Revenge matches, team kills and clash of powerhouses colored the first day of LoL competition at IPL 5.
Although headlined by MLG champions Azubu Blaze, Group A did its best to provide entertaining upsets to the crowd. Whatever plans the other teams might have had evaporated in the presence of World Elite who charged in guns blazing to take the top spot in the group very much uncontested. With TD finishing last, it was up to Fnatic and Blaze to decide who will start in the WB and who down below. Carried by the flawless Lee Sin and Diana of Soaz and xPeke, Fnatic rewarded Blaze with a stomp, unhindered by the otherwise deadly Orianna/Nunu/Amumu AoE combo.
Group B began and ended according to all expectations: the two CLG brother teams took the WB seeds with the Europeans easily defeating their American counterparts.
Fresh from a Tales of the Lane championship, Curse.eu took Group C by storm, pouncing on North America's Season 2 bannermen TSM and Singapore Sentinels despite coming into the tournament with Patoy subbing after the recent departure of SuperAZE. TSM themselves had to go all the way through group's losers brackets but quickly pulled themselves together and sliced through Sentinels and Meat.
Inarguably, the level of entertainment peaked at Group D, in which world champions Taipei Assassins met Moscow 5 in a revenge match from the S2WC semi-finals. Spearheaded by Stanley's Rengar, the TPA were brutal towards the Russians but Alex_Ich's team was more than determined to make the playoffs' upper bracket. Falling to TPA sent them against CRS.na, the latter of which had to suffer through one AP Yi pentakill before losing their nexus.
| IPL 5 Group stage | |||
| Group A | Group B | ||
 World Elite | 2-0 |  CLG EU | 2-0 |
 Fnatic | 2-1 |  CLG Prime | 2-1 |
 Azubu Blaze | 1-2 |  Team Fear | 1-2 |
 Team Dynamic | 0-2 |  Iceland | 0-2 |
| Group C | Group D | ||
 Curse EU | 2-0 |  Taipei Assassins | 2-0 |
 Team Solomid | 2-1 |  Moscow 5 | 2-1 |
 Singapore Sentinels | 1-2 | Curse NA | 1-2 |
 Meat Playground | 0-2 |  Blackbean | 0-2 |
The end of the group stage gave start to the first matches of the playoffs where M5 ate another loss from an Asian teams, falling 0-2 to World Elite. The Chinese will play CLG.eu in the WB semis after the Europeans stomped 2-0 through TSM, seeing little to no trouble overcoming Americans' almost identical team compositions in both games.
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IPL 5 resumes at 19:00 CET with SGS vs Iceland and TD vs Crs.na.
