The second day of the group stage League of Legends World Championship offered several great games, including an incredible 10k gold comeback.
League of Legends - Day 2 of the group stage
Today's matches started with Team Flash Wolves against Team SoloMid (TSM). After yesterday the western NA / EU teams disappointed the fans with 0 wins to 4 defeats, the expectations were high.
And Team SoloMid fulfilled them! True, the game was highly competitive and often went back and forth with an early lead for the Flash Wolves and an early Baron. However, TSM kept their nerve and won after 53 minutes.
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Team WE against Misfits Gaming however, was very one-sided. WE didn't get involved and won with 9 to 0 kills after only 27 minutes. TSM against Team WE will be the opening match of the 3rd day and thus offers a lot of explosive and probably represents the preliminary decision in Group D.
The NA teams finish day 2 3-0
The third match of the day Immortals versus Fnatic at least had the advantage that only a western team could win. To the horror of the European fans, who rated Fnatic clearly stronger, however, Immortals (NA) won. Especially Fnatic Toplaner sOAZ on Cho'gath didn't have a good day with 1 kill and 6 deaths.
The following encounter of Longzhu Gaming versus Gigabyte Marines promised something unusual. The coach of the Gigabyte Marins, who went into the match as a much weaker team, had on Twitter "Never seen new tactics" promised. They weren't that new, but Cho'gath in the jungle + Mordekaiser and a lot of lane swaps made for a lot of action. Unfortunately, the Marines' plan did not work against the experienced Longzhu team and after only 24 minutes the Korean team won. The fans had a lot of fun though and the Gigabyte Marine Team at least tried something different and earned their respect.
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In the fifth game of the day they stood ahq e-sports club and the American Cloud9 Team opposite. After the defeat of Cloud 9 against SKT T1 on the first day, it was extremely important to achieve a victory in this match in order to keep the chance of advancing.
The team around ADC Sneaky then took advantage of this opportunity and won relatively clearly with 11 kills and only 3 counter kills. The NA teams finished the day 3-0.
SKT T1 versus Edward Gaming
The big and grand finale of the day was the encounter between the Chinese favorites Edward Gaming (EDG) and SKT T1. Even a Hollywood writer couldn't have written a better script for this game.
EDG got off to an extremely strong start and focused the SKT Midlaner Faker. Faker is usually used to this pressure and can prevent him from falling too far behind or from giving too many kills by playing skillfully. This time the pressure was so high that even he couldn't find a means. Several tower dives later, the game was almost lost for SKT. EDG had 10 to 0 kills and almost lay 10,000 gold up front, the SKT Midlane was down including the inhibitor and there wasn't much between EDG and the sensational victory.
An actually hopeless situation in which many teams would have given up, but SKT T1 is not a three-time world champion for nothing. Even in this situation, they looked for ways and means to make a comeback and they found it. SKT Support Wolf on Rakan managed to start a team fight by catching 3 opponents and throwing them up. The ensuing combination of Cho'gath's re-throwing and the Orianna Ultimate by Faker, who hit 4 members of EDG, enabled SKT ADC Bang to create a devastating Twitch Ultimate.
So 4 EDG members were dead on the battlefield and SKT was able to tear down 3 towers and the mid inhibitor. Thus the gold advantage had shrunk from 10,000 to 4,000, SKT was able to buy several important items and then won every further team fight. After 44 nerve-wracking minutes the time had come and SKT T1 won the game and delivered one of the biggest comebacks of the professional League of Legends History.
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