League Rundown - Episode 565: NA mids lul

[00:00:13] Speaker A: Gets a little too far here. He's gonna have to try and get himself out. Let me go. Tillery and the rest of the shots of fire. Zion is just killing the next Zion can eat it single handedly win the game by game by game by game by should be. Oh my God. Stupid passes through and manages to the table with Messiah tanking it up. I do not believe he just believe. I cannot understand this game. Unicorns of love. It wasn't a mutant. The Nexus. Hello and welcome to episode 565 of the League Rundown. This is your 2025 LEC LTA split two playoffs week three review, including the LEC Finals review. This episode is lovingly entitled Na Mids Lull. I'm your host, Kangas and I'm joined by two esteemed co hosts. Up first, we have. Fresh out of the can, it's Badger. [00:01:30] Speaker B: You know, I. I had something in mind, just a nice little quip, but G2 G2 lost to an NA mid. [00:01:40] Speaker A: Lol. Yeah. Also joining us on the podcast, he's way too buffed to be called scrawny. It's Yanni. [00:01:52] Speaker C: Yeah, listen, you know what? I appreciate that, man. I haven't been to the gym in a while though. My back just gave me some problems last year and you know, I gotta get. Oh yeah, you know. All right, so now we're gonna go into story time. [00:02:06] Speaker A: Story time. Before we get into the news, I. [00:02:08] Speaker C: Developed sciatica when I was like 10. You know how they always said, like, don't wrestle. Your parents are like, don't wrestle in the house. Well, like my buddy who like didn't know any better, I later on wrestled with somebody who did know any better. I just like jumped on my back when we were 10. And then randomly throughout the year, maybe like two or three times a year, ever since then, I'd go to like bend over and get like shooting pain down my leg and like not be able to bend over the rest of the day or realized later on in life that was sciatica. And as I've gotten older in the 20 years since then, it's gotten progressively worse. So when I was pushing a PR for vertical leg presses, I was like, oh man, we're going to PR today. We're going to push 550. And I did it, but my back was angry with me and typically would go away after like two weeks. And it didn't go away until I like hit the chiropractor. [00:02:56] Speaker A: So wait, what workout were you doing? [00:02:58] Speaker C: I was doing vertical leg presses. Not like, not like true vertical leg presses, but, you know, you know how you have the leg press machine and typically you just push your legs out in front. It's the one that, you know, works. The works like the quads. [00:03:10] Speaker A: There's. [00:03:10] Speaker C: There's an incline. [00:03:11] Speaker A: It's the one where you're, like, laying back a little bit. [00:03:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, 550, I'm. Yeah, I'm a big dude, you know, so I get to. I lug around a lot of weight, so, like, 550, it's pretty. You know, I really wanted that because that's, like, that's accomplishment right there. That. That's awesome. And I knew that my back was going to be problematic within the next day or two and was going to lay me up for, like, two weeks. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe that was my sign not to do it, but I did not listen to the sign. And therefore, I have not really gone to the gym since, like, August. So it's almost been a year. I got to get back. [00:03:44] Speaker A: All right, well, hey, everyone's journey is, you know, you got to take it at your own pace. It sucks when you have injuries like that, but encouraging you when you're feeling ready, get back into it, baby. I'm rooting for you, cheering you on. [00:03:56] Speaker C: Hell yeah, brother. I'm gonna get. You know what? I'm like, I'm gonna get back. Sometime this week is really my aim. [00:04:02] Speaker A: Or you know what we should do? [00:04:03] Speaker C: What's that? [00:04:04] Speaker A: Because we're both gonna be at msi. Let's get a gym day at msi. [00:04:08] Speaker C: Oh, dude, that'd be so sick. I'm actually so down for that. [00:04:11] Speaker A: All right, all right. We'll talk more about that later. MSI is coming up, but we do have kind of finals for all the regions that will be representing represented at MSI this last weekend and these coming weekends here. So let's talk about some of LCK Update. What's going on over in the lck? Where are we in the playoffs and kind of what are the storylines happening right now? [00:04:32] Speaker B: So we're getting close to the end. At this point, we are down to the final three matches. So we have the upper bracket match, the quote unquote upper bracket match that's between Genji and Hanwell Life coming up. That will be on third Friday, I believe. So we have. Friday we have Gen G. Let me make up. Let me look at the sketch and make sure they got this right. I didn't have it pulled up. I just have the Teams where they're at at this point. [00:05:01] Speaker A: So is it. Is it going to be like all three days in a row? Just. Yeah. [00:05:04] Speaker B: So it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday. [00:05:06] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So first up it is Gen G versus Hanwha Life. Winner of that is the number one seed from the lck. [00:05:15] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:16] Speaker B: To catch you up to speed. [00:05:18] Speaker A: Oh yeah, I remember this, that the format, the final match is not the championship match. It's kind of weird, right? [00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Because there's no quote unquote, champion for spring. It's just who's the first seed and who's the second seed coming out. So to get you up to speed, the bracket looked like KT versus Domon in the first round. Winner that plays Nongshim, winner that plays T1. Winner of that plays the loser of Gen G Hanwha. So KT Rolster came into it, you know, low expectations, fifth seed coming in KT3 Ode Dom1 in the first round, knocking Dom1 down to the lower group for Summer. Kind of like how they're doing in the lpl, how there's like the. The two different groups. I can't remember. Yeah, Nirvana. Send. Thank you. So it's like Legends and Rise or something like that are the two groups for LCK Summer. So Dom1, who went 5:0 and was so close to qualifying first, first strike, first stand. Fuck. Now has been knocked out in the first round of the Road to MSI playoffs and will be in the lower group with the, you know, Fear Ex. Okay, Bro Savings Bank. Do not finish the. Do not finish the split freaks and whatever the fuck the other team is. Doesn't matter. It's the lower group. So okay, KT3O's damwon and they come out and they 3.0nong shim. And everyone's like, oh, wait, hold on. We can't get excited at this point. What's going on? So KT is playing T1 and a telecom war to figure out who plays for the last MSI spot on. On Sunday. I mean, it's so Friday morning. It's Genji versus Hanwha. That's going to be a really good series. Saturday morning is KT versus T1. And then Sunday morning will be the loser of the Friday game versus the winner of the Friday game. And it's just going to be interesting. [00:07:30] Speaker A: The winner of the Saturday game, right? [00:07:31] Speaker B: Or Saturday game. Yeah, it's. Yeah, you know what I meant. So. