Winter has Come: Team Ice triumphs at the 2016 All-Star Event

Team Ice -- with squads from the EU LCS, LMS, and LPL -- proved that teamwork isn’t always the key to success. Sometimes you just need to ride on the back of your stars.

And many of Team Fire’s [GPL, LCK, and NA LCS] biggest stars were thumped to open the 1v1 tournament, including Bjergsen, Doublelift, and Faker. Ultimately, the result was settled before the Mixed 5v5 matchups to end the day thanks to the all Ice Final between Uzi and Maple, which paved the way for a lot of unusual picks like Shaco, Teemo, and the newly released Ivern.

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Uzi claims individual supremacy

Long heralded as one of the most gifted individual players in the professional landscape, LPL All-Star Uzi turned up to the 1v1 tournament with the intent to win. He made it clear from the get-go. Pros such as Doublelift said the pressure he exerts in lane is completely unparalleled. And on the Howling Abyss, there are no junglers to save you.

“I really, really wanted to win,” says Uzi. “I put in a lot of thought these past few days on how to win the lanes.” He didn’t shy away from the opportunity simply because he didn’t want to take it for granted, stating, “I’m not sure if I’ll get to come to next year’s All-Star Event. But if I do, then I want to win [the 1v1 again].”

Uzi played a mostly methodically style throughout the tournament and opted primarily for ADCs. Players were generally forced to all-in him from disadvantageous positions because he kept gaining minor advantages over them when it came to CSing.

While it looked like a dominant run, Uzi did suggest a bit of luck played into his win. He claimed his toughest matchup was against EU All-Star xPeke. “He’s a very strong player, and he definitely had a lot of preparation coming into the matchup against me,” says Uzi. “He knew which champions to pick to counter me and he knew which champions I was going to play, so I had a really hard time playing against him. In the very end, I was actually to the point where I felt like I needed to play something surprising to him and just try my luck out. That's why I picked Syndra.”

When pushed on that, Uzi conceded he hadn’t practiced her at all. “I wasn't even planning to play any AP champions. But after losing the second solo match, I realized that I had to do something different. So I went into my runes page and just basically whipped up an AP page. But I had so little time that I didn't get to finish my AP page. I knew that if I did my Pick/Ban right it would leave Syndra out and I was pretty sure he'd pick Syndra. So I figured I'd try my luck and play into a Syndra mirror matchup.”

Considering he had no practice on the champion, it worked out incredibly well for him. He dictated the tempo of that particular matchup and ended up executing xPeke to advance to the Finals, where he defeated Maple in a straight 2-0 set.

He did all of this while injured, too! With a little band-aid around his thumb, Uzi says, “This morning we actually had a tour of the Sagrada Familia and I went to the top -- when I was walking down, I tripped. I kind of twisted my ankle a bit and my thumb was bleeding. I'm really surprised that, even with a bleeding thumb, I was able to become the Solo King!”

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The All-Stars All-Stars

Aside from Uzi, here were a few other individual standout performances from the weekend:

• Dash and Ibai are early frontrunners for a Tony Award after their stage performances this weekend. I half expected one of them to hold a lion cub up to the crowd as “The Circle of Life” roared from the speakers. Dash also turned super saiyan on the last day from all the yelling.
• Mata had hilarious reactions all weekend, including this one in the 1v1 tournament where he was finally slain in a duel. But what was really impressive was when he defeated Faker in the 1v1. This legend will surely grow, so let me be the first to embellish it: Mata destroyed Faker without losing even so much as a sliver of health. He then became supreme overlord of the galaxy and was known as “Dark Mata.”
• The Barcelona crowd delivered an All-Star performance as well. They chanted xPeke’s name at every opportunity -- whether it was because he was actually on stage or because someone thought it was too quiet. In addition to that, though, a whole bunch of pros had their names chanted too. Kudos!
• Lee Sin saw a ton of play this weekend, including both sides selecting him for the One-for-All matchup. The GPL’s jungler, Levi, made a name for himself with a dominant performance in that matchup.
• xPeke shined the brightest in his native Spain. The fans loved him. The casters loved him. Everyone loved him. From picking Garen to pushing Uzi to his limit in the 1v1 tournament Semifinal, he played with style and grace.

That wraps up the 2016 All-Star Event. We hope you enjoyed the break for all the off-season roster shuffles. May your super team prevail. May your underdog bite hard. And may you find success in Season 7.