ahq battles back to defeat Fnatic in stunning upset

The upsets just keep on coming. ahq e-Sports Club bounced back from their Day 1 loss to Group B leaders Cloud9 with a come-from-behind win over the heavily favored Fnatic.

While some analysts predicted close affairs between ahq and Fnatic, few would have expected that ahq would come back in this particular game. But as ahq top laner Ziv would tell us, they never panicked. "I don't think we really fell behind," Ziv said. "Our ADC scales really well, and Fnatic took too long to control the top side of the map."

The question on everyone's mind after champion select was, "TAHM KENCH!?" Yes. Tahm Kench. As Ziv explains, "Tahm Kench is a very good protector of the AD. Because FNC used an aggressive team comp, particularly Olaf, who can easily catch our AD, we have to assign Tahm Kench to protect him." Ziv paused, smiled, and laughed, "Also sometimes AN is not always under full control. So we use Tahm Kench to save him."

In addition to Tahm Kench, who proved invaluable in teamfights down the stretch, Ziv's Gnar was instrumental in the ahq comeback. Ziv managed to get the best of Huni on several occasions in lane, and was able to successfully split-push, while still being effective in teamfights. "I think the [Darius versus Gnar] matchup is actually pretty equal," Ziv explained. "The key is Frozen Mallet -- it's pretty good to limit Darius's movement. You can kite him very easily and split-push against him."

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With Ziv's knowledge of the top lane matchup, he was able to capitalize on Huni's mistakes, and that boon is what kept ahq in the game long enough for their composition to scale. "I think Huni plays really aggressively, and when he makes a mistake, he tries to get it back," Ziv said, "So whenever he makes a mistake and tries to be even more aggressive, we tried to capitalize on that."

Despite Fnatic eventually taking most of the map and ahq's middle inhibitor, ahq's world-class team-fighting brought them back into the game. "We didn't want to go to late game, because of Orianna," Ziv continued, "So we had to manage Gnar's rage to win team fights [to win the game.]"

Ziv's Gnar did his part, and was critical in the turning point. ahq won a 5-for-1 teamfight, earning multiple shutdown bonuses in the process, and took two turrets in the aftermath. From there, ahq was able to grab back enough vision control to start winning successive teamfights.

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It was enough. After a particularly great teamfight, ahq rode the momentum down the mid lane and stormed the Nexus. But Ziv is not satisfied. "I think we had better team fighting and chemistry," Ziv explained. But later said, "In this meta, our fighting style isn't ideal -- economic operation and tower-pushing is best. We'll have to vary our strategy to advance far in the tournament."

Despite the necessity for improvement, Ziv is optimistic about ahq's chances. "If we capitalize on [Invictus Gaming's weak form], and we keep our condition up, there's a good chance we'll get out of the Group," Ziv said. "IG isn't conditioned that well. Cloud9 has used the same strategy [in both their games] -- sieging and pushing. We'll make sure to counter this strategy next time."

The first step is Sunday when ahq takes on a wounded IG, who is now 0-2 after falling to Cloud9. Make sure you catch the game at 16:00 Central European Summer Time or 7:00am Pacific Standard Time.

Frank Fields is a Senior Editor for Riot Games Esports Web Content team. Talk to him on Twitter about ordered lists, where your comments will be assimilated into the Matrix. You can also find him in Solo Queue in the Diamond 5 retirement home.