Group Stage Day 2: Underdogs Ascendant
After an action-packed Day 1 in which Fnatic made a Chinese team surrender, and Counter Logic Gaming turned a game around against the Flash Wolves, you’d think Day 2 would be out of surprises. That’s when you’d be wrong.
As the old adage goes: never count out the underdog. There were two games that really shook the power rankings that seemed to be set in stone, as China and Korea had a few cracks in their reputation as dominant regions.
The Backdoor Torch Has Been Passed
Origen had the monumental task of taking down LGD Gaming. Not only were LGD China’s top seed, but they swept Edward Gaming, the overall favorite out of the LPL, during their regional playoffs. For Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez and crew, they would have to play out of their minds to even hope to beat this behemoth.
As it turns out, play out of their minds they did. Not only did Jesper “Niels” Svenningsen rewrite the handbook on how to flash away from Malphite ultimates, he also danced around team fights perfectly on Kalista with a 6/0/9 kda by the end of the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ec-0nSxLFs
The real highlight of the game was when xPeke, billed as the team’s weakest link in terms of mechanical skill, unleashed a massive Command: Shockwave on 4 mhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv4IQgs3BZEembers of LGD. His Orianna quickly scooped up a quadra kill and swung the match squarely in Origen’s favor.
To top it all off, it appears that xPeke has been giving Paul “sOAZ” Boyer some private backdoor lessons, as Origen’s top tier top laner made the most out of his team distracting LGD at Baron to take down the nexus highhandedly.
The god of backdoors passing the sacred secrets of nexus killing to his teammate.
Wolves > Tigers
The big Taiwanese dogs took on the even bigger Korean cats in this matchup that was heavily in favor of KOO Tigers on paper. They drafted a comfortable late game protect the AD Carry composition focusing on Jinx with Lulu, Lee Sin, and Gnar for peel and control. The Flash Wolves however, would respond with a poke composition consisting of Varus, Nidalee and mid lane Gangplank for Huang “Maple” Yi-Tang.
Things were looking bad for the Flash Wolves right out of the gate as an early level 1 scuffle led to two quick kills in favor of KOO. The game appeared to be heading for another typical slow burn win by Korea’s #2 seed, but a surprise team fight in mid spelled disaster for the Tigers.
From then on the Wolves wasted no time hounding their opponents into a corner. A quick Baron take meant the poke composition could truly work its magic, and the Tigers found their base in shambles soon after.
It’s also important to note that while he’s the least hyped member of his team, it was Chou “Steak” Lu-Hsi that provided the clutch plays to seal this victory. Not only did he soak up damage for his team as Darius, he secured the crucial Baron buff by singling out the enemy jungler and hacking his head off. Another clutch catch onto the enemy AD Carry led to a downed inhibitor. With many analysts writing Steak off as one of the least impactful players in his role at the tournament, this underdog triumph must feel really good for the Wolves.
Perhaps Steak has been hiding his skill in his hair all this time.
Other Surprises
Apart from those upsets we had the resident King of the Mid Lane, SK Telecom’s Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok completely styling against the Bangkok Titans by countering a mid Irelia pick with an Olaf! That marks the first time Faker has ever used that champion in competitive play, so for now we can say that he has a perfect winrate on that pick.
We also saw CLG, who looked rather shaky in their game against the Flash Wolves until a clutch turnaround, vastly improve against paiN Gaming. Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng put on another rock star performance as his Tristana jumped and blasted her way to a binary code score of 10/0/10.
It’s also fortunate that Jake “Xmithie” Puchero squeezed into the Worlds picture at the last moment in order to unleash his classic Lee Sin pick on the big stage. His Dragon’s Rages set up so many key picks for his team as the faith train kept on chugging on the way to a decisive 23 to 7 kill victory for North America’s #1 team.
Can’t wait for more League of Legends action? Remember to keep track of the Worlds matches on our results page.
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