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League of Legends Worlds 2019: Day 6 recap – the mythical Griffin

By Josh Tyler

League of Legends. Photo courtesy of Riot Games
League of Legends. Photo courtesy of Riot Games /
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Two more teams saw their Worlds dreams die today, including one of North America’s great hopes. What happened in today’s League of Legends action?

Half of the groups have been decided, with Groups A and B sending two of their best teams onto the Worlds quarterfinals stage. Today, though, was far less climactic than yesterday’s League of Legends action. Two games into today’s play, G2 and Griffin had punched their tickets to the quarterfinals and Cloud9 and Hong Kong Attitude were eliminated.

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It was a day of vindication for Griffin, who shook off all the odds that were placed against them to upset G2 twice and earn the #1 seed. On the other side, though, North America’s most successful organization internationally, Cloud9, was unceremoniously eliminated in the group stage. Who looked most and least impressive?

Stock up

Griffin

There were a lot of questions about Griffin coming into this Worlds. They had a reputation for being chokers in LCK and a lot of analysts pegged them as a likely team to flame out in the group stage.

With all the drama surrounding their team’s ownership and management, which caused coaching changes prior to and during Worlds along with uncertainty about the team’s roster, it would have been easy for the first-timers at Worlds to fold. Instead, they came out swinging to put themselves in the driver’s seat to advance. They took down C9 in under 24 minutes in a dominant performance where they surrendered only a single kill.

Then, in the final game of the day with a chance to potentially force a tiebreaker with a win over G2, Griffin completely styled on the LEC’s best team. They jumped out to a 2k gold lead at 15 minutes and never let up, only surrendering two kills (to their 19) and no objectives in an easy win.

NA > EU

As much as it pains me (a North American resident and stan) to admit it, the gap between NA and Europe isn’t just there it’s quite massive. With G2 advancing to quarterfinals and C9 being eliminated, this will mark the third-straight year that EU sends more teams to the quarterfinals than NA (unless Clutch go absolutely god-mode tomorrow and 3-0 their group).

More than that, in their head-to-head matchup, G2 completely styled on Cloud9, jumping out to a 1.8k gold lead at just the 6-minute mark. They started out the game 5-0 and, although they relinquished some of their power with some minor mid game blunders, they ultimately came out on top, representing EU.

Stock down

Jankos and Wunder

If you want to look at some culprits for G2’s struggles today, the top side of the map is going to come squarely into focus. Jungler Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski played extremely well in their first two games on the day against Hong Kong Attitude and C9, going a combined 12/3/12. Unfortunately, he got absolutely dominated in the two games against Griffin.

Griffin’s jungler Tarzan read Jankos like a book, out-pathing the LEC MVP and being in a position to counter his every gank. Jankos ended the two games against Griffin 1/11/3.

On the top side of the map, though, Wunder didn’t have those same low lows of Jankos against Griffin (or at least his poor statistics weren’t entirely his fault), but he also had pretty underwhelming performances across the day. In the other two games on the day, Wunder went 6/7/15, which isn’t horrible, but his damage outputs tended to be a bit on the lower end.

Against Griffin, unfortunately, Martin “Wunder” Hansen was pretty much unable to do anything against Sword, which is a big problem considering most people would assume that top lane would be a pressure point for G2 over Griffin. Now, it wasn’t entirely his fault, because G2 didn’t do Wunder any favors in their pick/ban strategy or jungle pressure, but going 0/6/0 in two do-or-die games against the perceived weakest link on the other team is just not acceptable.

Next. A look at the new LoL esports manager game. dark

LMS

I said yesterday was the low point for the LMS as a region, but today their third seed went 0-6 in groups. They join 2018 MAD Team, 2018 G-Rex, 2017 1907 Fenerbahçe, 2015 Bangkok Titans, 2014 Dark Passage, and 2013 Mineski as the only teams to go winless in the group stage (excluding Season 2 where groups were only three games total). That makes four teams from the LMS who have gone winless in groups, with AHQ possibly poised to make it five tomorrow.

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