Loki: I think our win looked much more convincing of the two games. Their win was more down to our own mistakes. So this game is in our hands, and I trust them to win first seed.

Pope: Fnatic looked dominant in the last game vs IG, they knew what they needed to do in draft to beat them. In this game its just a case of repeating what they did before. Control Ning in jungle, thats it. He plays a crucial role in ensuring they can play around TheShy as a win condition.

Loki: They are playing Duke though…

Pope: Oh are they not? Fuck. I thought they were playing TheShy…

Loki: I’ll just leave it like that then.

Pope: Oh fuck. Fuck you… motherfucker.

Loki: I decided to invite your ex gf to do pick and ban analysis. She insists she can do it better than you Pope. Is she what KEX could’ve been?

LivLuv: FNC in this draft show a masterclass in drafting mindgames as well as a deep understanding of IG’s win conditions.

FNC’s bans are Camille, Thresh and Urgot, Camille is a solid due to it being one of Nings best Champions, the Thresh ban suggests to IG that FNC will opt to take Rakan first pick especially with Alistar off the board limiting the support champion pool. The urgot ban however sets up the Akali first pick perfectly, this baits IG into thinking it might be flexed to top lane. It also forces IG into another predicament do they take the Xayah/Rakan to deny FNC? Or do they attempt to get a strong top or mid pick? IG opt into taking the Irelia and Xayah, favouring the Xayah due to her safety with her ultimate and Irelia due to her strong 1v1 prowess.

FNC however, then throw another curve ball at IG they take both Ezreal and Rakan, this Ezreal pick left a few people bewildered, however it makes perfect sense Ezreal has the ability to remain safe in team fights and requires less peel than Sivir, he also has more diversity and safety in item builds, being able to take a more tanky build to survive the dive potential from Irelia. This also frees up Rakan to play more proactive in fights allowing him to move away from his ADC.

Due to IG banning Alistar and FNC banning thresh, all the main counters to Rakan are now off the table as well as the other S tier supports for this tournament, this means that IG need to get creative in their next pick, they opt into the Leona, deciding they need to lock down the Akali in these team fights. But this just provides further strength to this Ezreal pick.

Due to the earlier Urgot ban, IG waste two bans in the next phase falling for FNC’s plan, leading to believe that this Akali is going toplane they target two bans into the mid lane, which are Lissandra and Swain in these bans however, they reveal one crucial thing that this Irelia is going top lane. FNC also recognise that IG have taken the bait but FNC, they don’t ban midlaners, and ban 2 junglers Xin/Taliyah, this will eliminate Nings early game pressure and ability as well as weaken the ability to 2v2 for Mid and Top on the side of IG, this gives FNC’s lanes a lot more safety as well as allowing Broxah to grab himself a very strong jungle matchup.

IG lock the gragas, sticking to their guns that this Akali is going top, this gives FNC the chance to take Lee sin and Ornn, Lee sin, a broxah power pick will give him full control over this Gragas, eliminating any early game pressure  Ning could have. Ornn is just a safe tank pick with good solid engage and and works really well into IG’s win condition of trying to fight in choke points.

IG then lock Rookie LB, but by this point, it’s too late for IG. They’ve forced their jungler into a bad position, their bot lane into a lane they can’t win, and their mid laner and top laner will no longer be able to receive help from their jungler – all because FNC baited them hard in draft

Loki: At around 15:30 one of the two key turning points takes place. Broxah dies after he Insec’s ning into our team, and later Bwipo goes down after getting a good multiman ultimate. But we manage to trade back two kills on both Rekkles and Caps, take Herald, and take top tower. We shouldn’t even be ahead or even at this point given how hard they should be rolling us. So this is a major win early on.

Loki: I think the game was won right here. Their best hope is to fight us in a choke point, and yet we still take 3 kills, infernal drake, AND baron off this teamfight. Caps zones off both LB and Xayah which leaves the team time to shred Irelia and Gragas.

