The first week of cross-group play has begun in the EU LCS, with the top two teams from Group B playing against the first and fourth place teams from Group A. Giants attempted to take a big win over the undefeated Unicorns of Love, while Group A’s undefeated G2 battled it out with a 3-1 H2K. Here’s how the matches went down.
Unicorns of Love (5-0) 2-0 Giants (1-5)
Giants started off game one with Na “NighT” Gun-woo getting caught out at level one and giving up first blood. The Unicorns set up an early gank in the top lane, and while Giants attempted to respond by matching junglers and roams from the mid laners, it resulted in three more kills for Unicorns of Love, while Giants only picked up one. The rest of this game followed this trend, as every time Giants looked to gain an edge, UoL was able to respond and gain more off of each trade. With UoL getting Baron before 22 minutes, their 8k gold lead ended up being too much for Giants to overcome, giving UoL their first win of the series.
Game two started off much better for Giants, as they got a kill in all three lanes by five minutes. Unfortunately for Giants, immediately after their third kill, UoL was able to respond by picking up two of their own kills in the bottom lane, and this is where the Unicorns kicked things into gear. Unicorns of Love went on to rack up 10 kills before Giants was able to get one back, putting them at a 3.5k gold lead by 11 minutes. The aggressive plays UoL continued to make gave Giants no breathing room to catch up, as Unicorns of Love remain undefeated with an expected 2-0 victory over Giants.
Player of the series goes to Andrei “Xerxe” Dragomir with a 6/0/26 score on Ivern across the two games. In both games, it seemed like Xerxe was in the right spot at the right time, which was key for UoL to maintain control every time Giants began to make something happen.
G2 (5-0) 2-1 H2K (3-2)
Game one of the series started off interesting with H2K letting Camille through the first ban phase in favor of banning Ryze. The game was quite slow, with first blood not coming through until 12:30 when we saw Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu, on Shen, getting a solo kill against the Camille. The two teams went back and forth for the early mid game. While G2 grabbed a small gold lead, H2K was able to pick up the first three dragons. As we went into the late game, we saw H2K not being able to answer the split-push from Ki “Expect” Dae-han, which eventually resulted in G2 taking the first victory of the series.
Game two was quite the opposite of game one. Despite picking a favorable matchup, G2’s bottom lane failed to execute, resulting in Alfonso “mithy” Aguirre Rodríguez being 0/3/0 by 13 minutes. We saw a very controlled mid game from H2K, and with their excellent vision control, they were able to continuously set up picks and safe dives, netting them a large advantage. H2K’s 22 minute Baron pretty much sealed the fate of G2, as H2K had no trouble cleanly closing out game two to tie up the series.
Game three saw an interesting pick by G2 when Sivir was drafted while Varus was still available. We saw again G2’s bottom lane getting outperformed in the laning phase and giving up an early first blood. H2K attempted to keep the pressure on throughout the game, but was having trouble taking down towers through the Sivir waveclear. G2 was able to respond well to H2K’s pushes, mostly due to the fact that Expect on Maokai was doing very well in the 1v1 matchup against Odoamne’s Rumble. Once G2 held H2K off long enough, the deficit wasn’t enough to stop G2 from taking over the game and winning the series.
Player of this series goes to Expect, who was a key component in both victories and didn’t have too rough of a game, even in the loss. In a difficult matchup of Maokai into Rumble, Expect never let Odoamne get too much of an advantage, which allowed their team to hold on long enough to take the series win, despite being so behind from the early game.
Do you think Unicorns of Love and G2 will continue their winning streaks? Comment below, or let us know @GAMURScom.
Image via Riot Flickr
