Lidn: I considered this to be the easier opponent in our group after seeing them in play-ins. They did win a lot of games in play-ins, but not as convincingly as I expected.
And after seeing our resident Fortnite team beat G-Rex, that only made me more confident in a win.

Loki: G-Rex worried me just a little. A Taiwanese underdog with Toyz thrown in the mix is a recipe for disaster. Any illusions I had of the potential Taipei Assassins magic was totally shattered the moment I saw 100 Thieves clap them. The way I see it, if they can manage it then why can’t we?

The main concern I saw the wider Fnatic community was the decision to sub in Bwipo. The reactions came mostly in reaction to seeing it more as an indication of disrespect towards sOAZ’s stellar performance last game. But the substitution makes sense. If not now, when? The the tournament is a marathon, not a sprint. If Bwipo doesn’t get any warm up games in before we reach the quarter finals then all that shared scrim time he’s had goes to waste. A brave decision by the coaching staff.

Lidn: Once more we pick up our botlane + top in the first rotation, which seems to be a trend this year. What surprised me and a lot of the community was that even though Pyke was not banned, we did not lock it in. Dylan and Joey most likely had another comp and game plan ready for G-Rex. But with Hylissang going for a not-so alpha support to make plays, who would pick it up? The stars aligned and we were blessed with Broxah’s legendary Lee Sin. Broxah’s Lee plays reached the LoL’s subreddit frontpage at least twice before Worlds started so a lot of eyes was on him this game.

Someone who clearly was excited was our very own closet vegan Tofuklops and had this to say:

Tofuklops: As soon as Hyli locked Lee Sin in I turned off the stream to get some streetfood, because I knew it was already over”

Loki: Discord favourite and resident e-girl hunter Mandingo, hinted at the origins of his name by noting the distinct lack of Jayce. His intimate relationship with Jayce may have some correlation with the flexible hammer he wields, something perhaps he relates to. Anyway here’s his contribution to the draft.

Mandingo: I’m surprised they didn’t pick Jayce against a free wild card team like G-Rex, I feel Jayce is super sleeper OP atm. But then I remember that Bwipo said IE is good on Jayce and then I understood their decision.

Loki: There are two trends I’m seeing emerge from our p/b. The first is our reluctance to trade Urgot/Aatrox, which suggests we are either uncomfortable playing it or are saving it for later. The second is our rotation order where we pick for top/adc/support in first pick round, and save mid jungle for the second pick round. I think it goes to show how much we value this 2v2 matchup.

Lidn: Only 4 minutes into the games into the game, G-Rex was kind enough to show us what Iron 4 will look like with a very optimistic dive into a level 4 Ornn. With a well timed Searing Charge, Bwipo knocks up both Camille and Shen. Caps was able to pick up first blood with a well timed Teleport the moment the dive was about to happen.

Loki: It feels like we won the game at around this time. Just like in the 100 Thieves game, as soon as one of our solo laners gets first blood we immediately collapse for a play on botside. Broxah earns himself some style points by picking up 3 of the kills and 1 assist.

Lidn: At the 21 minute mark, Broxah with his best Kim Jong-Un impression, locates and nukes Camille near blue buff, which then leads to a Baron takedown for Fnatic.

Lidn: Boy were there Claps to go around for everyone this game.

• Great Teleport usage once again from both Caps and Bwipo in the early game.
  Both had a great impact on the game.
• Broxah’s impeccable mechanical skill, truly a gift from above.
• Caps’ roams. Might not been one of his flashy games, but a key factor to why all the fights and skirmishes went our way.
• Lastly, the true intent of picking Sivir for Rekkles was clearly to help our boys move around with such huge cojones, which they proved they had by 5 man diving enemy Fountain in a Worlds group stage game.

Loki: Lets just say the team looked pretty constipated because there isn’t much crap to sift through. I’ll do my best

• We showed our Lee Sin pocket pick, which could hurt us long term by giving teams some scouting material against us.
• We were giving up kills as we tower dived, juggling aggro may be something that needs work.
• At around 13 mins we try capitalise on a pick in enemy top side jungle without deep vision. What starts off as a potential catch spirals into a full on awkward teamfight where Fnatic are split up. We were lucky to only lose Hylissang there, but better teams will capitalise on fights like these. Papasmithy points out this fight was not even necessary, as Fnatic were already in a position to take top tower. For sure the crappiest moment in the game.

Lidn: After having him has a honorable mention twice already, I’m really happy to say that Broxah finally got his well deserved MVP after a super clean Lee Sin game. This was hopefully not the last time we see him on this champion this tournament, but I wouldn’t surprised if Broxah’s Lee Sin has been written down in many of the coaches Death Notes.