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, interesting. [00:07:37] Speaker B: Generally speaking, I mean, honestly, if, if, if it's not Genji and Hanwha representing LCK at MSI. We did something wrong. We did. [00:07:46] Speaker A: Look, man, T1 just have the narrative buff sometimes. [00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:50] Speaker A: But it's not. [00:07:51] Speaker B: They don't have the MSI buff. They have the world's buff. You gotta keep that in mind. So. [00:07:58] Speaker A: But when's the last time they missed an msi? [00:08:01] Speaker B: Last year. No. [00:08:02] Speaker A: Oh, they weren't it. No, they were there, right? [00:08:04] Speaker B: They were there. Were they there? I thought they weren't there last year. [00:08:06] Speaker C: They were there last year. [00:08:07] Speaker B: Yeah. They were there. Oh, yeah. [00:08:09] Speaker C: Yeah. They've been to Emmy every MSI since 2022. [00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. Okay. Never mind. [00:08:17] Speaker A: Been a while since they've missed out, but either way, if they're not like, the favorites right now, and they're gonna have to stop a pretty hot kt. The telecom wars are always fun. It's like crazy win rate to T1, though, right? Like, don't they have, like a 90 win rate of the telecom war? [00:08:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty much. [00:08:33] Speaker C: It's this. [00:08:34] Speaker B: At this point, it's very far, and. [00:08:36] Speaker C: Few between this leads me to believe that. I don't know. I think Katie's gonna do it this time. I. Now, listen, I'm a guy that I don't. I'm. I'm not. I don't really have, like, a fan allegiance for any LCK team because it's actually the region that I kind of watch the least. Right. It's just because I'm preoccupied with watching another region that goes on at that time. But I just enjoy the league as a whole. Right. Like, I always enjoy when I get to catch an LCK game no matter what. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:02] Speaker C: But, like, this is a nice run that KT is going on, man. And I think that it would be really cool to see, like, some of these underdog teams that have gone on really hot runs in the four major leagues get to msi. [00:09:19] Speaker A: That would be cool. Yeah. Because, like, LPL has a similar narrative going on right now. And we'll talk about that with lta. It just happened essentially with lec, so I think that's natural. Time to talk about lpl. Yanni, what's the LPL update? Where are we in the. The playoffs and kind of what's the. The big storyline happening? [00:09:35] Speaker C: Yeah. So LPL has gotten a little crazy in the last week. Right. So basically, on Monday, BLG took on anyone's legend, and the winner is going to msi. Anyone's legend will be blg, three games to two. Now, if somebody recall, early in the split, BLG had looked all out of sorts. They went and they, you know, they punted their jungler and they got the jungler from the worst team in group Ascend and then became the best team in group Ascend somehow, you know, because that, that's how that works, right? You know, they went on this really nice run. They had a, they had a tough assignment, right? They finished fourth out of the. The top four. So they did not have their pick of team to face in the first round. They three zeroed IG. They three zero top eSports. And then, you know, unfortunately they did for them, they did lose to anyone's legend. But really happy for anyone's legend because it's the first MSI appearance I believe for the entire roster for anyone's legend as a whole. You know, who are, who are, you know, formerly the Rogue warriors as well. So like it's, that's really, really big for that entire organization as a whole. And then the real big thing though is Team we has gone on the most improbable run that you could have expected out of this team. They finished 7:11 in group Ascend. They were bolstered by a huge winning streak that they had in the middle of the split that got them like five of their seven wins or like six of their seven wins. So they were like sandwich like lost streak, win streak and then lost streak. Going into the playoffs. They had to face a group Nirvana team, the second place group Nirvana team, just to even get into the playoffs. And a lot of people on the broadcast thought that LGD, the Nirvana team was going to win Team W E1 and were like, oh great, congratulations. Team WB is going to play against anyone's legend. They're going to lose. They're going to get sent to the lower bracket and they're probably going to lose there too. So with Weibo beating jdg, that meant that JDG had to play against team W e. And we know JDG with their, their insane roster of ala shun scout pays and missing that it was probably over for team W e and dwe smacked them. Like Team W e showed up and smacked them. But then they had to play against Top Esports because BLG beat Top Esports. The first stand representatives are now in the losers bracket. And we're like, all right, Team W e you guys did. You guys did good. You beat jdg. What the hell? You just beat Top Esports. At a best of five, they beat top ESP three games to two and they sent 369. Canavi Cream, Jackie Love, and Crisp Packing LC and split three. [00:12:19] Speaker A: Yeah. I was gonna say this is lower bracket, right? So top esports are just, like, out. [00:12:22] Speaker C: Oh, they're out. Yep. Seeing split three, baby, you're. You're heroes. [00:12:26] Speaker A: We need it. Let's go. W. I did not want to see top esports back. [00:12:30] Speaker C: Yeah. And now team W, they're Gonna play against IG literally Wednesday morning at 5am so in seven hours, they're gonna play against IG, who is also, you know, close to elimination here. And, you know, IG have been a little shaky. They beat FPX three games to two, which is not something that you would expect. You would expect IG to have a much cleaner series. They did look a lot better against Weibo, who, on paper, were at least a better team. But, I mean, team W e they have the magic, baby. Like, I. I think that they're actually gonna win, man. I. I think that they entire roster has been unlocked. You know, early on, it was just their ad carry taehyun, who, you know, I hate to say it, but the entire of twe are like the rejects. Like, Taeyoon was not able to cut an lck. Caris, their mid laner was not able to cut an lck. A monkey was formerly of EDG and was expected to be this really great young jungler, and they let him go. And Cube, as a top laner, has just kind of been, like, there. And vampire, especially the young support, he's only 19 years old. I mean, he was the. The butt of the joke at the end of last year, right? And everybody was like, man, this guy's terrible. This guy can't play. And early on, you know, taehyun was the rock. But then monkey came in. They. They picked him up, and he unlocked Vampire at the support role. And that allowed them to unlock Caris in the mid lane. Yeah, he struggles a lot. But they are able to bolster his gameplay by using jungle pressure to unlock their support to make sure their mid laner doesn't end the game away. And if he gets a couple kills, Karras can carry a game. And then Cube has been a stalwart rock in the top lane. I mean, like, this team is playing really consistently. They've got a style that works for them. And I really want to see them beat ig. Now, the only problem is, if they beat ig, they gotta play against blg. And if they beat ig, great. But if they play against blg, I love the magic. I love the story. I'm not sure if I If I am willing to say they're gonna beat blg. But you should check out IG versus Team W e Wednesday morning. Tomorrow morning, seven hours episode's probably not going to be out by then, but that means you should go check the vod, because I'm sure that'll be a. A banger. [00:14:45] Speaker A: Plug the YouTube. Plug the YouTube. Where can you find the VOD? [00:14:47] Speaker C: You know, you can find the VOD at lplorenglish or you can go to Twitch if you want to catch the Twitch vod. It's Twitch tv. LPL English. [00:14:58] Speaker A: Hell yeah. Fun stuff right there. Make sure to go support the channel as well as the Twitch channel because that's, you know, all the work. Again, everyone from the LPL unofficial English broadcast is doing in or putting in the best way to reward it. Just follow all the channels and then if you have the ability to, you can also subscribe, do all that fun stuff to tell. [00:15:20] Speaker C: We love you guys. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, cool. So that's what's happening. LPL lck. We're gonna have. We already had LEC finals happen this past weekend. LTA north finals are gonna be next weekend along with the LPL lck. And then we'll be able to cover lcp, which is kind of the one region we don't really have anybody with their eyes on or even L. SE we'll have like RMC on at some point to kind of go over everything happening down there. But we'll do a full MSI preview episode to catch everyone up to speed on the teams going, the representatives, and what to expect from all of them. Other news that happened. We have one bit of, well, one final award that was given out very shortly after the last week's episode was posted. Inspired. Got mvp. Any surprises from anyone on the pod? [00:16:05] Speaker C: Not at all, man. That guy's really. [00:16:09] Speaker B: Anybody but inspired. We would actually riot. [00:16:12] Speaker A: So clearly him. And then also we had one kind of quasi roster news. It wasn't confirmed, but apparently Larson is sticking with Navi. They are keeping the franchise mid laner from Rogue that they got the spot from. I, you know, burped a little bit because I was trying to hold back a vomit in my mouth while I was saying that right there. But Larson's still with them apparently. We'll see if that's true. [00:16:43] Speaker B: Is continuing his ways somehow, some way. [00:16:48] Speaker A: But of course, again, that was only a rumor. I didn't even. I don't even know if that was like a Sheep Esports article. I just saw like a Twitter. [00:16:53] Speaker B: I thought it was A sheep one, but maybe it was. [00:16:56] Speaker C: I think it's a sheep one. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Okay, well, either way. God, they're usually right. I hope it's not okay. Well, there we go. That's. That's really all the news that we had that we were able to think of before going live for this week's episode. If we miss anything, make sure to let us know in the community. Discord. You can find a link in the description wherever you are listening. Speaking of, we have the updates from Fantasy from the Discord. I played a little bit of catch up. Apollo is still in first. Pacific is still in second. Apollo's at 1110 points. Pacific's at 1102 points. I'm at 10, 80 points. I was about like, I want to say like a hundred points behind. Maybe not that much. I was a lot of points behind Apollo before this weekend. Now I'm only 30. So that's striking distance to take that first place back. A big part is I did not fully commit. I know some people just picked all of Fly Quest again. Yes, they won the series, but, you know, C9 really made them work for it as. We'll talk about that later. So I diversified a little bit. I was still my lowest scoring week to date though. I got like 65 points because even though flag was one, they just did not get a lot. And I backed Team Liquid as the other team in the shop if I beat them. But shout out. Yeah, and he still had a good amount of points. Okay, cool. And also if you want to support the podcast, you can do so through our Patreon or our merch shop. Links for both of those are also in the description. All right, gentlemen, we have two regions to talk about and we're going to start off with the one that just wrapped up their split all the way across the ocean from where we are right now in eu. The LEC had their finals week weekend with a lower bracket finals and then a grand finals. And oh boy, did it not go how I expected it to. Yanni, you might notice. So it was only me and RMC on the podcast last week, but we both got it wrong by default based on this first prediction. Because Casey versus mcoi. How did that series look what happened? [00:19:03] Speaker C: So first and foremost, if I was on, I would have done the same thing. I don't think I would have predicted G2 to win their match, but I would have picked Casey to beat Koi. So, you know, that's. Yeah, you know, I'm right there with you guys in spirit. At the very least. You know, big match, right? Coy versus Casey because winner goes to MSI and ewc, right? And like game one, I mean, Meerwin did not look good on this Gwen. Like, he, he kind of had a bad time. [00:19:39] Speaker B: Doesn't cut it sometimes, you know? [00:19:41] Speaker C: No, no, it was really bad. It was like, oh man, like collie Casey. Yeah, it's like, oh my God. Casey is just gonna like absolutely crush Koi, right? And things were just like, not looking good. But then like game two, Meerwyn pulls out the wacky right on hit Nico Top. Like, all right, bro. Against, against Niddy Top in the year of our Lord 2025, right? I mean, like, you know, Casey had pretty good, pretty good scaling on their side with Vlad Azir. But then like, things got really weird. They, they send Vlad a TP to try to end the game at like at Dragon after they already lost. Yike. And then Jojo Pugn went back and teleported to answer that. So now it's a 4v3 at the Dragon and like they're trying to secure Mountain Solar KC. But then they fight the 4v3. And you know, I, I, I don't necessarily know if I agree with that decision to fight 4v3. I think fighting 5v4 with your, with your Azir is probably the, the better way to go. And then the game kind of just got out of hand from there. Then you go to game three, which is, you know, Meerwin pulling out this Varys top and like, dude just doing crazy stuff. [00:20:56] Speaker A: Funny how like the, the first two wins for mcoi really felt like they were around Merwin's funny picks. I love this guy for what he's willing to play up there. But also Jojo on the casting was pretty fun. [00:21:05] Speaker C: Yes. Jojo's cassadon was really, really strong. Alvaro in this game was nuts, bro. He got like five assists like within like the first like 10 minutes of the game. A bro got like three assists in a mid lane fight. Goes up top, helps with a dive and like, you know, they get a huge lead. Jojo gets going early on this. Cast it in, right? Yeah, they had some fundamental issues with the comp like in the mid game because you've got Varus as your top laner instead of like an actual top laner. Like you will run into issues but like, you know, they, they got ahead enough early and then that allowed Jojo to, you know, hit that level 16 break point on Kassadin and run over the game, right? But then in game four, right, Casey comes Back they crush mcoi like it's not close, bro. Like you've got this, you've got this ivern pick for El Yoyo which has like no agency when your lanes lose like this. I mean JoJo went one and four on the smolder. Meerwin got absolutely sunned by Kana in the top lane. So then you get to the, you know the all important game five, right? And when the chips are down, you get Jojo Pune Cassiopeia coming through for a must win game, right? And yep, the game, it wasn't lost at the start when Kcana and Yike go to dive Meerwyn on k' Sante. But Supa was just there on the rotation. They go two for one. Super's playing jinx. He gets two kills on this jinx and then almost immediately after a bottom lane fight, he gets two more kills. Carmine Core just doesn't have any hard lockdown for this jinx and it's. She's got four kills early and you just know that no matter what KC tries to do, eventually this jinx is just going to be inevitable. There's going to be no way that you're actually going to be able to kill Supa. There was no way they were able to kill Super. He went 12 and one carries McOid a victory. It was a really, really nice comp. Gets them to MSI, gets them to eat up WC. [00:23:09] Speaker A: And the craziest part, this was JoJo's technically second ever Cassiopeia game. The first time he ever did it in like arguably a pro career was when he was on an Academy back in 2021. [00:23:23] Speaker C: Yes sir. