Bengi gives SKT an edge in EDG grudge match

Compared to a famously cocky team like last year’s World Champion Samsung White, SKTelecom T1 seems to have a different strategy toward opponents. Kill them with kindness off the Rift, then kill them with murder on the Rift. One of only two remaining members from the SKT roster that swept Worlds in 2013, Seong-ung “Bengi” Bae is the picture of zen calm after the team’s win over Edward Gaming. This was the rematch that fans had been waiting for since EDG took down SKT in the Finals of the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational.

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"Our first two games [against H2K and the Bangkok Titans] were more difficult and we met more resistance than we originally expected, so we figured the third game also would go like that, which motivated us to prepare harder. But the third game was...unexpected."

Bengi would never bring himself to say “GG EZ”, but once his teammate and top laner Gyeong-Hwan “MaRin” Jang cranked up the Renekton croc-o-dial to 11, the game’s outcome never looked remotely in doubt. “After MaRin got the solo kill in top lane, we realised that he was going to snowball the advantage. So we didn’t need to take any risks. We just had to play it safe and we were pretty confident we would win the game convincingly that way.”

Though it’s possible that Bengi brought out the Pool Party Rek’Sai skin because their team comp had a worrying lack of jet ski, he claims to have been primarily interested in keeping it out of the hands of EDG’s world-renowned jungler, Ming "Clearlove" Kai.

“Rek’Sai is no longer in the god tier,” says Bengi, “but with Elise, who is the best jungler out there banned already, we strategically wanted to take away Clearlove’s favoured jungler, which is Rek’Sai. I always feel that when the game ends with the opposing team’s jungler not having contributed much, I feel like I’ve contributed to the team’s win. So that was important to me.”

Ending the game with a 1/1/12 KDA, Bengi played his supporting role in SKT’s comp perfectly. He simply needed to offer the bump to set up MaRin and Sang-hyeok "Faker" Lee Ryze's spike. Aggressive warding, relentless poke, and clutch knock-ups in team fights. Hopefully he’ll forgive us for not 100% believing him when he claims, “I don’t rate myself that highly. I think I’m just about in the middle of the pack.” Sounds like the kind of thing a pool shark would say.

Bengi bestows the laurel of ‘world’s best jungler’ on a member of European’s best hope in this World Championship: “I think Fnatic’s Reignover is the best.”

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With such a decisive win against EDG in their first meeting, Bengi's team has a realistic chance of achieving his desire to, in his own words, “win it all without dropping a match and rehashing the feeling that we had back in 2013.”