Pope: The claps:

• FNC learned very quickly where IG we warding early and Broxah adapted his pathing very well to that to very easy ganks onto botside
• Early dragon control was extremely good this game Broxah play’s out of his mind on the Lee sin, styling on ming every chance he gets
• FNC’s team fighting is super strong, Caps with really good target selection and Bwipo landing a lot of key ults, Hyli as well being able to catch irelia with his ultimate every fight stopping her getting onto the back line

Pope: The craps:

• Rookie plays the LB matchup super well and secures pretty much the best possible 1v1 scenario vs Caps, punishing Caps’ greed in this game as he consistently over extends without shroud up.
• FNC don’t really respect the early potential of IG on some plays, Having no vision of LB and playing pretty far forward FNC didn’t really respect IG’s map movement.

Loki: Who’s your choice for MVP?

Pope: My MVP for this game is going to be Bwipo, his Ornn ults every fight were on point catching out mutiple members, ensuring clean engages as well as forcing out Jackeylove’s R every time, leading for Caps to be able to easily pick him off, or for him to be afraid to walk forward.

Loki: Plus he’s the only one that hasn’t won an MVP award here yet! So we have to give him the prestigious mvp award here. Congrats Bwipo!

Loki: This is the last scheduled game of the day, and it all comes down to forcing a tiebreaker for first seed. The Thieves couldn’t steal a win off them, G-Rex couldn’t take a bite out of their record, Invictus Gaming swept all of them just as we did. Last time we were on blue side, this time we are on red side. I think our coaching staff is going to be the difference here with how much they’ll prepare us for this one. TheShy has been subbed in for them, so our answer is Bwipo. Nervous, but a lot more optimistic compared to last time. I’m subbing in cult master and Irish alcoholic Lord Pope Maguire into this one.

Lord Pope Maguire: Thanks very much Loki, you amazing person. Going in this game vs IG I’d like to see Fnatic put more priority around jungle bans, and get Broxah a better matchup while getting Hylissang a safer matchup. I think that would give Fnatic a closer early game vs IG. I think TheShy is a really great individual player so I’d like for Bwipo to play safe in this matchup.

Loki: Do you not think that adding in Bwipo means we should be matching TheShy and have him play more aggressive? Why sub out sOAZ for this matchup if you want to play safe?

Lord Pope Maguire: TheShy is one of the best two top laners in the tournament, so it’s better to play safe and not allow him to get a lead to deny that win condition. Bwipo has more lane awareness for what TheShy would like to do in lane, and how he would play.

Loki: Forcing the Swain ban is huge, since I don’t think its worth the ban vs us. I don’t think we would place that much priority on it vs a team like IG anyway. I noted beforehand that we kept banning both Urgot and Aatrox, which suggested we either couldn’t play it or we were saving it. Plot twist, we can play and flex both, and thats what we do in first rotation. Everyone expected the Caps counter pick, nobody expected the blind pick so early on. I think IG was taken by surprise as well since they likely expected to trade Aatrox or Urgot.

Second round of bans they make the mistake of targeting Rekkles who has in the past absorbed 5 bans without problems. Its likely thought they could force Rekkles on Ezreal here, based on the group stage games. But he pulls out the signature Tristana. On top of this they attempt to deny Lee Sin from Broxah, which we take no issue with as he can play other junglers too.

Lord Pope Maguire: I think IG really trolled with this draft. I think its really cocky and basically saying they can match whatever Fnatic throw at them by leaving up so many power picks. I think Swain, Sion, and Tahm Kench are really bad first round bans. I disagree with you Loki that they were caught off guard by the Aatrox and Urgot picks, as they respond immediately with Ryze. They are happy enough to take Alistair and Kaisa, which is telegraphed when they banned Tahm Kench. Ryze into Aatrox wins both in top and mid, so they’re okay with it.

