

Overall it should be a good match and I’m looking forward to how both teams try and handle each other since they’re not from the same region and don’t have the experience fighting each other. A lot of unique and clashing strategies could be pulled out.

Week 7 LPL Review

by Michael "Tribble" Godani

After a week of upsets, the LPL returned with twelve magnificent matches containing even more surprises. Let’s take a look at the most interesting matches of the weekend:

March 6th

As mentioned in the preview that we released earlier this week, the first match of the week would be Master3 against King. Both teams played against each other in the Damacia cup - where M3 took the win after a fifth and deciding match in the Bo5 series.

This match-up could best be put into one word as “botlane.” The series ended in a tie with two very one-sided matches, something we've been seeing more and more in the LPL lately.

Both teams in their wins started out strong, only the M3 botlane stuck to Corki/Annie while King switched over to Graves/Thresh after not having too much success with the Kalista/Morgana combo. A series like many others, yet still undecided as both teams had to do with a single point.

Next, we had upcoming IEM contenders Team WE facing off against Snake Esports. For those who have seen the two matches, incredible! You will surely find a few plays of there in our new weekly LPL Top 5.

As said, this match-up was one of the best ones of the weekend due to the highly unpredictable outcome of both matches. Along with the revived Team WE, Ninja came out guns blazing, ending game one carrying on his Kassadin with an amazing 11-0-3, participating in 14 of the teams 18 kills.

But what a game this was! Let’s take it towards the 20ish minute mark; dragon had respawned and both teams wanted a piece of it while not having great vision control in the river. Team WE beat Snake to it and took control over the dragon area only a few seconds before the spawn. Team WE did pick it up without any real fight, but this wouldn't be LPL if there wouldn't be a fight after all.

Team WE pick up their second dragon and right after Snake tries to engage onto Team WE but before the engage is a real engage, Ninja already used his Null Sphere on Baka to take away 50% of his HP after which Spirit uses his Flag and Drag to jump into the frontline of Snake. Team WE retreats as Snake chases them down towards the bottom lane where Flandre uses his Twisted Advance onto Styz and YuZhe his Dark Binding hits Beast, unable to follow up on his sonic wave. As Kryst4l takes out three members of Team WE, Ninja goes ahead and cashes in on the shut down gold from Kryst4l.

Team We might have gotten the dragon but lose the fight 4-2 and the worst thing there is that all the gold, or most of it, went to Kryst4l, which meant a even stronger Corki for the next teamfight. After an intense game, that, after 36 minutes was only in favor of Snake who had a 800 gold lead and 3v2 dragons, it could have been anybody’s game. It could have been, but it appeared that Snake pulled off a Scarra. What seemed to be a teamfight going in favor of Snake, got turned by Gnar’s Gnar! A triple stun onto the side of the baron pit sealed the faith for Snake.

Game 2 wasn't much of a difference from Game 1. That’s what made this series so good,both teams continued where they ended in game one. A four men gank on Ninja’s Ezreal gets turned into a first blood for spirit. That play set the whole game around after only 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Team WE was in the lead and decided that it was time for a early dragon, low enough to be smited, but Beast takes it away with his Prey Seeker on the so popular Rek’Sai. What a steal!

Ninja continued his carry performance with the Ezreal just the same way he did with the Kassadin only now he had more kills earlier in the game. Around the early midgame there was a fight for the tier two turret from Snake where Ninja in a skillful fashion picks up a couple of kills and survives with 30% of his life remaining as if it was nothing.

It was nothing, Team WE continued to take a bigger lead throughout the game and even had a 10k gold lead. The only problem was Flandre’s Mundo who at some point was unkillable, the total opposite of Aluka’s Maokai who seemed to try to equal his deaths to the amount of towers that his team had taken.

After some bad focus in teamfights and a few picks here and there, the gold lead from Team WE wasn't that big of an issue anymore. It came to a point where gold didn't really matter all that much anymore and the immortal Mundo and ghoul shooting Kogmaw were dictating the teamfights despite the fed Ezreal from Ninja.

Snake had a huge advantage throughout the game and that was that they managed to pick up four dragons and one minute before their fifth would spawn the game-deciding teamfight broke out. Ezreal being focused and the major tank Maokai, Snake had a free passage into the base of Team WE to secure the split.

