SKT’s MaRin pierces H2K’s heart with Fiora

Going into SKTelecom T1 and H2K’s clash on Day 1 of the Worlds 2015 Group Stage, everybody’s eyes were on the mid lane. Sang-hyeok "Faker" Lee vs. Sang-ook "Ryu" Yoo, the epic rematch to settle an old score from a Zed mirror-match duel that lives in YouTube infamy. Ryu even hovered the Zed pick momentarily just to toy with spectators’ emotions, eventually opting for the LeBlanc pick into Faker’s Azir. But with everybody’s eyes on mid, the decisive carry for SKT T1 in today’s match would prove to be their top laner, Gyeong-Hwan "MaRin" Jang, whose hard carry on Fiora would ultimately tip the game heavily in SKT’s favour.

“Given the history between Faker and Ryu with the Zed matchup, we thought Ryu was going to prepare a lot for Faker,” says MaRin. “So we anticipated that they’d be really strong, but that didn’t really affect me in any way. I just played pretty comfortably.”

Everybody wants to kill Faker. His nickname ‘the unkillable demon king’ serves as a kind of implicit double-dog dare. To the point that it can easily bait teams into a dangerous state of overconfidence when they do manage to bring him down. Roughly 22 minutes into the match, Faker went slightly too aggressive on H2K’s AD carry Petter "Hjarnan" Freyschuss, only to find himself on the business end of a Gragas body slam from H2K’s Jean-Victor "Loulex" Burgevin, followed immediately thereafter by a deftly placed explosive barrel.

Aaaand...God was dead.

What H2K didn’t take into account is that when you cut the head off SKT, the beast is still very much alive, and very lethal. And the stinger in the beast’s tail was the duelist blade of MaRin’s Fiora. H2K thought the game was theirs and kept fighting. Fiora’s riposte ability blocked decisive moves from H2K, such as Ryu’s assassination attempt. As the river ran red and the fight drew out, you could see it slipping away from H2K, but they couldn’t bring themselves to retreat. Like a teenager in a horror movie saying the ill-fated phrase “I’ll be right back,” H2K re-engaged. They’d killed Faker, didn’t that mean the fight belonged to them? MaRin had another outcome in mind.

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“I’d picked Fiora because [H2K] picked Gnar and Braum. She’s a really good champion against tanky champions. The moment that I knew Fiora was the right choice was at that dragon fight where the game was pretty much decided. My teammates were all down, but I was able to come back and sweep the entire team. So that’s when I thought I made a good choice.”

“Pretty much decided” and “good choice” -- the understatement is real. After getting aced in that team fight, H2K lost the tenuous grip they’d kept on the game. They’d kept the gold lead mostly equal up until that point, but once they’d lost their hold, and the precipitous downhill slide began.

MaRin assures us that, despite being the heavy favourite in the match, SKT had no intention of underestimating its opponent. “No one in SKT was super confident that we would win easily,” he says. And though dominant, his play wasn’t perfect either.

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“I do think there’s an improvement area for me. I knew that Gragas was coming to dive the tower [10 minutes in] but I stayed anyway because I got kind of greedy and I thought I could fend off their attack. But it turned out to be the wrong decision and I ended up dying. So that’s a mistake I made -- being greedy -- and want to improve on.”

SKT’s opening game of Worlds 2015 was a perfect reminder of how many threats they bring to a fight. Korea’s No. 1 seed is just getting warmed up. And that’s a frightening thought indeed.

To catch all of the games from the 2015 World Championship, head over to the spoiler-free VODs page

Jason Killingsworth is a senior writer for Riot Games, based in Dublin, Ireland. You can find him on Twitter @RiotWhiski