Loki: I too give the MVP award to Broxah. His Lee Sin pocket pick was unleashed and single handedly manhandled G-Rex. If you’re still not convinced he deserves the award, see what the number 1 Lee Sin player on the FNCD had to say about Broxah’s Lee Sin.

Young Rat: Broxah’s Lee has been absent from the competitive stage ever since he became such a chad teamplayer, but for this game he was allowed to bring it back and boy was it a glorious nostalgic event. His mechanics are cleaner than Stan’s chat history and his pathing trumps that of Loulex’s pathing nirvana. His solo kill on the enemy Camille that lead to a free baron was beautiful and his ward hop to land the Sonic Wave in the botlane was exquisite. Broxah is truly still a chad at heart and he showed everyone that on the world stage.

 

Lidn: Next up is the most intense day yet. It’s time to play all the teams once more, but all in one day. 100 Thieves first, G-Rex second and Invictus Gaming third.

I’m very hopeful and actually believe that we will go 3-0 and play a tie-breaker vs IG for first seed. I do think we will see a closer game between us and 100 Thieves as they’ve played us once and got information from that. A loss is more valuable than a win in most cases. But fact still remains, Fnatic already has dedicated players for Fortnite, so our time spent in SoloQ will definitely be in our favor. IG is still a tough opponent, but I think we’ll see a cleaner early game from us. If that means a more calm and collected Hylissang on an aggressive support, or simply putting him on tank duty remains to see.

Loki: G-Rex? Or G-Rekt? That was a comfortable win for us. But next Wednesday will be intense. The scheduling is very favourable. We have the two “easier” matchups to start off with. Both teams do look like they have some upset potential in them. We will have to be cautious and try not to focus too much on the IG game as nothing is guaranteed this Worlds. I have full confidence that the coaching staff will show each team respect, and take the games one by one. I’m predicting a tiebreaker will be needed to secure first seed in this group, so its likely we will need to win 4 games and fight tooth and nail for first seed.

On a closing note, I managed to ask Bwipo some questions ahead of tomorrow. The questions asked were:

1. How do you rank the other 4 top laners in the group? (Ssumday, the Shy, Duke, and PK)
2. Do you agree with me that Wunder is the most overrated top laner in the west?

Bwipo:

1. I think in terms of potential, TheShy is the scariest. Then Duke and Ssumday being rather close in skill. PK is a little behind, but not a bad player by any means.
2. Wunder is having a great tournament. Maybe he was overrated in the past, but he’s showing a better performance and continues to be a reason G2 is performing.

Loki: Well.. can’t argue with that. Though I’ll still wait until quarter finals passes before I can fully accept that second answer 😛

Loki: I asked people what they thought going into the game. The Doctor, a German spy who was sent on a mission to New Zealand told me he felt “at ease” going into the game. He perscribed some special medicine to keep the tone relaxed. He felt we could win, but knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Personally, I was concerned we would have to blind pick mid into the best midlaner at Worlds. So from the outset I felt the odds were slightly in their favour, and didn’t mind losing this one so much. The most important thing about this game for me was seeing how well we’d match up against a world class team. In an ideal world we’d go 2-0, but at best I expect us both to go 1-1.

Lidn: I knew this game would not be as smooth as our game vs 100T, but I still thought it was winnable. Ning, IG’s jungler, played a big part when they beat G-Rex, with his pathing and balls-of-steel offensive plays with Zac. With that in mind, I hope Broxah can track this gank-happy jungler and match him when he ganks, or counter jungle to deny him gold and XP. As the proud and non-ardent abuser support player I am, my eyes will always be on botlane to see what Hyli can pull off. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a roaming support to help Caps in mid versus the not-so-rookie midlaner Rookie.

Loki: To quote my friend Lord Pope Maguire, this may be a case of “inting in draft”. We were placed in a difficult position being on blue side. We first pick Rakan, which IG completely counter with Leona/Ornn/Xin Zhao. Perhaps it ended up that we were a bit stuck with what we wanted to first pick, we didn’t want to opt to first pick Urgot and trade for Aatrox. And we didn’t want to blind first pick Irelia either. So perhaps in this instance Xayah may be the safer first pick, and be happy with conceding Rakan (of course it’s easy to say in hindsight). What’s your take Lidn?

Lidn: Definitely agree with Loki here. Picking a playmaker such as Rakan first, hints what type of game we want to play, and what Hyli will look to do. And as we could see, IG shut the Rakan pick down straight away. Seeing Ning on an aggressive jungler such as Xin Zhao versus our comp didn’t feel too good as we’ll most likely see them shut down our botlane in regards to our Rakan first pick.