These are the endgame results for Friday, March 6th:

March 7th

Energy Pacemaker took on Invictus Gaming on the second day and took yet another point of a well respected team in China. After getting humiliated by Vici Gaming, EP stepped up their game and have been taking points of LGD and even VG (in the game on the 8th of March).

After a somewhat close match, EP decided to finish the game off the back of a beautiful outplay in a teamfight in the midlane. They took Game 1 and forced IG to step up their game for the second game.

IG didn’t really impress this second game, but with some beautiful rotations and picks, IG managed to at least splitting with the last seat in the LPL.

OMG took on Gamtee in the last game of the day. As mentioned in the preview, Hu1 was one of players we should keep an eye out for. His Rek’Sai was taken away in the first game and he was not looking impressive with his Lee Sin. OMG came to the rift with their “Running Man” botlane (San&Xiyang) who played the Corki/Morgana combo. The most interesting aspect of this game was Cool playing Xerath to almost perfection. His first blood on Hu1 showed some nice skillshot mechanics and also his teamfighting presence was really out of this world. No wonder this man is being seen as one of the top midlaners in the world.

Gogoing went back to his Maokai and made sure that the Gamtee line-up was not able to reach the backline of OMG, great Twisted Advances and smartly dodged the Righteous Fury/RoA to just build straight into tank stats for the teamfights.

It wasn't even the gold lead that made OMG win, but the way they used their champions to the fullest of their abilities.

Game 2 was moderately different. OMG appeared onto the rift without a tank and havd nothing work out with Xiyang. His Veigar and Gogoing got pressured too hard by LetMe really sealing the game. The teamfights that OMG wanted didn’t appear and Gamtee forced them onto their playstyle by jumping onto the carries. Gamtee splits with OMG and this face-off ended in another draw.

These are the endgame results for Saturday, March 8th:

March 9th

The final day of the week was all about EDG vs Snake and OMG facing SHRC.

EDG vs Snake was the third match of the day and EDG was seeking revenge for the only defeat that they suffered this Spring Split against Snake.

EDG showed up big time although they did swap out Clearlove for Firel0li. The disrespect towards Snake showed really after Pawn locked in Riven as last pick in the draft. What seemed to be a difficult start for EDG and some might say that Snake did win the early game, really turned the moment that Deft’s Corki picked up a double kill in the toplane after making sure that Flandre’s Gnar was useless and 2+ levels behind most of the EDG members.

EDG continued from here on to step up their game and turn on the pressure by out-rotating and out-teamfighting Snake. “Get Corki fed” that seemed to be the mission here and that mission was accomplished after a 29 minute win. 

Game 2 was all about the “Juggermaw” for Snake, who had a Maokai, Jarvan, Lulu, Kogmaw, Janna comp. The whole idea was to stall the game until 35+ minutes so that this lategame scaling team can get to work and let the Kogmaw go where he pleases.

EDG responded to this comp in a very good way, picking them off, exploiting their weaknesses early and taking turrets as fast as possible including the dragons. They were on the right track but just didn't seem to be able to finish the game or to take an inhibitor even.

Snake took their advantage from this weakness and continued to get bigger to even an extent where Kryst4l sold his boots and picked up a 6th damage item. He had enough movement speed from the Lulu and Janna and with their shields, Kryst4l and his companions picked up Game 2 to split the series.

I highly recommend that you do watch this series on YouTube, it was a joy to watch!

The final game of the week was between OMG and Uzi’s former team, Star Horn Royal Club.

OMG showed up today with their Uzi/Cloud botlane and came out with a lot of force and energy! SHRC’s Wei showed up again with his Graves, God knows why because this fella is clearly not suited for this level of gameplay - again showing a bad performance and trailing by 45cs after 10 minutes.

A wonderful 1v3 outplay by Uzi on his Kalista really said everything about this match. OMG had no equal, they were not tested, the only aspect of their game that was tested was to not fall into the trolling behavior that they often do show in games. They did need a win to secure the second spot and so did they finish off SHRC in just 23 minutes.

Game 2 didn't differ that much, the game took a bit longer and forcing their way to playing 5v3 by camping Koro1 non-stop and zoning him leaving him with only 91 CS after 32 minutes and not taking the likes of Wei too serious.

For OMG, Cloud was the real MVP this game, beautiful Flash+Hook combo’s with a lantern to drag a teammate in and on point flails.