Second round of bans they greed hard here, they should’ve banned Tristana and Xayah and left Sivir. Trist is a good matchup into Kai’Sa, especially with Braum which is a high pressure duo. With the Alistair they only have the option of knocking away one of the champions. Alistair is much better into Sivir who can only spell shield one spell. The Lee Sin denial was not worth it, and they should’ve taken Xin Zhao (or Gragas) and Fiora. I think taking Lee was more bm, because there’s no chance he’s getting onto Tristana. Fiora is an okay pick into both Urgot and Aatrox, but its a skill matchup into both. Overall, very cock draft.

Lord Pope Maguire: Fnatic get the kill mid here with a roam from Hylissang. The kill opens up the bot tower to be taken for first blood tower, allowing the botlane to go top and play around herald side.

Loki: Caps and Bwipo get caught and give gold over to TheShy and Jackeylove. Taking advantage of JackeyLove’s greedy pathing, Rekkles solo kills him and takes the free tower mid. The cost is insane because Jackeylove could’ve collected the mid wave safely, and gone even with Rekkles. But instead the last outer tower goes down and river control around baron belongs to Fnatic. This also means later Herald can be used for a midlane inner which means IG have more trouble warding further out on the map.

Loki: The baron fight is where the game is won at around 26 minutes. IG can’t teamfight due to their teamcomp. Fiora is dogshit in teamfights, and Baolan is the only tank on the team. The issue here is Baolan engages too early before TheShy has tp’ed. Lmaolan also uses ult after he gets hit with lots of damage which makes the usage wasted when he gets Urgot ulted. The fight ends with 4 kills and baron at no cost for Fnatic.

Loki: Discord spammer and emote shitposter Trapman expresses the positives of this game below.

Trapman: As for Claps in this very convincing victory over arguably the best early game team in the world, there’s quite alot we can look at.

• Bwipo managed to completely hold his own against TheShy and Fnatics’ botlane managed to pressure the lane very hard due to good laning and Broxah continuously finding his way into botside. They then transitioned it into stopping the bleeding in mid where Rookie was getting the better of Caps.
• Come midgame, Fnatic pulled very far ahead through great punishes, good map rotations and a clear showing of superior team fighting and team play in general. They then turned to finishing the game off at 28:30 in a very decisive fashion, just barely over two minutes after the Baron was aquired.
• Basically, Fnatic are gonna win worlds.

Lord Pope Maguire: I just want to also add that Fnatic’s warding and vision control this game was lit.

Loki: Pope you’re quite a negative person, why don’t you look at the craps this game?

Lord Pope Maguire:

• We didnt have good dragon control despite pushing bot lane all game. Early dragon control could’ve been better.
• Caps really struggled in the Rookie matchup, harder than he should’ve. He was down 50cs at one point which shouldn’t happen.
• We were not good at playing around top lane when Fiora’s flash was down, especially with Urgot having ghost and exhaust. There was an opportunity to punish TheShy there and put Bwipo ahead in the matchup.

Loki: I asked G2 cheerleader and noncommunicative Teambosyy who he thought was the MVP of the game. Here’s what he had to say:

Teambosyy: After week 1 there were a lot of people impressed by Jackeylove and disappointed in Rekkles after the IG match. Personally I didnt understand this as Jackeylove was spoonfed his kills by Ning and FNC’s botlane had to play 2v3 early on, but even after that Rekkles kept up. In week 2 he gets to show all the haters wrong with his infamous Tristana pick and show why he is a better adc than Jackeylove, by far. He makes the smartest choices, wins lane even though it was practically 1v2 with Hylissang roaming so much and carried teamfights with his leads that he, for the most part, got by himself. You simply cannot make the argument for someone else over Rekkles this game even though all of Fnatic played amazingly.

Lord Pope Maguire: I agree Rekkles is MVP this game, but not for the same reasons I think IG played very cocky this game Jackeylove especially and it was very good of Rekkles to recongise it, able to catch him when he was going to collect farm and being able to punish his recalls/bad timings into objectives.

