Splyce was dominating the match. Playing the familiar 1-3-1 split push style that their fans had come to love, they ran over Misfits en-route to a 2-0 lead in the EU LCS quarterfinals. They were running their opponents ragged and were in total control.
Splyce achieved their lead through strong solo lanes. They decidedly won the draft phase in games one and two. And that was aside from the creative picks from the bottom lane—get ready for Fiddlesticks support, because it was just played in a LCS playoff match.
In contrast to their performances in the two teams’ regular season meeting, top laner Martin “Wunder” Hansen and mid laner Chres “Sencus” Laursen played well. The draft wins certainly benefited Sencux, who got his hands on Syndra.
Syndra looks like she’s easy to play: Just press “R.” But there’s more that goes into it, especially with how she positions her Dark Spheres so that her spells do maximum damage. After a rough lane phase in game one, Sencux was nearly flawless for the rest of the first two games, destroying carries left and right.
Meanwhile, Wunder didn’t post great score lines, but he did draw a ton of attention. Wunder was able to get a strong split push going, making it tough for Misfits to control the side lanes. He was a huge problem, and when Misfits lost sight of him for an instant, it led to disaster.
Seeing the problem with Syndra, Misfits decided to take her away in their first rotation in game three and give her to their own mid laner, Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage. PowerOfEvil repaid their trust with a dominant showing, going 6/3/10 including multiple highlight-reel plays.
But the real heroes of the game were the Misfits duo lane of Steven “Hans Sama” Liv and Lee “IgNar” Dong-geun. IgNar has been fantastic for Misfits all split and his Thresh play was fantastic. And when Splyce started going off with their split push, Hans Sama helped Misfits the three-person group.
In game four, Misfits finally started punishing the Splyce duo lane for picking split push champions. Hans Sama and IgNar took control of the lane and even when Kasper “Kobbe” Kobberup tried to flash out of trouble, PowerOfEvil was there to clean things up.
Speaking of PowerOfEvil, Misfits also solved their mid lane draft problem. Instead of trying to run head-on into Sencux’ Syndra with immobile mages, they gave him LeBlanc, someone who could help them snowball their early leads and run circles around Syndra’s skill shots.
Finally, jungler Lee “KaKAO” Byung-kwon took total control of the jungle and facilitated his team’s movements around the map. The team looked much more comfortable trading sides of the map with Splyce and even beating them to the punch. Splyce actually looked tilted, like they were stuck in mud watching Misfits run circles around them. They could never find PowerOfEvil or KaKAO while their own solo pushers were caught repeatedly.
That tilt continued into game five. PowerOfEvil got an early First Blood and the run was on.
This would tilt anyone. Wunder had just teleported back to lane.
Misfits just continued to dive, dive, dive. They shut down the solo lanes and there went Splyce’s split push. Splyce did manage to get Kobbe fed and his Lucian almost carried some late game fights. But the rest of Misfits were too far ahead, and Splyce looked visibly shaken. Even the casters picked up on how shell-shocked Wunder and Trashy looked.
It took them a few games to find it, but Misfits found themselves. PowerOfEvil has gone through a lot in his young career but on mobile assassins, he can still wipe the floor. And it’s good to see KaKAO performing like this on the playoff stage again. It’s been a long career for him—and in this year’s playoffs it will continue a little longer.