OMG take a very convincing 2-0 victory over SHRC who really need to hope that Namei, who is coming back next week, will jump into the Gogoing carry mode and carry them towards the play offs.

Later this week the LPL Top 5 will be released, a LCS FanZone special, keep an eye out on the timelines of Jodi and Tribble.

Standings after Week 7:

Schedule for Week 8:

Day 1:
Star Horn Royal Club vs Gamtee
Invictus Gaming vs Vici Gaming
Edward Gaming vs LGD Gaming
King vs Energy Pacemaker

Day 2:
LGD Gaming vs Snake
Energy Pacemaker vs Gamtee
Edward Gaming vs Invictus Gaming
Master3 vs OMG

Day 3:
Star Horn Royal Club vs King
Invictus Gaming vs Gamtee
OMG vs Snake
LGD Gaming vs Master3

Week 7 LPL Preview

After what was a somewhat shocking week, we are back with twelve fantastic confrontations. Let’s take a look at the most interesting matches this weekend and the Top Three Players to look out for.

by Michael "Tribble" Godani

Current standings:

Friday

Kicking off this week will be Master3 vs King. Last week, both teams showed up; Master3 defeated the still undefeated Snake 2-0 and King took a game off EDG. Both teams faced each other this week in the Demacia cup where Master3 came out with a 3-2 victory. Superstar Dade celebrated the revival of Master3 with a pentakill on Yasuo in Game 1. Tied for the 7/8th spot with 13 points apiece, this could really be a step in the right direction to either team to secure that 4th place spot towards the end of the split.

Star Horn Royal Club, Worlds finalists of 2014 are facing a powerhouse in LGD. Both teams made different impressions on us last week. SHRC got aced by EP, who finally got their first 2-0 of the split, where they played incredibly bad. They took a strike back against Master3, where two incredible games full of objective steals ended in a 1-1. SHRC really looked a lot better in this match-up and all we can ask for is that they continue that path of playing.

LGD is currently 4th in the standings after splitting against Gamtee and EP. This is really what LGD is all about this season, extremely well-played games followed up by a different LGD who don’t seem to be able to get that victory but will always settle for the draw. 

The last game of the day goes to OMG against Vici Gaming. OMG took a game off the top two team in the world, EDG, with a surprising new botlane in the form of San and Xiyang. Gogoing was dominating on his Gnar whom he played for the first time in the pro-scene. OMG looked really good that first game and hopefully they'll continue this type of gameplay and see how Vici gaming respond to that.

Vici gaming is home of the best support player in the world, Mata. The whole team has been playing better each week and it is really a joy to watch their rotations and picks as they have one of the strongest roaming supports in the scene. After failing to take a 2-0 against TWE last week, which could’ve given them the 4th spot in the standings, they’re certainly looking to turn up the heat against OMG.

Friday’s games

Master3 vs King

Star Horn Royal Club vs LGD Gaming

Team We vs Snake

OMG vs Vici Gaming

Saturday

The first game of Saturday can be described in one word for Snake. Revenge.

Revenge for their 2-0 beating at the hands of Master3 and revenge against all their vocal critics. Ella and Beast are the players who can make this match-up against King really turn if they give Kryst4l enough space to do his job in teamfights.

But it's easier said then done to “create space in teamfights” since King is such a teamfighting-oriented team who, still as they are sharing the 7th spot, should've been higher up the standings.

Both teams will bring out their best and this will be one of the must-watch confrontations in Week 7.

Saturday’s games

King vs Snake

Invictus Gaming vs Energy Pacemaker

Team WE vs Master3

OMG vs Gamtee

Sunday

Sunday is Edward Gaming’s chance for revenge against the surprisingly well-performing Snake, the only team to leave EDG with 0 points after 2 games.

EDG seems to be looking not only for a win, but for the same type of win that they showed in Game 2 against OMG.

Fast rotations, incredible picks so that the lead they build up will even give them 4v5 teamfight potential if needed. They will want to not only defeat Snake but to show everyone that EDG is the uncontested number 1 in the LPL.

Snake on the other hand as mentioned before is looking for revenge and in this match-up Snake will be seeking to show, once again, why they have been second for such a long time this split.

Perhaps not as big of a game as EDG vs OMG, but looking at the standings it actually is.

A win for EDG can enforce their first seat but a loss could bring both Snake and OMG closer to taking that away from them.

Finally we end the weekend with OMG vs SHRC.

