Worlds 2016 Recap: Mata the Alistar God, Brings TSM Down
Wildcard teams prove they deserve their spots in the championship, supports carrying their team and a professional player turns into a professional bug-hunter. These are just some of the highlights of the opening day for the 2016 League of Legends World Championship.
Group Stage – Day 1 Results
Group Stage – Day 1 G2 vs CLG Postgame
Game 1 – Viking Steamroller
Don’t be misled by the statistics, despite dealing just 12k damage to champions, Xmithie’s Olaf led CLG to victory in Game 1. Wherever he went, it’s either a kill or an objective for CLG and despite him charging, diving and just recklessly swinging into the enemy team, his score by the end of the game is a clean 6/0/5.
In several instances, G2 Expect failed to match CLG Darshan’s teleports leading to skirmishes where G2 was forced to fight with a numbers disadvantage. Despite Expect having an 86-CS lead over Darshan and dealing a ton more damage, Darshan’s great teleport plays to other lanes gave him 7 assists while his lane opponent finished the game with no assists whatsoever.
The other members of CLG didn’t slouch but with Olaf at the tip of the spear, it was a strong win over G2.
Group Stage – Day 1 ROX vs ANX Postgame
Game 2 – Two Cats
The current favorite team to win the championship, ROX Tigers, faces a wildcard team, Albus NoX Luna, and everyone was quick to dismiss ANX . Some say they will be lucky to make it past the 20-minute mark.
ROX’ jungler, Peanut, became too aggressive and too disrespectful of ANX that, at the 3-minute mark, he tried to invade ANX’ jungle and was almost killed in the process. Thanks to Smeb and Kuro helping him out, he survives the invade but at the cost of his teammate’s lives. This gave ANX an early 0-2 lead over ROX that just sent the crowd into a frenzy.
Getting 2 early kills from the #1 team isn’t easy and it being done by a wildcard team is surprising indeed.
Despite ANX having a 5-7 kill advantage, the teams’ gold were just even 12 minutes into the game. ANX wasn’t able to convert their early game advantage and ROX punished that mistake by taking objective after objective after objective . They built up gold and map advantage and even Ace’d ANX three times before finally delivering the final blow.
Is this a good start for ANX or a bad omen for ROX?
Group Stage – Day 1 H2K vs AHQ Postgame
Game 3 – Balanced Seesaw
With EDG considered to be the #1 team in Group C, these two teams are in a very tight race for #2.
As you can see in the postgame breakdown above, H2k had a great early and mid game. They had, at the 20-minute mark, a 3.9k gold advantage over AHQ with all lanes having a 20-CS lead over their team opponent.
But AHQ was able to stall the game until they were ready to fight H2K head-on. 30 minutes into the game, AHQ secured Baron and got 2 kills in exchange for 3 of their own members. But even with the Baron buff, the game still went on for another 17-minutes. Talk about a very close fight!
The game was decided, once and for all, in another fight for Baron around 42:45. AHQ, knowing that H2K Odoamne’s teleport is down, start Baron and is force the enemy team to a 4v5 fight. H2K Ryu tunnel visions unto AHQ AN and gets immediately picked off. H2K Jankos falls next and, instead of H2K going back to base, they reengage in a 3v5 fight in the Baron pit. It results in an Ace and a free Baron for AHQ without losing a single player. They then take the Elder Dragon and finish the game, not giving H2K the chance of fighting back.
Group Stage – Day 1 ITZ vs EDG Postgame
Game 4 – Big Surprise
Wait, can I take back what I just said? That EDG is considered to be the #1 team in Group C? This match was just a phenomenal game for INTZ eSports.
Unlike the fight between ROX and ANX, ITZ was able to use the lead they had early in the game to finish off EDG.
Knowing that EDG’s weakest link is their top lane, ITZ’s plan was to repeatedly send their jungler to the top lane and help ITZ Yang to just punish EDG Mouse. EDG didn’t respond until Irelia was almost a non-factor in the game. While Irelia was forced to farm to catch up, Gnar and Lee Sin were free to roam around and, using the advantage they accumulated at the top lane, punish EDG’s other lanes.
EDG PawN and Deft tried their hardest to carry the game, and to a certain degree they were able to, but with the game essentially a 4v5, it was a steep slope they almost conquered but ultimately failed to climb.
Group Stage – Day 1 SSG vs SPY Postgame
Game 5 – Cantankerous Pick
Whenever a player hovers Kled, the Cantakerous Cavalier, the crowd goes wild in anticipation of seeing him in The Rift. Splyce seemingly fell for it and picked him in their first fight against Samsung Galaxy.
Picking an untested champion, putting it up against one of the best top laners and just charging head-first into a fight is certainly a recipe for disaster, as seen in this fight. While SPY Wunder do have a 50% kill participation, a lot of his plays were questinable. Using Chaaaaaaaaarge!!! to blindly, uhm, charge into a fight just to get collapsed on by the whole team is never a good plan.
With the top lane almost a free lane for SSG CuVee and the mid lane, while showing some resistance, gave SSG Ambition a lot of time to roam, they were able to snowball out of control.
Overall, it was a commanding win by SSG over an experimental, and risky, composition by SPY.
Group Stage – Day 1 TSM vs RNG Postgame
Game 6 – Game of the Day
The last game of the day was interrupted after just 3 minutes due to an Aurelion Sol bug reported by TSM Bjergsen. Aurelion Sol’s orbs, he reported, were invisible and it was verified by League officials. After trying to apply several fixes, it was decided that the bug is serious enough to warrant a complete remake of the game and the temporary ban of Aurelion Sol from all games until the bug is fixed.
As the game was remade and the match commenced, it was clear that TSM had the upper hand in the early stages of the fight. TSM Svenskeren’s Lee Sin was invading and stealing RNG’s jungle buffs, dashing all over the place and just being a big headache for RNG. RNG, meanwhile, was very composed, very respectful of TSM’s early game advantage. As the casters have noted, this wasn’t the usual RNG as, in the normal season, they’d usually fight for every objective and not let the enemy team get anything for free. In this match against TSM, they seemingly were holding back and giving TSM every objective with little to almost no contest.
And for good reasons.
Their team’s strength lies with team fights so they wait until they’re able to take on TSM 5v5. They also play around RNG Mata’s Flash cooldown before initiating a team fight and, with a phenomenal 94% kill participation, it was easy to name him as this game’s MVP.
Though no team was heavily favored over the other, it all came down to who can fight better as a team. The answer was RNG and, if Mata maintains this level of play, I’m sure we’ll see more RNG games in this competition.
Group Stage – Day 1 Standings
Were your predictions for this day’s outcome correct? Or were you proven wrong like me?
This is just Day 1 of the Group Stage of the 2016 League of Legends World Championship! Tune in as we cover the tournament here in eSports INQ.
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