MSI 2022 Rumble Stage Day 11: G2 Esports go 0-5 Against a Surging Saigon Buffalo Team

G2 Esports go 0-5 after their 24 game win streak got snapped, this time to a surging Saigon Buffalo team on Day 5 of MSI 2022.

Saigon Buffalo continue their unprecedented streak of dominance by handing a decisive L to the faltering G2 Esports, who now have gone 0-5 after their 24 game win streak. The European champions looked anemic in their game versus Saigon, lacking the teamfighting moxie of days one and two to carry themselves out of an early game old deficit.

I was pleasantly surprised at seeing them drop their Kalista priority in favor of the Kai’Sa – something I had been very adamant about in my recent post – but Flakked did not have one of his usual excellent games on the champion, mistiming his Flash and getting killed off by Hasmed’s Aatrox near Dragon to further cement Saigon’s monstrous lead.

G2 got off to a good start with a gorgeous level 3 top lane dive, using Vladimir’s untargetability to drop turret aggro and secure the First Blood on Aatrox. However, things only went south from there, with the G2 bot lane forfeiting a duo lane kill, compounded by a roam to mid lane to kill of Caps’ Anivia.

BeanJ was the happy benefactor of all of these kills, accelerating his Gwen jungle into a very early Riftmaker. The Buffaloes never relented from that advantageous position, with BeanJ using the early gold injection to promptly take over the game, using Gwen’s invulnerability to split up G2 members and burst them down with AOE nukes.

BeanJ has had a lukewarm MSI thus far but was easily the MVP of this game, alongside a surging Froggy, who I had previously called the worst player of the Rumble Stage. It is a shame this young team is playing so well only after they have been eliminated, but it is still refreshing to see good League of Legends out of them, and I cannot wait to see how their learnings from MSI will supercharge them once they return to Vietnam.