These teams have had an incredible history together: OMG have been eliminated by SHRC at the last world championship and the worlds before, the last time being far closer with five incredible games of beautiful play. 

Since then a lot has changed and SHRC is not the team that they were used to be, losing UZI to OMG and not being able to have Namei play for them has really set them back a lot. Earlier this split OMG already 2-0’d SHRC and how things are looking now, the only thing that is marvelous about this match-up are the team names. OMG will most likely win this match, unless……

Top 3 players to watch:

1.     Gamtee’s Hu1 – After scoring a pentakill in his first ever professional match, this man is the person to follow this week. Gamtee will only play 1 game this week, but it’s against OMG. Let’s see if the penta-debut from Hu1 who also was quite good for a new jungler in terms of vision, can continue his positive performance in this week.

2.     Master3’s Dade – Sometimes it’s best to ignore the kills on a midlaner and actually look at his performance in teamfights. Dade performed good last week, yes he did good, not outstanding, but good. His Azir game might have not been the luckiest games that he has played but the way he performed in teamfights was incredibly good. Yes, he might have died a couple of times, but he made sure he died for a good cause. After scoring a pentakill during the Demacia Cup against King, all we can hope for is that DADE IS BACK!

3.     Master3 botlane- Normally a player should be standing here, but the botlane of Master3 has really been performing exquisitely the last few games. The Kalista/Leo combo is really a joy to watch as they carry teamfights on their own with the amount of CC and peel that Lovecd provides. A joy to watch!

The games are live viewable on the following streams at 6AM CEST:

http://www.twitch.tv/riotgames2

http://star.longzhu.tv/lpl

Day 1:

Master3 vs King

Star Horn Royal Club vs LGD Gaming

Team We vs Snake

OMG vs Vici Gaming

Day 2:

King vs Snake

Invictus Gaming vs Energy Pacemaker

Team WE vs Master3

OMG vs Gamtee

Day 3:

Vici Gaming vs Energy Pacemaker

Master3 vs Gamtee

Edward Gaming vs Snake

OMG vs Star Horn Royal Club

Week 7 EU LCS Preview! El Classico Round Two!

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos 

Three more weeks, three more games, and for some teams, one chance. Here’s what to watch out for in Week 7 of the EU LCS:

Day 1- Meet Your Makers (2-10) vs Giants Gaming (4-8)

The outlook is quite bleak for MYM who look to be heading down to the challenger scene as the first ever auto relegated LCS team. However, unlike their NA counterpart in Team Coast, the team is still showing signs of life and can realistically climb out of the bottom spot. Taking out one of the teams directly above them is the best way to go about this. Provided MYM can show up here and against the other team at 4-8 overall (Roccat) in their last game of the split, they can at least hope to pull off a tiebreaker or even trump the other two if they can pull off any more upsets. It isn't much to hold onto, but the true sign of a team that should remain in the LCS is the ability to adapt and turn deficits. If Gambit and H2k can do it, MYM can too.

Day 1- H2k Gaming (8-4) vs Gambit Gaming (7-5)

It’s the battle of the six game win streak vs the seven game win streak, a battle of the two teams with the most momentous turn around in EU LCS history since Alliance in spring 2014. Funnily enough, Gambit’s win streak started off with their victory over H2k in week three so what better team to end it than H2k themselves. If H2k win this match they tie second at the end of day one with the loser of El Classico round two, however if Gambit win they tie third with H2k and equal the second longest EU LCS win streak held by themselves, SK Gaming and Alliance at eight. Another win in day two then ties them for the longest held by Fnatic at nine. With all these teams have learnt and the momentum they've built since their rise, this could prove to be an even better game than Fnatic vs SK.

Day 1- SK Gaming (9-3) vs Fnatic (9-3)

Round two of the rightfully-hyped matchup, El Classico ended SK Gaming’s eight game win streak in Week 5 and now they have a chance to get one back on Fnatic and reclaim the first place spot. SK have been humbled in the past two weeks while Fnatic have been struggling to maintain perfect consistency having slipped up a few times to teams at the peak of their form (UOL, CW & GMB). If SK want to be taken seriously at IEM, they should look to fix themselves here. Realistically this game will decide which of these teams finishes in first and is subsequently the best team in EU at the moment. By far.