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Not even during like a riot like regular season tournament. It was called arena of Legends which was like a lead in tournament for proving ground. It's like a really weird format back there but like for. For tier one one play. This was his first ever stage Casiopia. Which just makes it crazier that in game five they rely on him for it and he played pretty well. I. I thought he actually did. [00:23:45] Speaker B: He piloted it pretty well. I think they just. I think their game five comp that they have was. They had. It was insane just based on draft played out. Just. Yeah, I mean how is. How is Renekton Sejuani supposed to get through Cassiopeia Maokai like frontline to get to a ching. [00:24:03] Speaker A: Just couldn't get into the fights. [00:24:07] Speaker B: Collist tried his best but he just was not able to do anything to Koi front line before Supa would even get like first Reset. [00:24:17] Speaker A: He also had that really like tragic. This was in game five where he like you could tell that the nerves were getting to him because he just like misfortune ults mid lane and cancel off angle from the. The minion wave and cancels it and then just like walks away. You're like, oh no. Nobody saw that the camera was on it. We saw it. [00:24:38] Speaker B: It's like surely. Surely nobody was watching it. And it turns out that everybody was watching it. So. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's one of those moments where like that's got to be one of the more stressful moments in a young player like that's career. So hope he doesn't like kick himself too much for it. But it. You really could tell, I think. I don't know for certain, but my opinion is that there is either a spoken or just an unspoken rule on the EU broadcast team that you don't dunk on Clif or really any members of kc. I imagine it's because their community and fans will just kill you if you. [00:25:13] Speaker B: Do genuinely remember when we. Remember when we. We got Casey in for the first time and you. You're. You're like wacky prediction was that there was gonna more than one instance of. [00:25:25] Speaker A: Police intervention because of the. I was right. Rumors have it that I was right. But I. I think that's like a clear instance on broadcast where you could tell the casters were like. [00:25:37] Speaker B: Of. They just want to be like you just cancel it. [00:25:40] Speaker A: All right, let's keep going. Yeah. Okay. [00:25:42] Speaker B: All right. Oh my God. [00:25:45] Speaker A: Oh. The best one that we had was this was just like a regular season game. I know that Aale likes to meme this one a lot. We were watching it together before a lta game and Kalist like throws a game cuz they're like super far ahead. He's playing Kaisa and then he like tries to take a 1v1 bot side but then the entire team collapses on him and then he dies. And what the caster said, I don't remember. I think it was Vettius. He's like, you know, sometimes you just find yourself in the middle of all five enemies. You just find yourself there, you know. [00:26:15] Speaker C: Happens to me all the time, bro. [00:26:17] Speaker A: Yeah, you didn't throw. He didn't overextend. He just found himself there, you know. It's crazy. [00:26:22] Speaker C: I still. I'll still never forget the. The. The blg emote that he dropped moving from the Baron fight a couple weeks. [00:26:28] Speaker A: That was amazing. [00:26:31] Speaker C: It's just a melee. [00:26:36] Speaker A: He. We know how good he can he's so good. Which makes me love these stupid shitty moments that he has because I'm like, dude, this kid's still gonna be like one of the great. [00:26:44] Speaker C: He's got rookie moments. [00:26:46] Speaker A: Yeah, he's still a rookie. Like give him some slack. But the fact that like people don't even talk about the mistakes, I think is very funny. Yeah. But yeah, that was, that was the Saturday games with McCoy taking the win. They had to fight for it. But they did beat kc, which is more than, you know, we can say for how went for their match against G2. But they, they were able to do this in the upper bracket earlier. They. They did take Casey into the lower bracket early on and this was kind of their rematch. So back to back five game series between these two. And the only two five game series in EU's entire bracket, mind you. Because then Yanni, what happened in the finals? [00:27:25] Speaker C: Ah, well, M Koi go. And they beat the Tara. The G2. Three games the one. And you know, it's just the magic. The magic, man. Yeah. [00:27:40] Speaker A: Like those first two games, like they just did not know what to do. [00:27:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I. I mean I don't, I don't really. Like, they just play around Baron. So weird, man. Like, I don't know. [00:27:56] Speaker A: They. [00:27:56] Speaker C: They play around Barons so strangely and like MCO is just playing the map better for a large majority of this game. Playing on side lanes better, getting good picks with their composition and then merely gets picked off on the square. He's got this Gwen again, right? And oddly enough, that's when things start going badly for G2 because then they're like, let's do Baron. And they fail to secure it the first time they go even in a fight, you know, McCoy forces them off of it and then G2's like, it, let's do it again. We're gonna go for it a second time. Right? And yeah, they get it. But they lose like three members. They lose a lot of structures. And then, you know, Meerwind taketh away, but then he giveth two. They tried to make a pick play onto him in top lane like again later in the game. And he wins the 2v1. He's 1, 4 and 3 after winning the 2v1. And. And they win the game off that like it just starts. It kicks off the game winning sequence which was so strange. Again, I really don't like. I don't know, man. This guy's Gwen is just like too sketchy for my taste. Right. It's. It just really is. [00:29:09] Speaker A: Well, it's an AP Champion, but it's not a ranged AP Champion. [00:29:12] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:29:13] Speaker B: The problem is you only can't play at the mirror and special. Yeah. [00:29:16] Speaker C: Can't play it. Right. Game two. Listen, I thought this game was going to be, like, done and dusted early because Caps and Broken Blade get early kills on rise and Camille, which is like, usually an indicator that you're gonna lose the game. Right. [00:29:32] Speaker A: Like, and also they have a senna for scaling. And like, I love Trundle as a pick right now. Other than the fact he didn't have like a giga tank to steal stats from in this game, but, like, he still had a lot of value. [00:29:42] Speaker C: Yeah, you could steal. I mean, you still from Rel and then like, you kind of just make her, like, completely irrelevant. [00:29:47] Speaker A: Right. [00:29:47] Speaker C: You can't really engage at that point, but you gotta be. [00:29:49] Speaker A: Or you gotta Galia. [00:29:50] Speaker B: Right. [00:29:50] Speaker A: Like, anybody that goes in, it's not gonna make you invincible, but it makes them very squishy. [00:29:54] Speaker C: Yeah. But the. The good News is, like, G2 see that? And they're like, excellent. We can start skirmishing, right? But like, the MCOI comp has Pantheon and it's got Galio, it's got these globals, and they shut down literally every single play. And then like G2 starts getting desperate. They make a TP play behind MCO as they're retreating from G2 side of the map. And they're like, we can catch Alvaro here. And he just outplays