Esports
G2 Esports showed off their sublime skills and defeated SK Telecom T1 in the semi finals to advance to the League of Legends World Championship final. Here’s how it went down.
In what might be one of the most hyped series of the League of Legends World Championship 2019, G2 Esports took down Korea’s first seed SK Telecom T1 in front of a roaring Spanish crowd. Through superior team-fighting and better decision making, the European powerhouse only lost a single game in their 3-1 victory to the Korean squad. All four games were extremely close, to the point that they came down to single team-fight victories.
SKT had never not made it to the finals in any Worlds they have participated in – until now. G2 Esports took them down, in a confident fashion too, showing that they're flexible in the way that they approach the game, which was one of the major points going into the series.
The European super team are known to accelerate gold leads in the mid-game, but showed in this series that they can also play a more macro-orientated style. Korea is very well known for macro and excellent jungle tracking capabilities, yet, G2 took Korea’s style, made it their own and dominated with it. This series will go down in the League of Legends history books as one of the greatest, so if you missed some of the action, here’s how G2 earned their place in the Worlds 2019 grand finals.
Ryze or Renekton?
The current Worlds metagame has about 10 to 15 very strong priority picks. The issue with picks and bans is that both teams can only ban three of those champions in the first rotation. This puts a lot of pressure on both coaches to not give the other team strong picks, while leaving your own team empty-handed.
Priority champions in the first pick and ban phase were mainly Renekton and Ryze. SKT banned Quinn, one of Renekton’s biggest counters, so they effectively showed that they were going to first pick him. This gave G2 the freedom to pick both Ryze and Xayah. Later on in the series, it showed that G2 didn’t prioritise the Renekton as much as SKT did, which gave the European squad an edge in the pick and ban phase.
In the early game, Kim ‘Khan’ Dong-ha’s Renekton got shut down hard by Marcin ‘Jankos’ Jankowski, Martin ‘Wunder’ Hansen and Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther by repeat ganks, roams and dives. A Renekton that's put behind can’t really build into a lot of damage, since he will be one shot in early team fights. This limited his building path and freed up the top side of the map for G2 Esports. However, the game stayed very even up until the 25 minute mark, when SKT managed to take down a Baron. SKT’s problem was that they weren’t able to utilise the Baron to create a large gold lead. G2 Esports, however, caught them off guard and won a massive team-fight, shutting down SKT’s Baron play.
To win the game, G2 executed a 2-3 split push style with Wunder and Caps in one lane. SKT were unable to answer and gave up towers and inhibitors to G2. Meanwhile, SKT forced another Baron play, to make G2 come to them and relieve map pressure. However, SKT didn’t anticipate the fact that G2 has also some great team-fighting. While SKT get the Baron smite, they lose the next team-fight, which ultimately lost them the game. The first game went to G2 Esports.
The Elder Dragon steal
While the first game came down to smart map rotations and objective control, the second game was more team-fight oriented. SKT opted in for the Yasuo/Gragas bot lane, which is an old G2 special. It was no surprise to see Mihael ‘Mikyx’ Mehle and Luka ‘Perkz’ Perković try to execute a game plan to counter SKT’s weak early game. While G2 were able to put the Yasuo back significantly, he still managed to scale well into the late game.
With Yasuo being able to block Ornn’s ultimate with his Windwall, it became increasingly difficult for G2 Esports to fight SKT on their own terms. With the European squad losing fights left and right, they opted in for a last ditch Elder Dragon attempt, but were defeated in the pit. SKT marched down to G2’s Nexus and tie up the series.
Jankos and Wunder
The early game was a nightmare for G2 Esports in game three. Wunder’s Camille was set behind extremely far because he died twice and used his teleport. Jankos managed to help G2 claw their way back into the series by ganking Wunder and landing a beautiful Elise cocoon on Renekton. A few minutes later, Camille picked up another kill on Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok’s Ryze in the mid-lane, getting Wunder on even footing against the fed Renekton.
Yet, it wasn’t enough to stabilise. This was the first game in the series where SKT held a clear advantage in the early game. Through smart map movement, G2 were still able to pick up structures and an Infernal Dragon. SKT seemed a bit lost in the mid-game and had trouble finding answers to G2’s rotations. Ultimately, G2 were able to stabilise and win a few team-fights in a row, before closing out the game without a Baron, thanks to a great team-fight in SKT’s base.
Perkz switches back to Yasuo
With G2 on match point, SKT subbed out support player Lee ‘Effort’ Sang-ho for Cho ‘Mata’ Se-hyeong. Effort had a rough game three and missed multiple key Leona ultimates and engages, which contributed to SKT’s loss. Mata is a League of Legends veteran and a leading voice in the team, but often struggles mechanically. With this change, SKT’s coaches wanted to clean up their rough mid to late game.
In the first rotation of the draft, G2 Esports picked up Gragas, Syndra and Yasuo. One of G2 Esports’ main strengths is their ability to flex champions to different roles. Gragas can both Jungle and Support and both Yasuo and Syndra can be flexed into different roles as well. This meant that G2 Esports kept their options open against SKT’s draft and ultimately gave them an edge in what would be the final game.
In the early game, G2 Esports showed how to play Yasuo/Gragas without falling behind early on. They invaded the blue buff, which split the map and made it easier for G2’s bot-lane to farm since they were covered by Mikyx’s Gragas. A small mis-play from Mata gave Perkz the room to go all-in on SKT’s ADC and he then burned all the summoner spells of the bot-lane, giving Jankos easy access to pick up first blood.
Unfortunately for Perkz, he fell quite far behind in the mid-game. He wasn’t able to pick up crucial kills and was solo killed by Faker’s Qiyana in the bot-lane. Again, the game was very close and both teams held leads at different stages. SKT’s Khan on Vladimir was scaling well into the late game and was becoming a problem for G2 to deal with. However, with some clean team-fighting, G2 were able to pick up a Baron and destroy SKT’s bot-lane inhibitor. In the process, Perkz died and SKT saw their chance to break into G2’s base. G2 Esports, however, picked up a dragon and made it back to their base in time to initiate a fight. This team-fight was incredibly close, up until Perkz finally respawned and picked up a quadra kill in the process. Caps then teleported to the open bot-lane inhibitor to end the game, resulting in a 3-1 victory for the European squad.
With this victory, G2 Esports cement themselves as 2019 Worlds finalists and will play against FunPlus Phoenix next week. Both teams have similar strengths and like to roam from the mid-lane. G2 have already shown that they can beat tournament favourites, so the grand finals will truly be a test to see if G2 can make it all the way and become Europe’s second ever world champions.
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