League of Legends Mid Season Cup: The Five Best Plays from Day 1

If you missed Day 1 of the action from the Mid Season Cup, here are the five best plays of the day!

For most North American League of Legends fans, they weren’t able to get up early enough (or stay up late enough) to catch all the great plays from Day 1 of the League of Legends Mid Season Cup. Featuring the four best teams in the LCK (T1, DAMWON Gaming, Gen.G, and DragonX) and LPL (Top Esports, FunPlus Phoenix, JD Gaming, and Invictus Gaming), the action saw insane players like Faker, Knight, Khan, Doinb, and so many others face off in exhibition matches.

Only the four teams in Group A played today, but there was still incredible action. By the end of the day, FunPlus Phoenix and Top Esports both advanced to the semi-finals with a 2-1 record (FPX gets the first seed by winning the head-to-head match). But a few plays from today were just so insane we had to make sure they weren’t missed because people were sleeping.

5. Faker Goes Deep

The Unkillable Demon King himself, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok kicks off our list of the biggest plays

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from Day 1 of the Mid Season Cup with this ballsy use of the package (no pun intended) on Corki. Faker takes the Valkyrie deep into FPX’s team to start off this teamfight, getting of a ton of damage to allow his team to pick up a kill on ADC Lin “Lwx” Wei-Xiang before managing to slink away with a sliver of health.

Then, he bases and teleports right back into the fight to pick up a kill for himself on former teammate Kim “Khan” Dong-ha. He nearly picks up a double kill on FPX support Liu “Crisp” Qing-Song, but unfortunately he’s killed by the turret due to his greed. Still, it’s a sick play by one of the best players in the game and proves Faker still has it.

4. The Canyon Prediction

It’s a simple play, but it’s still so satisfying for any Lee Sin player to watch. DAMWON jungler Kim “Canyon” Geon-bu spots his opposing jungler Moon “Cuzz” Woo-chan farming his wolf camp. Canyon knows that Cuzz is playing Graves, who has a couple of dashes in his kit, so he throws his Sonic Wave to the spot where he thinks Cuzz will dash to, hitting the Graves and securing the easy kill. Not flashy, but that’s one of those plays you make in solo queue and flash the emote.

3. A Knight Flank

For most fans who don’t watch the LPL, today was their introduction to Zhuo “Knight” Ding, the mid laner of Top Esports. And he did not disappoint.

In the final game of the day, Knight basically ended the game himself with a gorgeous flank on Ekko, dashing over the wall at Red Buff and landing a huge stun onto the backline of T1. This allowed Top Esports to instantly delete Faker and Cuzz before turning onto ADC Park “Teddy” Jin-seong. With no defense left for T1, Top was able to run down and close out the victory.

2. Huge Effort

T1’s support Lee “Effort” Sang-ho doesn’t get a lot of recognition, but he had one very good play in T1’s victory over FPX. He played Gragas support in all three games in Day 1 of the Mid Season Cup, but in this game he made his biggest play.

In combination with his ADC on Kalista, Effort threw himself into Khan, waiting for Vladimir’s pool to end, and forcing a quick flash. Effort then flashed himself and chunked Khan, which forced the Kindred ult out of Gao “Tian” Tian-Liang. With all of FPX’s big safety tools gone, Effort and T1 went in, picking up four kills (Effort even got one with a nice Gragas barrel from downtown) that led T1 to a win over the defending World Champion.

1. Knight Outplays Everyone

Like I said, Knight had himself a day today in his first international match. This play was almost a massive win for DAMWON, who set everything up beautifully with the stolen Ornn ult and top laner Jang “Nuguri” Ha-gwon wreaking havoc on Aatrox. Then Knight showed up.

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While everyone is going to point to how clutch the Yuumi heals were in this play (and yes, that’s true, Yuumi is broken), Knight just freaking outplayed everyone. His use of Leblanc’s Distortion and Mimic allowed him to pick up a triple kill, turning what was going to be a lost fight into an even exchange. Top Esports would go on to win this game on the back of Knight’s masterful play.

The Mid Season Cup continues tomorrow with Group B action at 3:00 EST / 8:00 CET.

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