Showing posts with label EU Expansion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EU Expansion. Show all posts

Saturday, December 20, 2014

EU LCS Expansion Tournament: H2k vs Giants Gaming



By Reece "Sabrewolf" Dos-Santos 

With the demons of past failed LCS attempts behind them, H2k took to the stage against Giants Gaming; both teams coming off back-to-back 3-0 sweeps against their first round opponents.

Pick/ban phase

Interestingly, because of how the teams chose to be set up, Giants remained on red side for the whole series. What they aimed to get out of this strategy, however, will remain an enigma.

H2k was relentless in their ban strategy of taking out the threat of xPepii by removing Xerath, Leblanc and Syndra in all three games. Giants, on the other hand, opted to try and adapt their banning to remove one key component of what dismantled them in the previous game: banning Febiven’s game one Jayce in game two and Voidle’s game one and two Janna in game three.

Pick-wise, both teams displayed good variety of picks and compositions. H2k played a poke strategy with Corki and Jayce in game one before moving on to more team fight orientated compositions in games two and three. The only person that played the same champion in all three games was Rydle on Thresh, a champion that worked quite well for him in the series, especially in game three.

Into the Games

One thing that was noticeable to me across this series was the performance of the bottom lane of Giants. While the action in the bottom lane was often overshadowed by the standout performances of H2k’s top half, Adryh and Rydle put up a very good laning phase in all 3 games. Adryh’s Sivir in game one had a 20 minute CS lead six minutes in, in game three they also heavily bullied out the bottom lane of H2k to the point where Hjarnan’s Sivir only managed to get back into the game off the back off the performance of the rest of his team. Despite the consistent lead in Giants’ bottom lane, there was simply nothing the pair could do when faced with the absolute demolition that Loulex, Odoamne and Febiven put up.

Game one saw three consecutive counter ganks from Loulex on the middle lane as Fr3deric tried his hardest to shut down Febiven but subsequently he ended up just pushing himself and xPepii further behind. Giants made a little comeback with 4 kills and the first dragon but the next three went to H2k and Febiven and Loulex slowly choked the Giants out. 

Game two saw a similar story of Giants’ falling behind on a solo lane early on. Odoamne took complete control of the game on Irelia getting a huge cs lead and 4 kills early on. Febiven’s Orianna also played a heavy part in their team fight presence in backing Odoamne who went nuts decimating the Giants in any way possible. One thing that was a slight let down for H2k was Loulex’s tendency to over commit and go in to deep without the proper protection in order to set things up for his team.

While these attempts proved non detrimental in any way, a team in a better position than Giants would have been able to easily pick on these small positional missteps. The biggest error for H2k in game two was over chasing a good fight they could have used to push into the base, gifting two unnecessary kills to xPepii’s Ahri.

Similarly in game three, Loulex’s presence across the map in the early stages was heavy and the H2k solo lanes quickly took control of the map. Odoamne’s Irelia had Werelyb’s Maokai in his back pocket for the whole game and Febiven’s Ahri was a huge threat; however due to H2k’s tendency to make missteps and positional errors, particularly on Loulex’s front, the game took a lot longer to close out than it  should have. H2k’s dragon control was also very lax allowing Giant’s to pick up three, but the fact that this simply did not matter at all proved how far ahead and how oppressive the solo lanes of H2k were throughout this series.

If I had to pick an MVP throughout this series I’d have to give my vote to Febiven, he had a super commanding series knocking xPepii down and keeping him down across all three games. He remained a constant deadly threat and made team fighting very difficult for the Giants.

With this H2k finally live up to their growing hype since the days being Cloud 9 Eclipse and earn their way into the EU LCS as its 9th team.


by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos

Friday, December 19, 2014

EU Expansion Tournament: H2k going up against Giants for LCS spot


By Anel “Musinlol” Musinovic

With the first two days over, we head into the third day of Round 3 to see Giants and H2k face off against each other.

H2k vs Giants
Odamne, loulex, febiven, Hjarnan & Voidle vs Werlyb, Fr3deric, xPepii, Adryh & Rydle

Both H2k and Giants are this one series away from entering the EU LCS, and H2k are once again coming in as favorites for a LCS spot. Last time against Copenhagen Wolves they did fail miserably but I think they have learned their lesson. They should be showing up strong and not choking.

Giants have shown themselves to be a strong team and yesterday they 3-0’d a underwhelming Reason Gaming. Many will expect H2k to 3-0 but Giants can, in my opinion, take a game and that is why I have given it 3-1 for H2k. Giants' Fre3deric did an amazing job of snowballing lanes yesterday, but against H2k it is going to be a very hard task. H2k has superior solo lanes but the botlane of Giants can match the H2k one, therefore Adryh & Febiven are my featured players to watch.

Giants should not be focus their bans on Febiven, n!fac tried that but that failed since Febiven was dominating no matter what champion he was on. They should maybe be focusing on trying to ban out loulex and especially his Lee Sin.

Player to watch from H2k Gaming: Febiven

Febiven is the star of both the team and the whole challenger scene, so he's the obvious pick for the player to watch. He is an extremely strong midlaner and is considered one of the best in Europe. He has multiple accounts in high challenger and will be coming out strong against xPepi. xPepi has shown himself to be a good midlaner so far but he will maybe have too much on his hands this time.

Player to watch from Giants: Adryh

Adryh has had exceptional games on Jinx so far, which he seems to prefer. No other adcs seem to play Jinx at the time but Adryh definitely makes it work. It might be a champion to ban for H2k. If the Jinx is banned he often falls back on Ezreal or Lucian. In the first round of the expansion tournament, he went 9-0-8 on Jinx & 7-4-10 on Lucian when the Jinx was picked away from him. He also had great games against Millenium. Against Reason he was 7-1 twice on Jinx, and 5-4-10 on Ezreal in the last game of the series. If he can pull out these performances against H2k they might have a chance but it seems very unlikely.

Predicted score: H2k 3 - 1 Giants

The game will be played December 19th at 7:00am EST, 13:00 CET