LEC
The LEC (League of Legends European Championship), fresh off the rebranding that saw them break out of the LCS moniker, started their season with all 10 teams participating against each other for 2 fixtures in as many days. The very first match featured Fnatic and returning franchise SK Gaming facing off to see who would get off on the right foot. And for the duration of the match, it looked like SK was going to do just that and nab a surprise victory over the favored black and orange squad. Uncoordination and risky dives doomed Fnatic as their ensuing team fights went SK’s way.
However, latency issues forced the referees to stop the game and force the two teams to start over from the beginning. This means they had to re-pick and re-ban their champions in the selection phase. Of course, this move was met with outrage from the viewers as they believed Fnatic paused the game on purpose so they could stop SK’s momentum. Despite the reaction, there was not much anyone could do with the connectivity problems, so the rematch had to go on as ordered by Riot Studios. Fnatic’s subsequent bannings of the same champions SK used in the first game only added fuel to the fire, but the momentum never returned to their favor as the latter finally came out on top after the 31-minute game. SK’s Selfmade and Crownshot provided a huge boost for their team as their contribution paved the way for their win.
As the first day went on, a mix of expected outcomes and captivating upsets were exchanged with the most prevalent among them being Schalke 04’s win over Team Vitality. This was due to Vitality’s unwillingness to ignore the Baron. As a result, Schalke took advantage of their stubbornness by completing their objectives (destroying turrets, slaying the monsters, etc.) which hampered Vitality in a slow and painstaking fashion. Fortunately, in Vitality’s next game against Splyce the next day, they managed to fix their macro play to win a lengthy 40-minute game. On the other hand, Splyce executed the same plan as Vitality as they played down to focus solely on taking down the Baron and nothing else; and that costed them dearly. Perhaps they should’ve taken notes of Vitality’s first game a day ago.