Loki: I think its unanimous. Rekkles played his best game of the tournament here. What really stood out in my mind was the solo kill on Jackeylove to rescue the game after Caps and Bwipo went down. I think he did the job he was asked to, played teamfights well, found picks, and took the right objectives. Congratulations Rekkles, you’re our MVP of this game.

Loki: I liked how the game went overall, the standout things for me were vision control and our ability to win the early game vs IG. Both are promising signs going into the tiebreaker. We have the momentum on our side, and I think this has been our most promising result so far. Lets get the first seed, and kick Lmaolan and TheShit down to second place.

Loki: So coming in Bwipo gets subbed in by the coach. I think they’re going for splitting the games evenly between the top laners by giving them 3 games each. Taiwan has looked really poor overall in the group stage. Pretty safe to say there’s a low chance of an upset here, and more of a warmup game for Bwipo.

Lidn: This game we were facing 0-4 G-Rex and and I was as certain of an easy win as certain it is that a Fnatic Inhouse game has to be paused because of Stan’s infamous smoke breaks. A lot of the focus has been on Top and Mid so I was really hoping to see our botlane pop off and give us a great showing.

Loki: Irelia first pick again, just as we discussed in the game before she is a safe blind pick and powerful first pick. I think G-Rex are just asking for a beating by giving that away. G-Rex take Xayah + Rakan, and ban Sivir which means Rekkles shifts onto Ezreal. Ezreal can stay safe in lane alone while Hylissang roams with Braum, so the pick works with our style. The biggest positive for me is the Xin Zhao for Broxah, showing that we have another weapon in our arsenal seeing how strong the pick is looking at the moment. We also hold off on showing our top lane pick for as long as possible which leads Bwipo to pick his signature Swain. Another balanced draft for us with AP being provided in the top lane to compensate for the AD mid.

Lidn: As Sivir was banned in first rotation, I was a bit disappointed that Hylissang didn’t whip out Pyke, knowing that Rekkles would pick Ezreal. Same arguement that Loki brought up works here, Ezreal is a great pick if you want Pyke as he can survive alone in lane, while Pyke is exploring the rest of the map. Now, perhaps Fnatic is saving Pyke for later, so going for something like Braum is good because it doesn’t reveal anything, and obviously brings a lot of CC and tankiness to the table. We also got to see Nidalee being picked up by G-Rex, which I found pretty intestering. Nidalee has to get ahead early which meant that quite a few ganks could be expected. Seeing how they just gave Caps Irelia, camping mid to shut him down could have been their plan.

Loki: Bwipo has clearly been learning how to outplay 1v2’s vs sOAZ. Which is an incredible asset for a player who lines to lane so aggressively. He already came close to solo killing Sion early before and forcing Nidalee to hover around top. This time he draws the jungler’s attention again and turns the fight to get them both low, helping Broxah clean up a kill. At the same time this was happening there was a trade of kills bottom lane with Rekkles dying from trying an all in, but Hylissang and Caps picking up two in exchange. Effectively Fnatic win exchanges across the map just shy of 7 mins into the game.

Another 3 for 1 trade comes at around minute 13. Broxah rams his spear where it hurts to take down LeBlanc but trades his life for it. Shortly after Caps decides to avenge his big Danish brother and tower dives with the manliest support alive Hylissang, to pick up the double kill. Meanwhile Bwipo almost solo kills Sion again. Once again its FNC winning across the map with relative ease.

Loki: I’m leaving this to closet K-Pop (and Cloud9) fan The Doctor.

