League of Legends Worlds 2019: Top 6 moments from FPX vs. IG series
By Josh Tyler
The first semifinal series of Worlds 2019 is over. Here are the six moments from FPX vs. IG that got all the League of Legends fans hyped!
We have our first finalist for Worlds 2019, as FunPlus Phoenix (FPX) has defeated the defending League of Legends World Champions Invictus Gaming (IG). In a four-game series, there were a lot of fantastic moments of outplays, misplays, and triumphs to delight the Spanish crowd. Here are the six moments from the series that impressed us the most.
Rookie outplays a 2v1
In Game 1 of the series, IG mid laner Song “Rookie” Eui-jin roamed to the top lane for some clean-up duty after his top laner was killed by FPX’s solo laners Kim “GimGoon” Han-saem and Kim “Doinb” Tae-sang. While he thought that the two enemies were recalling in the top lane brush, it turns out it was all just a bait as Gimgoon dashed in on Renekton hoping to stun up and kill Rookie’s squishy Syndra.
However, Rookie repelled the attack with a great E – Scatter the Weak, stunning GimGoon. Then, with the wave coming Rookie and both GimGoon and Doinb recalling in brushes, Rookie fearlessly threw a Syndra orb into the brush with GimGoon, stunning him, before eventually finishing him off with his R – Unleash Power.
It was a very ballsy move for Rookie to pull given that the FPX solo laners had just attempted to bait him by engaging from the brush and he didn’t have vision to know if he would be hitting just one or both enemies. Without flash, Rookie risked getting engaged on and killed if he was wrong. Instead, he won the mind game and punished a greedy back position from GimGoon. Quickshot’s cackle at the play made it just hilarious to watch.
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Game 2 comeback
After winning Game 1, FunPlus Phoenix showed no signs of slowing down, jumping out to 6-0 kill advantage and almost a 3,000 gold lead just shy of the 12-minute mark. While Invictus did win a few skirmishes to shrink the gold lead at times, by the 20-minute mark FPX had grown their gold lead to over 5,000.
Then, at the 22-minute mark, Invictus tried a sneaky Baron from outside of vision of FunPlus. FPX did quickly diagnose the play and moved to flank Invictus, with GimGoon’s Mordekaiser teleporting in. It looked good at the start of the fight, with IG being forced to retreat, but then ADC Yu “JackeyLove” Wen-Bo hit a blind Varus ult onto FPX support Liu “Crisp” Qing-Song, allowing the team to blow him up instantly.
FPX continued to trickle in one-by-one, but IG outplayed the remaining members, killing all five FPX members with four IG players surviving. They managed to take the Baron and eventually the Inhibitor. While the game would go on for a while longer, this play marked the first moment of the series where IG felt like they were fully in control.
Ning’s big steal
As mentioned above, although IG cracked the FPX base at 23 minutes into Game 2, there was still more League of Legends to play. At 37:30, with vision control over the first spawning Elder Dragon, FPX began burning it down while GimGoon zoned the members of IG. Unfortunately, he and his teammates didn’t count the members and realize that there were only four players on the flank with GimGoon, not five.
Jungler Gao “Ning” Zhen-Ning dashed over the wall on Gragas, dumping his full damage combo and smite to steal the Elder Drake right out from under FPX jungler Gao “Tian” Tian-Liang‘s nose. With FPX having four elemental dragons already, securing Elder might have been a back-breaker for IG and give FPX incredible power in the coming team fight. With the steal, Ning kept his team’s hopes alive.