Fantasy Forecast-

For the first time in a while, no team is particularly safe. SK and Fnatic have each other to worry about while rising stars H2k and Gambit also clash.  Even the Unicorns who have Elements and Roccat should still be hesitant as the two most hyped teams in the preseason could still pull off a big win if they’ve begun to work on their problems. This week is a pure gamble.

Reminder: Wickd will be starting over Kev1n on EL and Noxiak over Nisbeth on MYM

Week 6 LPL Review

As expected and announced in the preview, Week 6 contained 24 games full of action and surprises. Let me take you through a few of the games and give you some fascinating facts about them.

by Michael "Tribble" Godani

February 27th

The day kicked off with an expected one-sided victory for Vici Gaming, who completely outclassed the inexperienced Energy Pacemakers. Vici then set out to humiliate EP, taking the second game in under 20 minutes and securing themselves three points for the series.

The second match was between LGD Gaming, one of the favorites for the top 3 spots, and Gamtee, who have improved a lot in their last few games. With the help of smart rotations, LGD won the first game with a strong lead in gold, kills and objectives. Gamtee's new jungler, Hu1, had a somewhat unlucky match, but his debut performance wasn't bad if you ignore the statistics.

Game 2 started off with a surprise for both Gamtee and their fans. Hu1 scored a pentakill after only 11 minutes.

The setup for the pentakill was exceedingly well done. Hu1, on Rek'sai, moved into the first botlane sidebush, waiting for TBQ to engage onto Sinkdream and Tale. On the engage, Hu1 immediately responded with a three men unborrow. Sinkdream dropped to PyL while both midlaners and toplaners raced to botlane. Hu1 picked up a fast double kill and then used the turret as a safespot just to flash in and take out PyL. During this, Xiaohu was putting out as much damage as he could with his ultimate while moving towards the botlane as Hu1 quickly took out We1less, who towerdove Letme and was still getting hit by the turret. Hu1 then chased down Acorn with Xiaohu to get his first Pentakill in his debut in the LPL!

Hu1 quickly turned that pentakill gold into a Sightstone and Giant’s Belt just to be that huge meatshield to carry his team to victory. Despite a 41 minute win for Gamtee to split the series, after the pentakill they were pretty much in control of the game.

The third game of the day was former SSB Spirit’s Team WE vs King. Team WE, being on the bottom of the LPL standings at this point, showed disappointing gameplay from pretty much all lanes. King, who are out of a playoff spot, were not reflecting their way of playing according to most analysts, but they've been steadily improving and were really looking forward to grabbing some points and repairing their standings this week.

The most exciting part of this series was actually game number two. TWE’s Ninja picked up the Cho’Gath mid against King’s Assassin’s Ahri. With an out of meta pick like Cho’Gath, it seemed like Team WE would split the series after losing Game 1 to the LPL newcomers. Winning scrims here and there on the map forced King to get their heads together and produced some heavy 5v5’s. Despite Aluka and his good Sion ults, the teamfighting potential of King took the victory with a clean ace, bringing out WE's surrender. An expected 2-0 victory for King and yet, a very strong performance from Team WE in Game 2.

The big match of the day was EDG vs OMG, take a look at the link below for the review with special guest Reid “RAPiD” Melton.

EDG vs OMG W6G4 review with Reid "Rapidcasting" Melton - LCSFanzone.com

These are the endgame results for Friday, February 27th:

February 28th

For those who have followed me or other LPL watchers on twitter, the second day in our favorite league was injected with the word “unexpected.” That being said, the struggling team of SHRC took one of the teams who hasn’t been able to secure a 2-0 victory yet in the current split, Energy Pacemaker. Energy Pacemaker came out with new energy in Game 1 against the 2014 Worlds' finalists and having their jungler Drizzle on his favorite champion, Lee sin, meant a different EP then we have seen until now or even yesterday.

One big surprise came in the champ select after Raphael locked in Viktor mid, following the trend that LCK’s GE Tigers started the day before. Drizzle tried taking control of Insec’s jungle by invading and taking away big creeps, hoping to force his enemy's Rengar away from the camps. SHRC controlled the first ten minutes, taking first blood after a great gank by Insec onto Raphael’s Viktor using the Lissandra/Rengar CC chain to lock him down, despite having cleanse on his champion. Later on, they secured the first drake in trade for a couple of flashes and Insec's life - and that is where the game started to turn.