TheDoctor: The team performed overall very well and never under- or overestimated G-Rex during the game, playing to the strengths of their champions. Clean executions across the map, with some things to highlight:

• Comfortable draft for our squad. Playing with Bwipo means to play more around the top side of the map. Putting Rekkles on Ezreal duty and giving Hylissang Braum are absolute staple picks for the team.
•  Bwipoggers unleashed: Kelptomancy Swain into Sion gave him a higher gold generation which he ended up utilizing really well, outplaying his matchup 1v1 and 1v2 multiple times. Putting a lot of pressure on the top lane and dominating his opponent from the beginning. He definitely showed that he is ready to take on bigger opponents on the worlds stage.
• Broxah on Xin Zhao with a good early game jungle pathing capitalizing on Bwipo’s 1v2 top lane outplay securing an early kill on Sion for himself. Overall a very good performance and the most consistent player of the team.
• Caps & Hylissang protecting Broxah (Rakan was planning to interrupt with W-R-Combo) to spawn the Rift Herald Top-Lane to get T2 Top-Lane turret and ace GRX after 22 minutes followed by taking down Baron Nashor and ending the game in less than 25 minutes.

Some minor things on the opposite can be done better in the future:

• Rekkles & Hylissang played overly aggressive on Level 5. Almost giving up two kills for first Blood. Thanks to Caps roaming down they could turn it around in a 2-for-1 for our team and Stitch loosing one and half wave of minions (including a canon minion)
• The team focused on individual outplays, towers & kills neglecting the dragons completely. Other teams that don’t fall as far behind can eventually have a comeback due to the free drakes they are getting.

Loki: I’m actually giving this one to Hylissang. He hadn’t made any major mistakes that I could see this game and was all over the map for major skirmishes. Just speaking about his performances overall today he’s been stellar. When he’s in form he’s world class. Well played Hylissang.

Lidn: For the first time this tournament, we finally got to see Hylissang performing as he did in the Summer split. His skillshots was finally on point, great roams and vision.
I’ve personally been a bit disappointed with him so far, not saying he has been bad, but still haven’t showed his true potential (CLG intensifies ) that we’ve all seen before.

Loki: The next time they make a Jurassic Park movie. Instead of fucking around with Chris Pratt just send our players in to kill the dinosaurs. They already made 5 go extinct today. T-Rex, G-Rex, what’s the difference? They get clapped all the same. Now we look ahead to Invictus Gaming, the game we were focusing on before the day even started. First seed is essential, but with the quality we’ve shown so far there’s no reason why we can’t beat them.

I’ll leave the last word to Emily, anything you wanted to add?

Emily: I’m not sure I could contribute anything cool aha!

Lidn: Thank you Emily for your heartwarming contribution, a true Fnatic fan to say the least. Looking ahead at the Invictus Gaming match, palms are getting sweaty as this is the game that will determine if we get a chance to fight for first seed. IG is a strong team, but I do agree with Loki, the quality of our games in our previous games has shown that we’re ready to take them on and give them a good fight for their money.

Loki: This game will set the tone for the rest of the day. We have to win all our games, and I’m expecting a tiebreaker needs to be forced. Of course we should take it one game at a time, and I hope the staff don’t look too far ahead just yet. Our first opponents are 100T. They look pretty checked out mentally, and seemingly also out of their hotel rooms too. So far watching their first three games has been rather depressing given how lifeless they look both in and out of game.

Lidn: Going into this day everyone know there was no room for mistakes as we currently had a 2-1 score and couldn’t lose any points to get 1st seed. Surely a lot of Fnatic fans were worried going into today’s games but brother 100 Thieves stepped up and calmed us down by playing us in the first game.

Lidn: One thing that stood out to me this game was obviously the Bard pick for Aphromoo. I’ve been a Bard main since his release 3 and a half years ago so I was very excited to see how bad Aphro would mess up. Also this time around we first picked Irelia which could be flexed top, which made no difference as our solo laners could go AD Janna and still win their lanes vs 100T, but exciting nontheless!

Loki: Ignoring Lidn gushing over Bard, lets take a look at our own draft. We tweak our pick order since they left Irelia up on first round of bans. Irelia is a strong first pick due to very few bad matchups. We also introduce the Sivir into our lineup since Rakan is banned, and that means we don’t force the enemy team into an awkward Rakan trade to deny Xayah synergy. It was also very important to take Braum to deny the Kai’Sa + Braum duo, and also take away a strong pick into Irelia.

