iG come out on top in the LPL

 

The final weekend of the groups would kick off with a rematch between Wings of Aurora and World Elite, where the underdog team was able to take down World Elite quite convincingly.  With shining confidence to their prior victory, they would give Twisted Fate to Misaya and Vayne to Weixiao -- arguably their most comfortable champions to see how things would pan out. Wings of Aurora would start out the game aggressively, pushing in for a free lizard steal from World Elite's jungle.

Despite the early game weakness of Vayne, Weixiao would display his comfort on her by beating out Graves and Lissandra as support on the side of WoA, regardless of heavy jungle assistance helping graves do what damage he can against the duo.  Not only would Weixiao and Fzzf be ahead in kills, but also would show a dominating lead in CS score.

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A map-long chase leads to several flashes blown for this first blood.

World Elite would have continued early game dominance when Jarvan would assist Renekton in a gank bottom, only for Caomei's Rumble to pick up a 1v2 kill, which was followed shortly after by another 2 kills with the assistance of Troll.  Suddenly, Wings of Aurora was not seeing the success they saw only a few weeks prior and were on the punished receiving end of the beating.

The stomping would not come to an end and Misaya would state exactly how big of a mistake it was to allow him to have the champion after assisting in 8 of the 9 kills just 10 minutes into the game, resulting in a 9-1 kill lead with all towers up and a 5-0-3 TF extremely early into the game.  Utter domination would continue with a 16 minute baron and a massive kill lead leaving irrepairable damage to the forces of WoA, netting World Elite an easy win at the end of their group.

VOD

 

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Unlike the previous game, the first several minutes of this game would start much, much slower than the other game, with a first blood only just barely going down to OMG against Team Livemore's Dream 7 minutes in.  OMG knew that if they won this one and Invictus Gaming lost their next one, they'd have a shot at securing top in the league. Strangely enough, the Vayne lane dominance would continue with San finding himself far ahed of Fish on Kog'Maw.

OMG would seize advantage of their early shoving and take the first dragon of the game and LiveMore would look to fall into the depths, but they were able to formulate a plan to assist Fish and Dragon in the bottom lane.  With the assistance of Wayoff on Sejuani, LiveMore would look to pick up a few kills in the bottom lane.

An effective counter gank brings hope to Team Livemore.

 

Even though the kill lead would be evened out entering the mid game, OMG would find themselves ahead due to a tower lead along with a second free dragon putting Team Livemore in a lot of trouble.  OMG showed extreme bravery even diving past the first bottom tower following the second dragon fight in order to attempt an even further lead to close the game out for their potential 1st.

OMG would find their lead growing and growing, nearly doubling in kills but not holding a super substantial gold lead, leaving LiveMore with some hope left. Following that, OMG found themselves at an unfortunate position at baron, allowing themseles to be engaged on and picked off, and allowing a baron steal from Fish.  From there, the game would go stale for awhile until OMG manned up, and ended up finding a way to close out the game after pushing through all the inhibitors.

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The game before the finale of the group stage would be the "David vs. Goliath" battle of the night, with Invictus Gaming top of the charts and Wayi Spider dead bottom.  However, bigger surprises have happened in the LPL, so we must always hold our tongues.  The game would kick off with a fight to control red side jungle.  Illusion moved quick to lizard elder to attempt to disrupt Spider's jungle with ZZitai following to help secure it.  

Though confidently strutting about and making hyper aggressive plays, Wayi Spider nearly penalizes him by taking a kill on him bottom, but the first blood instead would go to Kid up top with a dive on Irelia, leading to an early tower as well. Meanwhile, Pdd would be doing a good job of holding the tower bottom with the map advantage allowing iG to aggress onto the middle turret with their duo.

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Pdd manages a 1v2 kill after some greedy Sona harass.

 

 

Around 10 minutes in despite the kill lead, iG and Spider would find themselves only just barely apart in gold values, with towers even before the grouping of iG which would assist in destroying the tower of Wayi Spider and, therefore, allow for a free dragon due to top being shoved in.  Though Spider tries to counteract the lead by attacking them from behind at dragon, it comes with no merits for the team.

Though iG was initially able to acquire a large lead following these actions, Invictus Gaming found themselves much too deep in Spider's jungle, allowing for them to tie up the kill lead and for a 3-0 Varus.  Unfortunately, Wayi Spider would not be able to hold out for throws forever and iG asserted utter dominance pouring into the late game, bringing the score to 20-6 and being 5 towers at the 25 minute mark.  Wayi Spider went down and were not able to acquire a 4th win for the season.

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VOD

 

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A special guest joins Positive Energy for their last game...

 

A furry friend would join the ranks of Positive Energy in hopes of raising the spirit of the team in their last game which would end the group stage of the LPL (at least we'll pretend that's the reason.) The winner of this game would determine  who makes the cut for the top 4 in the end of the LPL. The first advantage of the day would go to Royal Club after capitalizing on extension and netting a kill for Jarvan and an assist for Elise top.

Things would quickly be brought up to speed as several summoners were burned skillfully and carefully allowing what was an extremely close exchange to be dictated by the finesse of the players.  After all was said and done, Vayne managed to pick up a kill, but PE dropped 2 kills to Thresh early on, ultimately losing the exchange and narrowly slipping away with a small amount of hit points remaining.

An exchange dictated entirely by skill and mechanics rather than circumstances.

 

The tides of the game would remain close with only a 1k gold deficit for Positive Energy.  However, two more kills would quickly be picked up by Royal Club's bottom lane, asserting even more dominance as an Ace in the Hole picked off Sona, bringing the bot lane of Royal to 6-2-6 with some help from Jing feeding another kill while trying to hold the lane. With the score now at 5-9, Positive Energy would be hard pressed to make it back into this game.

Though Royal was in the lead, PE wasn't out of the game, but was at a noticeable deficit while still retaining a somewhat even score in tower kills.  Despite Positive Energy's best efforts, Royal Club just proved themselves too powerful to lose teamfights around the baron late into the game, which would eventually snowball them into an advantageous position, allowing them to secure 5th place in a close final game against their slightly higher rated foes.

VOD