We now have our final two teams to round out the Top 4 in our EU Challenger Series 2. The roads there were long, exciting, and quite unusual in some cases.
Games of the Week
Meet Your Makers vs. Reason Gaming
Meet Your Makers (MYM) may have LCS experience under their belts along with a 3rd place finish in the Challenger Series 1, but that resume didn't amount to much against the onslaught that was Reason Gaming (RG). RG simply played better as a unit, and that shows in the statistics. Four-fifths of the team achieved double-digit assists in the first match; it wasn't the laning phase that RG dominated, but the teamfights. MYM were actually ahead in turrets around 35:00, but with superior coordination and maneuvering RG caught up nearly every member of MYM, secured Baron, and turned the tables. RG showed superior coordination in the second game, as well, where they took turrets nearly twice as fast as MYM. And, when the game reached that critical stage where a player either survives the fight or loses the game, RG smoothly picked off multiple members of MYM, pushed inhibitors, and suffocated MYM's chances with oppressively constant pressure on their nexus.
Ninjas in Pyjamas vs. Gamers 2
Turrets. That one word resided in the minds of Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP) when entering their match against Gamers 2 (G2). Despite a 46-minute game, NiP only reached double-digit kills in the last seconds when G2's members put out a last-ditch, all-or-nothing defense of the Nexus. Ahead of that, NiP simply outmaneuvered G2 and pushed down turret after turret, taking an apparently insurmountable lead in map control that G2 never recovered from.
NiP ran into some technical issues in Game 2 and were forced to forfeit the match.
Moving on to Game 3 in a surprising and odd 1-1 series, G2 picked up the slack and brought the match right down to the wire. Amazingly, despite a deficit in both turrets and gold (a full 10,000 gold!), NiP's heavy focus on AP AoE paid off in a key fight under their own inhibitor turret, thanks in no small part to a very well placed Gragas barrel. That fight proved the turning point of the match, and NiP came back to win despite being on the defensive since the game's start.
Overachievers of the Week
BarneyD
Reason Gaming's support picked up an astounding 19 assists in back-to-back matches against Meet Your Makers. On a playmaker like Thresh, BarneyD has joined the ranks of support players who remind the rest of those in League that the role isn't something to be taken lightly.
Trashy
Trashy played exceptionally well in the jungle for Reason Gaming. His stats on Lee Sin (8/1/12) and Elise (5/2/13) have shown that he's not only a dangerous player, but a versatile one, as well. Future teams will have to do more than ban out a single champion in order to shut this jungler down.
Disappointments of the Week
Ocelote Is Out
With Gamers 2's 2-0 defeat at the hands of Ninjas in Pyjamas, Ocelote's prospects of returning to the LCS this summer had dropped to zero. While no one can deny NiP is still an LCS-caliber team themselves, with the veterans to prove it, it still seems odd to think of one of the most popular mid laners on the entire planet has been knocked out of a semi-professional tournament as early as the quarterfinals.
Gilean splits his time between feeding bot, writing about esports, and feeding mid. If you’d like to receive tips on how to feed harder, you can follow him @HHGilean
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