them. Like, he just flashes over one member, turns around, stuns all three of them with his Q. Like, his role was, like, so nuts. G2 had a nice, like, potential game winning play up in the top lane where they pick off two members and it's a 5v3 and Alvaro is not quite there yet. And it looks like G2 is gonna get like two more kills. And he just like, flashes over the wall and he like, knocks three people to the side. He stuns three people. He pulls them in his. In his magnet storm and like, super firing arrows. Yeah, exactly. He's just buying so much room for these guys. He really saved this game for mco. I. I really want to, like, give him big MVP props for that one. Like, that was a really, really beautiful rel game. Game. Now, the good news for G2 is that in game three, Schooman got Vi and he just was everywhere like this, bro. Just. Just played out of his mind on this. VI going everywhere, making ganks happen, you know, sitting behind Jojo, setting behind Meerwyn, and. And they essentially everybody on McOil was irrelevant this game. Right? Like, even super couldn't. You know, super got like 400Cs on the ZERI. But. But, you know, he didn't have a. He didn't have one of these enchanters that you would really expect him to have. [00:31:41] Speaker A: Exactly. It's. It's like you're playing Zeri. Even if you get fed, you're against Vi, Annie, Kaisa, and Alistair. [00:31:47] Speaker C: Like, you're just gonna. [00:31:48] Speaker A: Everybody's diving on top of you. You just kind of screwed it up. And yeah, you have the brahm to help, but, like, it's not gonna do enough. And also, this was like one of the more useless Nidalees. Again, like, what's a Nidalee supposed to. To freaking do in this? Yeah, I mean, like, maybe assassinate the Annie, but like, this build, by the. [00:32:05] Speaker C: Way, this finishing build by Merlin is like the one of the builds of all time. So we've got sort. I don't know the order he built it, but we got Sorc Shoes, Sundered Sky, Trinity Force, Spear of Shojin. And he finishes his inventory with a Blightning Jewel and a Blasting Wand. [00:32:22] Speaker A: Hell yeah. [00:32:24] Speaker C: Like, that's. That's crazy. So now everybody's like, okay, the. You know the only time that Caps has lost in finals is getting three zeroed. And now he's down two games to one, right? [00:32:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:37] Speaker A: And he's never lost the finals unless it's a 3 0. [00:32:40] Speaker C: And admittedly in this game, G2 have the. The biggest blunder I think I've seen out of a team in the finals in my life, bro. Like, all right, so JoJo's back on Castle in. So you know you're going to win the early game as G2, right? [00:32:58] Speaker A: Yep. [00:32:58] Speaker C: And you know, they get ahead early. Caps has two kills on this Orianna, so it's like, all right. Orianna is not exactly a carry champion into the composition he's playing against. But we'll be able to deal good damage. And you know, for the third dragon, you know, G2 is like, all right, we want to put ourselves on Soul Point. Caps just gets, like, caught out. He just like walks the worst way possible, gets caught out and dies. Broken Blade rides the Rift herald in to this river fight from. From blue side to red side to try to, you know, knock people up. And he misses everybody and hits the wall. And Mundo is difficult to kill, but they all had to leave him behind. And he dies. From there, it breaks the dragon stacking. It lets Jojo scale up on this Cassadin Merwin starts cards solo, killing Broken Blade in the side lane is Kasante. And that's like the first sign of like, oh man, this mistake that we made just doomed the game, right? And like Merwin is just going ham on this cassante. He, he looked like he was piloting Kasante, like Kasante from like a year ago where he was just incredibly busted. And you can never deal damage to this champion. And he had such an impact in the game. And he is just absolutely unkillable. He's zoning people off. He's all outing people. He's getting kills. And like that's what you expected of a Mundo now, right? Because of how strong this champion is, you expect him to be unkillable like old K' Sante. But Broken Blade just got like after that was set completely behind. And finally at the end of the game, he's able to get a thousand gold shutdown. And it looks like he's doing Mundo things, but he's stuck in a 3v1. Afterward, he ends up dying and. And MCO they go. They take the victory. They are split two champions. A team that, you know, early on in the split, I remember on this podcast we had reservations about, you know, JoJo Pune was not playing very well and this looked like a, an average team, a a maybe fourth place team coming out of the LEC that had the potential to take games and maybe even series off of the top teams in the lec. And look at them now. [00:35:08] Speaker A: Now. I mean, Mizelle even had his like all too early, like hot take as JoJo becomes the new best mid in the LEC. I don't think he proved it, but hey, he's on track. I mean, winning a split pretty big. [00:35:24] Speaker B: It's gonna take a lot for him to like surpass caps at this point. Just I1, one split win isn't going to be enough. If they come out, they have a good showing at MSI and then they are able to come back in summer and take care of business there as well. Maybe he starts to gain that title, but I think he's. It's just the beginning of the road towards that. [00:35:46] Speaker A: I, I think the big breakout here and somebody that I want to give mad props to because this was a big reason why I didn't think this team would succeed in the playoffs. Supa stepped the fuck up, dude. Like, I thought that was really gonna doogie on him. In their series. Supa was better than Kalist. Supa was better than Hansama. Like, Supa just Played his heart out this weekend. And in that last game, I know that we're talking about like oh, it's the Cassidy and it's. It's the Soul kills from Broken Blade. It was Supa doing like 40 of his team's damage. Like this guy was going crazy and it's incredible like how well he was able to pilot, you know the. The champions that he was given and. And just like play in the series. So mad props to super. I was a doubter, I was a hater and I was proven wrong. And yeah, I think it's. I personally, I like it when players are able to do that because you know, that's just. It's a good story. Then the underdog winning. So yeah, mco not only are they split to winners for lec, they also will be the number one seed going into msig. Two will still be there. You'll still get a chee on the old G2 squad at the international event. [00:37:04] Speaker C: The first team to get to msi. [00:37:07] Speaker A: The first team actually to make it msi, but they will have to battle it out through the play ins. Whereas MCO will be making it in immediately to bracket. So shout out to them. Also shout out to JoJo. I mean like that was the. The name of the episode. NA Mids Lowell, the first NA player to win. You uh, the only NA player to play in eu. But he's. He's already gotten a win. That's kind of crazy. [00:37:31] Speaker B: Two splits and looking at how the play in stage for the lower bracket is like kind of setting up at this point. It. It feels like G2 should be able to make it through considering they will play the runners runner up of the lpl, the Gigabyte Marines or Gammy Sports now because they got second place and then whoever wins LTA South. So G2 should be fine to make it into the main stage of the bracket for MSR. [00:38:03] Speaker A: Dude, if G2 loses to like Loud. [00:38:07] Speaker B: I'm trying to think it's Iseris. I don't think Loud actually made it to. [00:38:14] Speaker A: Oh yeah, you're right. [00:38:16] Speaker B: It's Pain. Pain is the final boss. But it's Furia versus Iseris