EP was smelling blood and blood they found. SHRC was looking for fights in the most uncommon and strangest places which would only benefit EP's composition. Every single teamfight ended up in giving Viktor kills. Viktor, in turn, got massive, as you can expect and took his team by the hand together with the amazing performing Drizzle. The vision game was still pretty bad by EP but the way that they anticipated situations and taking into consideration that they were quite fed, there was no real vision needed to delete SHRC from the map in just 28 minutes.

The biggest surprise for Game 2 was that SHRC did not ban Viktor (who was picked by Raphael again) to which they had no answer and strangest of all, they didn’t ban or take away Drizzle's Lee Sin. Instead, Insec took the Jarvan IV, a champion who he is not that impressive on. This time, EP did manage to improve their warding around objectives and what also helped was that X1u was really showing up on his Thresh with some amazing backward flays. After dictating the lanes, great rotational ganks and a fast push of the outer turrets, EP managed to take a pre-22 minute baron with a 7-0-7 Viktor and a 4-1-5 Graves. EP, surprisingly enough for a team that hasn't won a series yet, closed out the game extremely fast and ended the game in 27 minutes with Raphael’s Viktor having a perfect 9-0-11 game, participating in 20 of the 22 kills. 

The second game of the day was between Masters 3 and the surprisingly well performing Snake Esports. Snake went into this confrontation being the only team to have won a set against the LPL powerhouse EDG. Snake did well by taking Baka’s Xerath away from him by putting Dade on him, yet the Azir was taken by Baka, which surprisingly got him quite the CS lead early against the under-performing midlaner from M3.

After taking the first two dragons against the odds, M3 was done giving away free objectives and turned on the heat by taking the next two without any real trouble. The botlane from M3 showed up with some incredible plays and, being part of 9 of the 11 team kills at around the 20 minute mark, really learned that they were the ones carrying their team through this game. With a comp to really poke their opponents, not a lot of vision was needed and so they did siege up to the tier 2 turrets with success. Putting Snake on their back with a 35 minute win in Game 1 only meant that Game 2 was going to be a do or die for Snake if they wanted to secure that second spot in the standings after this week.

Game 1 really showed that the current #1 spot for MVP, Kryst4l, is a bit overrated. He didn't show up in Game 1 and the Draven pick for Game 2 wasn't doing wonders for him and his team either. The decision to take Draven against such a mobile champion as Kalista (who was combined with the Leona) while having two assassins on their team with Dade’s Zed and DreamS’s Rengar, was a risky pick to say the least.

Baka was performing decently on his Kassadin with picking up a fast five kills but he didn't seem enough to deal with Looper’s Lissandra and the power botlane of Carry and Lovecd. After losing baron and some big scrims and teamfights, despite the gold lead, M3 did manage to push their gold lead towards a very clean 2-0 victory over Snake. Looper and the botlane, formed of Candy and Lovecd, really showed up with their incredible abilities of carrying the teamfights, while Dade was not to be left aside for his beautiful assassination plays on the Zed.

Candy is really playing a terrific Kalista and he and Lovecd seem to become stronger by the week. After EP shaking things up earlier today, followed by the ace of Masters 3 over Snake, would this be the time for Team WE to finally take their first series of the split?

Team WE left me with a good feeling. Even after losing the series to King, they seemed to have improved their teamplay and shotcalling and appeared ready to fight in the series against IG. Ninja, who hasn’t been performing well, jumped onto the Ezreal while Spirit took one of the tickets for the Nidalee jungle hype train and with success!

Slow pace and limited action really marked this series. We are talking about 18 kills in an almost 34 minute LPL game. What was strong this game was the dragon control by TWE, having that poke comp with the Nidalee, Ezreal and Corki while also having that big Maokai for the frontline and the Janna for the disengage. Making sure that they had the exact timer for the dragons resulted in a five dragon game while most of them were uncontested and otherwise the players of IG were poked down too low to be of any value to contest the objective.

The second game wasn’t much of a difference, only this time TWE didn’t have a poke comp and Aluka jumped onto his favorite champion, Sion. Another five drake game by TWE resulted in a beautiful and well deserved 2-0 victory over Invictus Gaming. We can only hope that TWE will continue this form of teamplay and objective control so that we will see a very different TWE for the last end of the split.

The final results for Day 2:

March 1st

On the third day of the week, the day of draws, there were a few games that are really worth mentioning. Let’s start off with Edward Gaming against King.

