Chapter 590: Defending the home court is our duty!
The pre-match declaration ends and the video begins, shot from an aerial perspective.
After a series of iconic buildings such as Xinghai Square, the cross-sea bridge, the radio and television tower and the Shengya World, Asia's longest transparent underwater channel, were displayed, the countdown began with the number '7' as the first number in the center of the big screen with ten cartoon blind monks as the background!
“77777777——”
“777777——”
“Absolutely!”
"Official manipulation is the most deadly."
"Courtesy Seven: You!"
"I was wondering why Zzaichang didn't appear on camera for EDG, turns out he appeared on camera on behalf of the official team."
"Nine blind monks and one ball!"
“Hahahahahahahahahaha classic chants are passed down.”
"I don't deserve it? Not only can I choose, I can also sign my name!"
“…”
The barrage of comments is full of memes.
The audience was equally delighted, their laughter even drowned out the sound of the timer.
At the last second, the image that appeared was a blind monk with a bruised face but a smug smile, which aroused endless reverie...
Immediately, a tearing special effect was used to present a shocking opening.
The camera turns to the commentary booth.
"Hello, summoners!"
"After three days of intense competition, we have finally reached the finals of the Asia Challenge!"
"Today, the final BO5 match will decide who is the best in Asia. Can the LPL, as the host, maintain its unbeaten streak from the S6 finals? Can the LCK, as the old overlord, make a comeback in this match and return to the top?"
"Defending our home court is our duty. Let's wait and see how LPL is awesome!"
Wawa, Miller and Ze Yuan were responsible for the commentary of this game.
Before the first game started, Wawa had already made his position clear.
"The first two teams to play are RNG from our LPL region and SKT from the LCK region."
"RNG, as the runner-up of our LPL region, is second only to EDG in strength, so they are a very suitable vanguard. Although SKT, the leader of the LCK, ranked fourth in the spring playoffs, they are definitely not ordinary people because they once played a dominant position."
"Let's take a look at their specific data."
The performances of the five positions, top lane, jungle, mid lane, AD, and support, were compared in turn.
It can be seen that RNG's overall data is better. Except for KDA, which is most related to the team style, it is basically 1-3 places higher than SKT.
Data doesn’t represent everything.
But such a lead undoubtedly instilled enough confidence in the audience.
Enter the Ban/Pick phase.
RNG's performance is mainly stable.
In the first round, Galio, Crow, and Morgana are banned.
Scorpion and Sejuani are banned in the second round.
They would rather release heroes like Xayah, Rakan, and Iron Man, who are more rogue in the current version, than give SKT the opportunity to play special tactics.
SKT first used a particularly strong mid laner to target Taliyah, Nightmare, two supports Zoe and one Xiaohu, and then held down Kaisa and Varus to suppress UZI's selection range.
After the selection, RNG used top laner Ornn, jungler Shen, mid laner Lissandra, and bottom lane EZ + Shen.
SKT used Nasus on top, Xayah and Rakan in the mid and jungle, and Malphite + Alnico on the bottom lane.
Speaking objectively, SKT's play was very smart.
Bang's performance in team battles is still remarkable, worthy of the title of top AD, but his laning ability has declined significantly. He will most likely not be able to withstand a normal confrontation with UZI, who still maintains his peak strength.
Using Xayah and Rakan in the mid and jungle can make up for this problem well.
Moreover, the reason why regular ADs are weak in the current version is that the prices of critical strike equipment have generally increased, and the endless burst has been reduced a lot. They can only fight in the bottom lane, and their speed will be slowed down regardless of whether they have two or three pieces of equipment, and they do not have the previous combat effectiveness.
It will be different if you take the middle lane soldiers + jungle resources.
Xia's first choice is the inexpensive and high-quality warrior jungle knife, and the second choice is the cheap and super-model Storm Cut. Although this outfit loses its strong enough late game, it is easy to get ahead of the opponent by half an item to one large item, forming a hard pressure at the equipment level.
The departure of Iron Man laid the best early foundation for this style of play.
If everything goes well, SKT can use the two dragon souls obtained by Iron Man to at least destroy the second tower in the middle lane, and then use the vanguard to force the high ground, replicating the classic fast push that EDG has used many times.
But……
Such a seemingly perfect idea was shattered by the Azure Steel Shadow of Mala Xiangguo.
RNG's new jungler Kasra is known as a radar player, which means he can always detect the opponent's position, but the opponent can never guess where he is.
Spicy hotpot is at the other extreme.
——The opponent does not need to guess where the spicy hot pot is, because the spicy hot pot is always on the face!
21 minutes.
The heads are 7-5.
The spicy hotpot’s record is 1-2-6, and the participation rate is 100%.
The economic gap is just over 2,000, which is not too much.
But SKT was beaten by RNG and fell behind by 2,000, which was equivalent to a collapse!
22 minutes and 07 seconds.
Seeing that Letme and Mala Xiangguo were both in the bottom lane, SKT wanted to use their numerical advantage to force a rush to Baron Nash.
However, Letme teleported into the field and formed double group control with Xiaohu. Even though one main player was missing, they still achieved a 0-for-5 team wipe in the dragon pit.
He took down the Baron and ended the game in one wave!
“Congratulations to RNG!”
"As the vanguard of the LPL region, RNG won their first victory and also completed their revenge on SKT!"
"This is also Xiaohu's revenge on Faker!"
Miller's voice was filled with emotion.
In 2013, when he was in the old Royal Club, UZI lost all three games against Faker, which marked the beginning of whether it was anti-Korean or fear of Korea.
In 2016, UZI participated in IEM10 with the QG team and was easily defeated by SKT. Although the main reason was Doinb who was killed 1-8 while using the Ice Girl, failure is failure, and other reasons are just minor details.
The most difficult time was at the World Finals that year, when I faced Windtalker Zyra, who gave away first blood repeatedly.
In the last game last year, RNG also lost with a score of 2-3.
Until today, RNG has absolutely crushed SKT, and with EDG in charge, this victory by RNG can be said to be the most important cornerstone of the LPL region.
After a short break.
The second battle continues.
What’s more interesting is that the ranking ideas of the two major regions just happened to be swapped.
In LPL, RNG, which ranked second, was ranked first, and then IG, which ranked fourth.
In LCK, SKT ranked fourth first, and AFs ranked second.
In this battle, IG made the greatest effort.
Unfortunately, in the absence of The shy, Duke is still a little powerless against LCK's current strongest top laner Kiin. The combination of Lao Zei + Baolan can only occupy a certain advantage but cannot open a big enough breakthrough in the bottom lane.
After holding out until the 36th minute, the small IG was wiped out by AFs and lost the second game.
“It’s so uncomfortable!”
After returning to the backstage, Ning Mazi patted his sunny and handsome face with regret: "In the 13-minute wave, I was just a little bit short, just a little bit. If we could win, we wouldn't have lost the big dragon."
"It's okay." Xing Dao consoled, "AFs is the strongest team in the LCK right now. It won't be easy for us to beat them if we meet them. Let them fight this time, and it will be easier to deal with them later."
"AFs, are you guys hard to beat?" Doinb was preparing to go on stage, and when he heard this, he came over.
"It's not easy to play against him. Their top laner Kiin is much stronger than Khan. I need several prerequisites to suppress him." Xing said seriously.
“Oh——” Mouse believed it and said, “Then leave it to us. We will win this game and not give LCK a chance to play a fifth game!”