Estrel. So. [00:38:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:27] Speaker B: So. Oh my gosh. Bounce back Summit back at an international tournament. Oh boy, that would be crazy. [00:38:35] Speaker C: Or. Or we can hope that Furia gets there because Think Card is their. One of their coaches. [00:38:41] Speaker A: Yes, true. That would be. Well I guess technically they are from our region. Anyway. I was going to say that'd be a third NA team but there no, there's only two. [00:38:51] Speaker B: Awkward. [00:38:52] Speaker A: Okay. [00:38:53] Speaker B: All right. Anyway. [00:38:54] Speaker C: Wow. This guy doesn't even know his own region. [00:38:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right. It's crazy. But that is LEC shout outs McCoy. We'll get to see them representing EU and also shout out El Yoya and JoJo's super funny slash awkward interview that happened after the finals. That was one of the funnier interviews I've seen interviewing Eloya. And then Jojo just walks in and stands next to Lore and then starts massaging and then just like takes the mic from him and starts talking that. Very funny. [00:39:25] Speaker C: He's like, what the hell's Eloya doing up here, man? [00:39:28] Speaker A: Right? Funny stuff. But that is LEC wrapped up. They're going to get a little break before msi. Whereas LTA north, we still have one more weekend of our playoffs ahead of us. LEC was doing the whole three matches a weekend, whereas LTA north committed to just two a weekend. Meaning that we have one more weekend of games with the lower bracket finals and then grand finals ahead of us. [00:39:53] Speaker C: Us. [00:39:55] Speaker A: But we actually have before that some games to talk about from this past weekend because we did get to see two different series, one lower bracket, one upper bracket. Start off with the upper bracket. It was Fly Quest versus C9. And I gotta say it, we got our first ever five game BO5 in LTA north history. It finally happened. Win. [00:40:20] Speaker B: We did it, everyone. [00:40:22] Speaker A: Everything else was three zeros. We finally got a five game series, baby. Let's go. And it delivered. In my opinion. [00:40:28] Speaker B: It didn't look like it was gonna be five games. Hell, it didn't look. It was gonna look like it was gonna be four games there for a while, but I didn't even think there. [00:40:36] Speaker A: Should have been a third game. [00:40:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I genuinely just, just, just, just. C9 should have been like, yeah, our bad. [00:40:43] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll try better next split or, or next weekend, I guess this. But the way it shook out was FlyQuest going up 2:0 in the series and then C9 taking two more in a row. And it's very rare statistically. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but it's actually pretty rare statistically for a reverse sweep to be stopped. Once a team gets two wins in a row to make the comeback, they more than half the time do win out the series again. I don't know the exact numbers. It might have changed in recent years, but I know at one point it was like, like 75 of the time they win the series or something crazy like that. [00:41:18] Speaker C: Momentum is crazy, man. Like especially in a game like League of Legends, where you are mental is so much more important than your mechanics at times. You know, it's really unlike anything that you see in like, you know, traditional sports or anything like that where, you know, it's, it's how well you play on the quarter, on the field or something like that, that. Because while there's a lot of mental to the game, there's also so much like mechanically, if you're just like on fire, it doesn't matter if you know, you were up 30 and the series is now 3 to 3 or something like that. If you're just on fire, you are just going to win. If you are generally the better team, you are just going to win. But in League of Legends, that momentum is crazy because players play so much worse when it comes to League of Legends. I think just because, because we have this entire like, we have this entire like, culture of like tilt in League of Legends. I think. [00:42:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:42:22] Speaker A: Like, like at the pro level or just like in, in. [00:42:25] Speaker C: No, it's, I think it's endemic for the game, you know, I, I. Because I don't think there's a player that a professional player that has never tilted in any game, no, in any game at any level, whether it be solo queue, whether it be amateur, whether it be pro, bro, it's all, it's happened to everybody. It's even happened to Faker. You can see it on his face when it does. Nobody is immune to tilt in League of Legends and this is where I think it rears its head. This is why I think momentum is so crazy in League of Legends. But I also think that having a team atmosphere like Fly Quests, where like they're not afraid to call each other out, but they're also like quite tight knit, quite close, makes it for optimal conditions for them to actually not lose a series if they're about to get reverse swept. [00:43:16] Speaker A: Not losing mental is a very important part. And I actually got to do pros this past weekend and I got to talk with Whippo and blabber about how the series went and it was really cool and insightful hearing from them because both of them referenced things up like about Team Mental and trying to like stay in the series and like these long series. Especially because like the first two, the first game was pretty one sided, like Fly Quest, just kind of smack Cloud nine. I loved the cho' Gath counter into the Yorick because a lot of top laners are happy to blind pick Yorick right now. And I was Talking to BP a little bit about the. The matchup, and he was like, yeah, obviously, Chogath, it's not a perfect counter. Like, nothing just completely shuts down Yorick. But level one ults, you can just, like, ult the maiden and then get rid of it. And the cooler thing that's like a more subtle interaction is that when Yorick cages you, first off, you have an auto attack reset with your vorpal spike E, but you also attack through the cage, so you can slow the Yorick and. And the ghouls and stuff while still clearing the cage, which is like, just. Just a little subtle thing. Right? Like, he'll be stuck in the cage, but then he'll still angle his auto so he slows the Yorick on the approach while, like, auto. Auto attack cancels. They hit the second one, and then you're just out of there. Right. [00:44:33] Speaker C: So, wait, hang on. [00:44:34] Speaker A: It's kind of cool. [00:44:35] Speaker C: Are you telling me that he's coming out of his. He's doing just fine. [00:44:37] Speaker A: He's doing just fine. [00:44:38] Speaker B: Got him. [00:44:39] Speaker A: He was doing just fine coming out of that cage. Yeah. And then the game two Top Lane also had a pretty fun matchup with the set into the Gwen, which is something that apparently Boip was played a lot in scrims. Fudge was talking about his experience against it. Blabber was mentioning that, yes, Thanatos has gotten a lot of experience playing against that. But Bwipo, in his own words, he said, I usually run it down in scrims when I'm playing set. So that gives them false confidence that it's gonna be a bad pickup. [00:45:07] Speaker C: Love that man. Love that, man. [00:45:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think early, it did go pretty well for Thanatos. But then mid game, C9 just wasn't really able to, like, get around the map well enough. And then Fly Quest had to, like, defend their base for one big push. But BWO had an insane engage on set and had, like, the haymaker to end all haymakers. [00:45:27] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:45:28] Speaker