King already took four points out of the possible six in the last two days and were really looking forward to giving the now mortal-looking team of EDG a strong fight. The first meeting between these teams was very close, although EDG did take the 2-0 in that series.

Game 1 was an incredible show of map control by EDG. They did not focus on the early dragons as we had seen against OMG earlier this week but instead worked on controlling the lanes and everything in-between. The way that EDG responded to a tier 2 turret siege from King at some point was by taking away their mid tier 1 turret and top tier 2 turret which forced the remaining four members of the team to recall and defend their base before EDG would take it in their wanted base race.

EDG continued to rotate inbetween the lanes to put out pressure onto the remaining outer turrets and inhibitor turrets with some stylish teamplay of Samsung superstars, Pawn and Deft. A high kill game from part of EDG that only gave away five kills in 36 minutes, of which one was a suicide into the enemies' fountain by Koro1. The 4-0-12 Twisted Fate of Pawn and 5-0-12 by Clearlove's Rek’Sai really impressed and this was by far one of the most dominating performances of this week.

Game 2 didn’t seem to be much different, only that EDG was looking for more and faster kills then in Game 1. The first show of power by King was around the 20 minute mark when Assassin, Nlxg and Leym were waiting in the river bush in the botlane to punish the arrogance of Pawn and Meiko running down the river over the scuttle crab that was in control of King by going for a 3-1 trade and taking the bot outer turret. King’s Assassin told the journalist of the LPL after the game that after going 1v2 against Deft and Meiko on the botlane, coming out with two kills for him and sacrificing himself to Clearlove so that his team could secure the baron was the moment that he felt like they had this game.

Assassin’s Zed was the highest level champion in the game and looking terrifying with wielding a Black Cleaver, BOTRK, Brutalizer and a Last Whisper after only 30 minutes. The proper items to simply delete a squishy target of the map. Nonetheless, the dragonfight that occurred several minutes later ended up in an easy 4-1, tier 2 turret and inhibitor for EDG, yet they lost the drake to King after Nlxg kicked Clearlove out of the pit with Lee Sin’s ultimate - securing his teams' fourth drake of the game.

After some vision control swaps around the baron between EDG and King, EDG came out on top and having that mid inhibitor down only meant that they were the ones that should be able to pick up this baron quite easy and uncontested.

Having wards everywhere in King’s red jungle and having super minions pushing into the nexus turrets, King didn’t hesitate to protect or, better say, steal this objective away from EDG, who clearly was not respecting the Fiddlesticks that was brought out by Leym as a support. When Leym ulted into the baron pit, Nlxg followed right after just to steal the baron away from EDG. While escaping, Skye put down the equalizer and burned through the heart of this EDG line-up - which left Pawn and Koro1 behind with very low health bars.

Deft being the only one to survive and being picked up later with only a little more then a minute remaining for a possible fifth drake for King only got this game looking more and more exiting. King made the wise decision to take away the inhibitor turret in the middle from EDG and then rotate back towards the dragon pit so that they could place their wards down to have full vision for what would be one of the "do-or-die" moments of an already fantastic week. The drake spawned and was started by King, which would result in a 50/50 smite fight between Clearlove and Nlxg - who was a level higher so 20 more damage on his smite. Nlxg came away again with the objective and this meant a fifth dragon plus baron buffed team that stood in front of EDG. King didn’t hesitate and deleted EDG in no time, with only Clearlove managing to escape.

This meant a fifth point out of the possible nine for King, knowing they did split against the number one of Korea and maybe the world, meant this was a great performance from this King team.

There were obviously more matches being played this weekend, they were all worth watching, yet I had to make a choice of which games to cover as a report and these were the ones. The Day 3 SHRC vs M3 is also a very interesting match to watch, highly recommend that if you love objective steals that you watch this series between SHRC and M3.

Standings after Week 6:

Upcoming Games for Week 7:

Day 1:

Master3 vs King
Star Horn Royal Club vs LGD Gaming
Team We vs Snake
OMG vs Vici Gaming

Day 2:

King vs Snake
Invictus Gaming vs Energy Pacemaker
Team WE vs Master3
OMG vs Gamtee

Day 3:

Vici Gaming vs Energy Pacemaker
Master3 vs Gamtee
Edward Gaming vs Snake
OMG vs Star Horn Royal Club