But its time to introduce our guest contributor for the blog post today. He is the famous virgin Sejuani abuser turned reformed Syndra ARAM main, the floor is yours Olli.

Olli: Pick and Ban for Fnatic is comfort upon comfort. Last time they trashed 100 Thieves and intended to make today look like garbage collection day. Lock-ins like Broxah’s Lee, Caps’ Irelia and Rekkles’ Sivir (Not to forget sOAZ’s favourite dog champ) really cements this game as one FNC has control over.

Olli: The Lee Sin pick meant that FNC were looking to play aggressively with Broxah early, and that came to fruition just before 5 minutes with a gank onto the mid lane. Caps had been trading aggressively with Ryu in the early stages of the game and almost looked like he’d bitten off more than he could chew, but after disengaging the fight he tagged in Broxah who landed a sweet sonic wave under the Thieves’ tower and followed with the Resonating Strike, securing first blood. From there, with the help of Hylissang, Broxah made it out alive falling as low as 18hp – but securing an early game lead for his side.

10 minutes pass and the game is yet to be truly cracked open, with the Thieves just 1.8k down seeking the bottom outer tower as a 5 man push. This is where Fnatic came alive. sOAZ teleported from the top side to support Rekkles in defence of the tower as Caps flanked from the river. Some fancy bladesurges saw Caps dance around the Thieves as he re-positioned for his Flawless Duet to land onto Rikara, and from there the Blade Dancer launched herself in with a gorgeous Vanguard’s Edge “Disarming everyone!” as put by Quickshot. With Ryu down, Rekkles unleashed a flurry of bouncing blades tearing up the NA health bars and dropping his opposite number Rikara. With a dubstep ignite to boot from Caps onto Ssumday, Fnatic had dominated a 3v5 picking up 3 kills to none and first tower. The Thieves were routed, and given no time to lick their wounds as the boys closed it out cleanly from there.

Loki: Lots of positives to take away from this game:

• Our drafting was on point. The team was definitely given the tools they needed to win this game.
• Excellent decisiveness to go for a 3v5 play and defending first tower blood. I don’t think any other team in the world would’ve gone for that play.
• We had some incredible mechanical outplays displayed from all members of the team.
• The game gets ended off a single baron push, no time wasted.

Lidn: Even though this was a fairly convincing win, a bit of craps was still detected:

• A slick Sion Teleport at our Red buff camp led to 100T getting 2 kills.
  The deaths themselves wasn’t much of a crap but the fact that they had 3 control wards in our bottom side jungle made Fnatic unaware of any sort of play happening. TL;DR, Do not only focus on offensive warding.
• The founder of Craps or Claps was quite a mixed bag this game. He did well in terms of following up on roams and teamfights, but you could see that he was underestimating his lane opponent. He was too far up for no reason at certain points, losing trades because of it. Any other midlaner in this tournament would have punished him for it and the game could have been more difficult than it had to be.

Lidn: What a lot of people didn’t know was that Fnatic actually had 7-man roster prepared for this years Worlds. And in this game, we clearly saw what a great impact that had on Fnatic. With that said, I think we all can agree on Fnatic’s MVP.
None other than the man in the midlane, Ryu.

The way he simply refused to kill Caps in mid was a thing of beauty which only a player of his caliber can execute. Then later on in the game when he realised that he can reactive his E as Lissandra, he decides to simply go int solo in the dragon pit versus Broxah’s Lee and Caps’ Irelia. Im sure you all can imagine how that ended.
thank mr ryu for fighting for Fnatic.

Loki: A slow game compared to the pace we usually play to. Its normal considering it was the first game of the day and you don’t want to take too many risks. It felt like we were in control the entire game. Solid result all around. Thanks for the easy wins 100 Thieves. Next up is Free-Rex.

Lidn: I let my Fnatic bias take complete control of my and predict our biggest stomp so far in the tournament. Now G-Rex was never a big threat to begin with but I was still underwhelmed by their performance. I can’t see us losing in any lane, lose any objective control or map control. Not much more to say than GG go next.