GPL Spring 2014 Grand Finals Recap

Though Vietnam was no longer in position to challenge for GPL supremacy, their performance before a live Vietnamese audience demanded their best for the final time in the spring split. Meanwhile, the Taipei Assassins weren't the only ones hungering for another crown; old hometown rivals AHQ developed a taste for gold during TPA's Season 3 slump, and sought to leverage all they had to quash the new Assassins reign before it could find its foothold.

3RD PLACE – TAIPEI SNIPERS VS SAIGON JOKERS

To kick off the final day of the spring split, the Jokers were yet again tasked with breaking the Taiwanese monopoly of the top spots, and this time against the Taipei Snipers. With the games played live in Vietnam, they had the home crowd advantage, and the pressure of a hostile environment showed in the first game as the Snipers were outmaneuvered by Optimus and Safety. Though they rode into Game 2 with tremendous momentum, the Jokers had failed to break the Snipers' spirits. Now that he was warmed up, OhReal's Nidalee's spears weren't blanking anymore: an end-of-game record of 7-0-13 attested to the holes torn into the Jokers' defenses time and time again. Unlike the Jokers, who played near-identical compositions in the first two games, the Snipers didn't offer the courtesy of allowing them to get used to the flow of the game. Their next two sets offered radically different strategies: a bloodthirsty all-in fighting composition featuring Kha'zix, Ryze and Draven, followed finally by a high-mobility Sivir and Pantheon-based team to dance out of reach of the Jokers' deep-dive Malphite and Fizz team. In a display of strategic deftness under high pressure, the Snipers shot down the Jokers' hope for a top-three finish yet again.

MVP

Chou "OhReal" Chun An Though his spears were a nonfactor in their first game against the Jokers, OhReal's devastating impact in the following games set the tone for the series. Whether it'd be blowing holes into the enemy defenses with a single well-timed spear, or running right up with a fistful of lightning on Ryze, the team built their fundamental strategies around their mid laner's champions. A final Gragas build with both Rabadon's Deathcap and Brutalizer was highly unusual to say the least, but the additional melee damage helped fight off the Jokers' attempts to close in and punish.

GRAND FINALS – TAIPEI ASSASSINS VS AHQ

The match between Taipei Assassins and AHQ Esports Club wasn't just between the top two teams of their respective GPL groups – both of them are circuit champions, with TPA claiming S2 and the winter split, while AHQ dominated the circuit during Season 3. Understandably, they held nothing back against each other, as TPA led Game 1 with an explosive level one fight in the jungle. Though Naz came out ahead of the fight with two kills, giving AHQ a 3-2 advantage, Bebe also came out ahead, and he made a crucial impact. His team's Kha'zix and Twitch-led ambush strategy seemed suspiciously designed with AHQ in mind: it worked around AHQ's momentum-stealing initiations, exploiting a weakness in AHQ's famous fight-oriented strengths. But TPA took their initial success too much to heart. AHQ seemed to flounder early in Game 2 as the Assassins took a three-turret lead, but they were really just waiting for the right opportunity. It was delivered to them on a silver platter at 21 minutes as the Assassins made a mindboggling error: they attempted a fast Baron to shut AHQ out as early as possible, but were not ready for Naz to suddenly jump in for a successful Smite, take a Double Kill, and set fire to all of their carefully accumulated advantages. In their zeal to break AHQ's spirits, it was the Assassins that were broken instead, as they offered barely any resistance in Game 3 either. Game 4 seemed to follow a similar pattern, but AHQ did not account for the Assassins' desperation and stubbornness. Over the course of the split, they've demonstrated a weakness that only the Jokers had managed to exploit to any level of success: a crucial inability to shut out games even from a position of overwhelming advantage. It was fatal versus Bebe's Kog'maw: as the game reached the one-hour mark, Bebe's maxed out inventory slowly chipped away at AHQ one fight at a time. Finally, at 60:50, they overrode the ill fortunes of their Game 2 Baron call: they forced AHQ to fight them before an enraged Nashor. Achie rampaged across AHQ's back line, TPA secured an explosive 4-1 advantage in the fight, and the defending champions miraculously secured one final match. With everything on the line, and after such a draining and dramatic performance, Game 5 was defined primarily by cautious inaction. With Lulu, Sivir and Karma to maximize TPA's team mobility, AHQ was cautiously outmaneuvered point for point over the course of a game that matched the prior for time consumed, but was a mere shadow of the energy, intensity and desperation. With over 100,000 gold in their pockets, TPA leveraged their combined strengths for one last push through the bot lane inhibitor, and DinTer sliced through AHQ for a game-winning and series-winning Double Kill.

MVP

Chen "Bebe" Bo-Wei Taipei Assassins captain and AD carry Bebe has firmly established himself as the unbowed king of the Southeast Asian circuit. He remained undaunted in the face of AHQ's relentless advance, refusing to give up what seemed to be a hopeless fight – his patience and leadership opened the path to a miraculous outcome, with his trust in his own abilities on Kog'maw in Game 4, and an inspiring championship victory.

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Image Credit: Taipei Assassins