As Loki also mentioned, us being on blueside meant that Caps would have to blind pick into Rookie, which is never a good thing. The optimal thing here to me would be something he knew he would be able to farm and survive with in lane, to make sure he doesn’t fall behind.
We got a comment from our very own  in the Jungle, Broxah, regarding the Olaf pick which has been questioned by the community. I asked him: “Can you give me some insight to why Olaf is picked as he’s not doing super well so far in Worlds, whats the reason you opt for him?”

Broxah: Olaf is a strong early game champion as he’s really powerful in skirmishes and has a fast jungle clear. Many Worlds games have been centered around early game and snowballed out of control, causing Olaf to be good as that’s exactly where he shines – while still being pretty good mid-game.

 

Lidn: While Broxah was counter jungling, Ning ganked bot twice pre 6 minutes getting them 2 kills. Hylissang thought that they deserves some more after putting so much effort and resources bot, so he simply walked up to a recalling enemy Kai’Sa, and handed himself over.

We came back into the game a bit after a clean not so clean dive bot which ended 3 to 2 kills for us and also turret first blood. Also our man Rekkles picked up a double kill which helped him avoid  2017’s depressed Rekkles, after seeing his support boost IG.

IG continued to push and pick up kills which eventually led them to attempt to take down Baron Nashor. Luckily they walked over a ward on their way to Baron pit to let Fnatic know what they were doing. sOAZ, being the man he is, uses Sion ultimate to go in blind into Baron pit and hits both their primary carries, leading them to back off from Baron while Rekkles pushes mid and getting ahead in CS above JackeyLove.

The big talking point of this game was Fnatic’s questionable decision to rush Baron.
Unfortunately, IG knew exactly what was going on and fought them in the pit, which led to Xayah getting a Quadrakill, and IG picking up Baron buff for all members.

Loki: The positives, the claps. Surface level it may be difficult to find many, but here’s some of my observations:

• sOAZ once again shows up huge on the World stage, his performance reminded me of his Gnar game vs RNG last year. Having star performances against top opponents is essential if we want to go far in the tournament.
• The loss was not as bad as it looked. We were only ever in a 1-3k deficit. Even when behind we managed to take first tower, contest first drake (cloud drake lul), prevent baron (with an unlucky knockup denying a double kill).
• Whilst the baron rush was awful, Broxah’s smite was just a hair to early and baron had 12hp. The call was high risk/high reward, if we take baron then it slows the pace of the game dramatically. So slow in fact, that it would even leave Madscot enough time to finally add his contributions to the last blog post.

Lidn: Even though it felt like we got demolished this game, there actually isn’t that many Crap moments to mention, but here are the few I gathered:

• The Swain blind pick for Caps. Barely did anything all game.
• Individual decision making from Hylissang and Caps. Both of them tried very hard to force plays once we fell behind which led to easy kills for IG which in turn gave them more map control.
• The panic Baron rush we attempted to try and get back into the game.

Again, we got Broxah to provide some insight about the Baron call.

Broxah: The baron throw mainly ended up happening after being behind ever since the first few minutes of the game. IG were ahead all game long, causing us to be a little more stressed out than we should have been. So when we finally had the chance to comeback, we took a risky decision not realising that we were actually fully back in the game and that we could easily slow down and win that way – and ended up throwing at baron because of it.

We appreciate Broxah taking the time to boost our discussion, thank mr broxah.

Loki: Who wants an MVP award?

sOAZ is for sure my pick. It’s insanely difficult to play as a tank when your team is behind. Yet somehow he kept us in the game on his own. His stellar individual performance prompted LCK caster CloudTemplar to say:

I don’t know about the best mid in the world, but right now, Soaz is the best top in the world period. – CloudTemplar

I rest my case.

Lidn: I think most people would agree with Loki and say sOAZ was the most valuable player for Fnatic and so will I. Though I do not think he was the sole hope this game. Broxah executed a very clean game, but did not really get many chances to use Olaf’s strengths in team fights. If Fnatic didn’t throw the game at Baron, I think we would have seen Broxah pop off in skirmishes once the gold difference would decrease.
sOAZ did have a great game and farmed well, and TP:ed when he had to, and of course, delayed the Baron takedown with his solo play. So my MVP vote also goes to sOAZ.

Lidn: Very similar expectation to the 100T game we had. G-Rex has not had a very good tournament so far and I think the game will end in a similar fashion as game 1. We simply have better players across the board and hopefully Craps will be locked up in Joey’s hotel room.

Loki: All in all, it could’ve been worse. The hype-train isn’t dead just yet, but expectations have been tempered due to the result. Personally I’m glad we dropped the game, because it was going to happen at some point. Losses are incredibly valuable resources to learn from. This is why DutchSource is such a great League of Legends player.

DutchSource: “Fuck you hahahah”

Loki: The exact response I hope we give G-Rex. I was a lot more worried about them until I saw them lose to 100 Clowns. So at this moment I’m confident we take our second win.

