Two weeks in San Francisco provided compelling League of Legends play as the World Championships opened with a bang. Upsets, and stunning ones at that, were the theme of the early going as the teams pushed for a quarterfinal place in Chicago.
Here is a group by group rundown:
The biggest surprise of the Group Stage was that for the first time ever, an International Wildcard team is moving on to the quarterfinals as the CIS representative, Albus NoX Luna, claimed Group A’s second seed.
Joining them as the number one seed are Korea’s ROX Tigers, although they failed to sweep all six games as many predicted they would. Meanwhile, shockingly, Albus NoX have shown a consistent quality that makes them a reasonable chance to continue their Cinderella run and pull off an upset in the round of eight.
While ROX were unable to stroll through the group, a highlight Kennen play by Smeb helped show how dominant this team can be when they’re on form.
To round out the group, Europe’s number one seed G2 only acquired one win and finished bottom, with North America’s second seed Counter Logic Gaming finishing in 3rd place.
Over in Group B, Korea’s SK Telecom T1 took first place after only dropping a single game to the LMS’s Flash Wolves. Behind SKT as the second seed were North America’s Cloud9, who were able to move on to the quarterfinals with just a .500 record.
This group was full of oddities, none more so than IMay‘s opening game in the second week against Flash Wolves. Support player Road was suspended for one game for toxicity, and with their only sub being a Mid laner, IMay were in a pickle. Instead of placing their substitute BaeMe at Support, IMay placed him at Mid lane, while moving starting Mid laner Athena into the jungle. This pushed their starting Jungler, Avoidless, into playing Support. The thinking was that Athena and BaeMe are Korean and could communicate better, as could the bot lane of Jinjiao and Avoidless, who both speak Chinese. It worked, with IMay miraculously defeating the Flash Wolves to start the day. Unfortunately for IMay, this wasn’t enough as they would end up tied for 3rd place with the Flash Wolves.
The second International Wildcard INTZ may have only secured one win, but it came against China’s EDG, one of the favourites to win the competition overall. While INTZ didn’t have the continued success that Albus NoX Luna enjoyed, they did show that the gap is closing between the top and bottom teams, which bodes well for the future.
In another stunning upset, Europe’s H2k would go 4-0 in the second week of the group stage (including winning a tiebreaker with EDG) to take the first seed in Group C and relegating EDG to the second seed. One of the standout players for H2k was AD Carry FORG1VEN, who had a total of one single death in their four games during the second week of play.
Meanwhile, the LMS’s ahq would have to settle for 3rd, with INTZ’s single victory leaving them in last place.
Rounding out the number one seeds was the winner of Group D; Korea’s Samsung Galaxy. Samsung continued the dominance of Korea as all three teams were able to capture a number one seed. While most expected Samsung to do well, few expected them to achieve so many victories in under 30 minutes, all of which were in the second week. Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see if Samsung can keep their incredible play going into the quarterfinals.
The second seed came down to the final battle between North America’s Team Solo Mid and China’s Royal Never Give Up. Despite superstar Mid laner Bjergsen’s best efforts, TSM fell to RNG, leaving TSM once again out at the group stage.
Europe’s Splyce would round out the group in 4th, although they did show flashes of good form with a willingness to play Kled, the newest champion allowed at Worlds, along with a week two victory over Royal Never Give Up.
The eight remaining teams now head for a showdown at The Chicago Theatre in Chicago starting on Thursday, with the winners moving on to Madison Square Garden in New York for the semifinals after that.
Image Credit: http://lol.gamepedia.com/2016_World_Championship