Loki: We kicked off our first Worlds game against 100T. Everyone was expecting a clean sweep going in, because make no mistake… 100T are garbage. Judging off their playoff performances this didn’t look like a good team. Having said that I was still less confident compared to everyone else. I’m always wary of teams with nothing to lose, especially when they’re heavy underdogs. I also respected Ssumday quite heavily considering he is a world class player, so overall not an easy affair. Plus you never know what Fornite can teach you…

Lidn: Just as Loki said, I think the majority of Fnatic fans felt confident going into this game, including myself. I didn’t exactly expect a clean sweep but I strongly believed our macro would suffocate them if we wouldn’t be able to win early on. Across the board, I felt we were stronger. 1 year ago I would be more worried about the botlane matchup, but with Hylissang having the season of his career and Aphromoo not being Hylissang, I felt that our bot-to-midlane control would be in our favor.

Lidn: Building on the HyliGod angle from the section earlier, right off the bat, we can see the fear of Hylissang’s Pyke pick, as it was banned in the first rotation. The Rakan + Xayah pick made me excited as I’ve found Rekkles Xayah games really exciting in the past, and obviously Hylissang on an aggressive, engage heavy support.

Loki: On paper our draft doesn’t seem very good. We’re a full AD comp, which makes us one dimensional the longer the game goes. When I asked Blumigan what he thought of the draft, he noted he wasn’t the biggest fan due to its reliance on macro. He was still confident we could pull it off.

Our first three rotations: Sion/Xayah/Rakan look to be our default picks for the tournament patch. The most defining parts of the draft is both the Graves pick for AnDa, and the Irelia counter pick mid for Caps. I don’t particularly rate the Olaf pick, but the Graves meant that there wasn’t a second reliable tank. So our comp was a good adaptation to the Graves.

Loki: Ryu lasted 11 minutes and 20 seconds before giving up first blood. Not too bad considering most newlyweds don’t last half as long. But still, the effects of the solo kill started the ball rolling for the team. Immediately after, Fnatic take 3 extra kills and first tower of the game. From that moment on Aphromoo and co tabbed out to queue up for a quick game of Fornite, while Ssumday did his best to salvage the game.

 

Lidn: It definitely was a lot of Clapping going around this game, which were:

• Caps getting a clean solo kill in the midlane to secure First blood.
• Broxah gank botlane that lead to a 5v5 fight were we picked up 3 kills for 0.
• Good objective control which lead to more kills and more destroyed turrets.
• Clean execution and usage of the Baron buff to push and destroy the Nexus.

Loki: Instead of me looking at the crappy aspects of our game was. I thought it fitting to invite a special guest who is an absolute expert on the negatives. Thanks for helping us out Madscot, so tell us what were the negatives this game?

Madscot: WAKE UP SHEEPLE! While it was a nice game, it could have been better:

• sOAZ takes the inting Sion strat a bit too far, gives the only kill of the game of what could have been a deathless match
• Lack of control and numbers around the Baron pit makes us leash the Herald for 100T: when you aim for the perfect game, you can’t give anything away
• Rekkles did not have 100+CS lead against Rikara, how is he ever gonna beat Uzi now? GG, go next…
• Fnatic actually had to destroy the Nexus, which means they didn’t crush 100T’s spirit enough so that they felt like their only option was to FF20. DO BETTER!

Lidn: I don’t think it will surprise anyone when I say that my MVP for this game is non other than Caps. He showed his fans and the rest of the world what he’s capable of in terms of mechanical play and this is only the beginning.
My honorable mention is the man in the Jungle, Broxah for great map movement and for picking up some nice kills with his axes.

Loki: Obvious choice for MVP of the game has to be Caps. The draft and comp centred around him, and this was his moment to hit the ground running at Worlds. He delivered with absolute style. Congratulations Caps, you’re the first MVP of a community blog. How does it feel?

Loki: Looking ahead we’re up against IG which is the toughest fixture in the group. The advantage we had here was the fact that we didn’t show much. All 5 picks are standard this tournament, we won off mid difference, and closed our lead without issue. But that was against 100T, which is not the best benchmark to use when gauging your strengths going into a tougher match. It would be like winning a fight against Stan, then thinking you are ready to take on Khabib Nurmagomedov.

Lidn: Invictus Gaming along with Fnatic are the group favourites and will definitely be a tough team to beat. Just as Loki mentioned, we didn’t really show much this game vs 100T so hopefully we can show something new that IG won’t see coming.
Eyes will be on Caps after his performance today, and especially on the midlane matchup vs Rookie, who analysts has referred to as the best midlaner at this tournament.

I expect to see a lot of action around midlane, so hopefully we will see an aggressive Fnatic with a lot of ganking potential from Broxah and Hylissang (Please no Pyke ban).