A: One shotting, two people, and then, boom, game was over. So by that point, it was like, okay, if C9 can't close out that game, it's probably not looking good for them. [00:45:37] Speaker C: I think what's really crazy about that game in particular is that you remarked that it went well early for Thanatos, and it did. He got. I think he got first blood or he got one of the first two kills of the game. And when you're, you know, playing a Gwen, it's like, hell, yeah, this is great. Especially because you've got a. A Maokai on your team so. So you have some CC to get you in. And by the 15 minute mark, he was down two levels to every single solo laner. Like that is ridiculous. I think if Flyquest aren't able to do that, aren't able to really make plays to, you know, kind of zone off Thanatos and shut him down and like drag him around right then they probably don't win the game. Like there's a world where Thanatos runs away with the game game but he. [00:46:24] Speaker A: Wasn'T able to, which is concerning for C9 going forward when you have that type of lead that you can't really do anything with it. Luckily though, I think the next two games I I can talk about top lane a lot because Bipo really went through the Bwipo picks here. He did nidalee for game three trash. He did shen for k4 also pretty trash. I like it in theory, you know, because they did like this kind of Cogma composition. But it. It was Kogma Victor with the Braum so no Enchanter with the Kogma. And also two carries you're trying to protect. And their jungler was Nefiri. If their jungler was like a Scarner or a Sejuani or something, I would have liked to weigh more. But this comp just has no hard engage and not enough peeling tools and protection tools to actually keep the Kogma safe like a Braum shield and a Shen Ult isn't enough enough? No to keep you safe against like a Rakan and Besta Skarner Silas engaging on you like that's a lot of stuff you're trying to absorb. [00:47:22] Speaker C: I. I like the theory of like oh, you can use Nafiri to get Shen into a fight if you want to be aggressive with it. Right. If you want an Ethereal to target and you really want to get in there, you can do that. Right? I just like, you know, if you had a. An enchanter support. I mean you're probably running away with this game because Masu. Masu started this game 40 on Kogmo. I mean like that's typically a death sentence. Like oh man, you fed the Kogma 4 kills GG. You lost the game. Right? But you know, credit to blabber enabling Thanatos who ran away with this game, bro. Like he like he is the father of Whippo in this. In this game, bro. Like it was cr. I think this was actually Dentist best game since joining C9. [00:48:13] Speaker B: Oh yeah. [00:48:15] Speaker A: Probably there but that's. That's a. [00:48:17] Speaker C: He played so individually well. He got Blabber helped him out one time and Thanos played so individually well after that and just killed everybody that he saw. Played so well in these team fights. Hit, you know, hit some dry alts, you know. You know, hit some. [00:48:36] Speaker A: It's lubricated. [00:48:36] Speaker C: Yeah, it's some lubricated alts. You know, it's very easy to hit an alt when you know, blabber goes and impales three people. But like, you still got to do it right? But yeah, it just felt like in every fight, every time you were like, there goes Standard House again, just ripping people apart. [00:48:52] Speaker B: When you. When you think of how Mbessa, the champion works as a whole and you think of like all the concepts that can go with it, like how you can imagine and they. How it being played, I think you could easily just go back to this Thanatos game as just like the quintessential, like, here's what you should do on this champion so that like, if. If you want to learn how to play the champion, watch this game. I mean, don't do half the shit that he does because, like, he's way better than you. But like not shoot for the concepts and the ideas of like how to play around your limits. Limits. And with all of the dashes, like it was. It was really well done, very well executed. [00:49:33] Speaker A: And then game five comes around and we get a Kali Mid Lane for C9 Loki and then Lee Sin. We have not seen a lot of Lee Sin out of Jungle. [00:49:45] Speaker B: That's my MVP right there. [00:49:47] Speaker A: That's our MVP right there. But I think the cooler thing was they somehow some way in game five of Fearless, they get Tristana and Ziggs. [00:50:00] Speaker C: That's enough. [00:50:01] Speaker A: What the hell? [00:50:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:02] Speaker A: How did these two champs make it this far? I'm even looking like the bands. I don't see like any Tristana bands earlier in the series. So that's crazy to think that like Fly Quest just were gifted. The Turbo turret taking composition. And yeah, they. They were able to do just that. That. So I think shout out to Masu and Quad who both had very good series inspired especially. And I mean really, everybody on this team stepped up when they needed to. I actually think that BWO was probably the anchor for. For a lot of the series outside. [00:50:36] Speaker C: Like the serial Enter sometimes this man, nicest guy ever. Biggest serial inter I've seen in my life sometimes. [00:50:44] Speaker A: But I mean, he'll also admit it. I mean, on pro is he was like, yeah, I got Like Giga carried by my team this series but like my team's just too good. [00:50:50] Speaker B: Good. [00:50:50] Speaker C: You know he had a couple games. He had a couple games where he played well. Like that's the thing about him. [00:50:54] Speaker A: Yeah. The set games are great. [00:50:55] Speaker C: The shorter the series is, the better BWIPO is going to play. Like you when you have Bipo on your team, you got a 3. 0 these series. He's going to. He's going to help you through these series. But after the second game you don't know what Bwipo you're getting. [00:51:11] Speaker B: At that point you really. [00:51:13] Speaker A: The problem is that he had to hard carry the second game so hard that he used up all of his energy and he had to take a nap for games three and four. [00:51:21] Speaker C: Oh yeah. [00:51:22] Speaker A: And then game five took a dirt. [00:51:23] Speaker C: Nap in game four. Bro. He died eight times. [00:51:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you know, he just played Gragas and he just threw up barrels at the Wave and that was fine for game five. That's all they needed. [00:51:32] Speaker C: The great neutralizer baby. [00:51:34] Speaker A: Yeah. But that was Saturday's games. Sunday we had another series and Badger. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Oh. Oh, you're boy coming. Honestly, I saw this coming from a mile away. I just it something about how they loaded into game one. I see you mentioned earlier that you like trundle as a jungle pick right now. I. I don't. I really don't like that. I don't. I don't like. I didn't like how they drafted. I feel like their comp was very uncynergistic with how they would want to play the game. Just you've got. But I mean Azir shuffle into like Rumble Alti with like a pillar on top of it with the lockdown from the Nautilus coming through. I mean it just feels like they have like Exodia esque champions but it just didn't seem like they were playing well as a team. I don't know. [00:52:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I really do think that like this the. The six man roster lie at this point. I'm just gonna call it what it is. Yeah. Not bring in umpteen this series. They didn't empty in their last series versus Dignitas either. They just played UG eight games in a row and got you know, went 4 for 4 with UG even dropping the game to Dignitas. Like it. I, I think Yuji's gonna be a great player but he doesn't bring that X factor that made some team liquid games special and like just turn into wins. And when again impact is not playing at his best core, GJ is not playing at his best best standard. League of Legends is not going to do it for this team. And Apa also was poised to carry pretty much every single one of the games. He only had one really good performance, but games one and two, like his Azir game was gross. And then was it a the Nico game? [00:53:29] Speaker B: Was the Nico game. He was finding good all tease. It's just they weren't able to play into it which, which. [00:53:37] Speaker A: But he's also the one that got picked in the bot lane. Yeah. And then I mean shout out to Contracts who had an incredible old because like APA was about to find this really good engage on you and Contracts throws his life away as he's getting picked to throw the old not onto the guys engaging on him, but onto Apa who he barely spots coming out of the old and is like, nope, stop you. And then that just like trades his life and is like the turning point for. [00:54:03] Speaker C: I mean this game was a top gap. [00:54:04] Speaker B: Really good. [00:54:05] Speaker C: Yeah, this game was a top gap through and through, bro. [00:54:09] Speaker A: Dude stepping up, man. [00:54:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I was. I was pleasantly surprised with how well Fudge Fudge played this weekend. I thought he had a really good, really good series and definitely could be considered for MVP of it if I. [00:54:27] Speaker A: It was between Fudge and Contracts. [00:54:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:29] Speaker A: The reason that Contracts edged out out over Fudge was because of the. The Yora game. And just like even in that game, Contracts, despite, you know, having a really bad stat line, was making more things happen than Fudge was. [00:54:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:44] Speaker A: And they both had really big pop off moments in the wins also. So that's why it kind of edged a little bit to Contract. [00:54:51] Speaker B: I. I'm just sad because one of my. One of my favorite bot lane like counter picks so like Lucianami back when it was. Was at its highest prevalence a couple years ago when it was like the. The defining S plus plus tier bot lane. I always thought that Aphelius Lulu matched really well into it and I mean we kind of saw it. I. I thought Jan played really well. It's just. It's unfortunate that just the rest of the team was falling apart around him and felt like as soon as Liquid would like was starting to slowly lose game two. And I mean slowly because this game was 54 minutes and there was times that you're just like, can we just get this. They're better off just being like, can we get this over with just so that Spawn can talk to us. We can get our mentals in check. Because this game probably went 15 to 20 minutes longer than it absolutely needed to. Like, they were just rolling the snow. They were rolling the boulder up the cliff, and no matter what they were going to do, it just. Just wasn't going to work well for them. [00:55:53] Speaker A: That's the thing about Shopify Rebellion though, is they don't quit. Like, they just kept fighting and they were down a significant amount of gold. But it was back to back, big plays off of contracts. And then Fudge had his probably like most impressive fight he's ever had as a player. Yeah, like, it's when Shopify is engaging onto Team Liquid, actually maybe even Liquid Engagement. I don't remember who engaged first, but chaos breaks out. Fudge on Aatrox ends up behind the raptor wall and Yan on Aphelios is in midway in mid lane shooting at everybody with the lulu on top of him with the Xin Zhao distracting everybody with the sign, distracting everybody. And Fudge like jumps over the wall with the E, gets a big damage and then flat gets exhausted, flashes back over the raptor pit, waits for the cooldown ease again, and then is able to take down Yan just solo through the. The lulu was like, oh my God, that was sick. [00:56:49] Speaker C: It was beautiful. Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest issue for Team Liquid this game was that they have, they. They're able to buy so much space with their comp and yet they could not buy any space for Yan this game. And a lot of it goes back to, you know, as I said earlier, it was a top gap. I thought impact looked really bad on Sion in this game. [00:57:10] Speaker A: Yeah, he was. [00:57:12] Speaker C: His score line looks fine, but yeah, his ults were not very impactful. He's ulting in, he's knocking somebody up, but there's no follow up. Right. So then he has to run away and he's losing a lot of his hp. And now instead of running toward the enemy like your comp is supposed to do, you're running away from the enemy. All right? And if you're running toward the enemy as an Aphelios, you're generally winning the game or at least winning the fight. I mean, like, you saw that Baron fight where things were not looking so hot and Fudge had the big flank. Well, Yan won them that fight and prevented this game from ending sooner by straight up running into the Aatrox with his chakras. Like, he is like, I am going to go down with the ship here, but I need to kill this Aatrox. Right. And like makes the hero play to make sure that like Shopify Just don't win the game on the spot. But you never got to see that the rest of the game. Like, everything is just so defensive. Or the APA alts are just like on a side lane and they're not in like a team fight where everybody's here. You're not really seeing the creative APA play like you're used to seeing on the Nico. Even though I thought he played fine, the score line didn't really reflect. I thought he played a little bit better than a score indicated. But, like, he was not. He did not have the creativity that game either. So I think when your solo lanes aren't really playing that well on champions that are meant to buy you space, it's going to be hard to play the game as an ad campaign. Gary. [00:58:32] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And then, I mean, we did get to see team looking pick up a win in game three. And as bad as Impact had looked, he looked really good on the jacks. [00:58:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:58:42] Speaker A: So it's funny that he was able to signature Champa. Yeah. AP on the Talia also kind of a signature pick for him at this point. And obviously this was do or die for Team Liquid. Backs against the wall, but they were able to deliver. This one, I think was like a little more of what would have happened if, like game two, they hadn't just given back the gold lead to Shopify Rebellion and they were able to close out clean because, like this one, it was still 34 minutes, like, a little bit longer. But overall it was much more controlled from Team Liquid. Like, they never really gave Shopify an angle back into it. And Shopify Rebellion just like lost everything on the map. Right. Like, I think they had the first dragon. That was it. Except for actually Otacon. They were able to sneak the Otacon, I'm pretty sure, because Team Liquid just, like, weren't paying attention. But then game four rolls around and oh, my God, the questions on all of our minds when Shopify do not ban zigs. And on blue side do not first pick zigs. It was like, okay, are they just like daring APA to play this channel champ? Like, at this point, it has to be a planned thing. And oh, boy, was it because palafox pulls out LeBlanc. I have not seen a LeBlanc played in quite a while. And genius midfielder. [01:00:06] Speaker B: I kind of forgot that she got the. The visual update. And I was like, sitting there and I'm like, what is this Champion? I'm like, oh, this is LeBlanc. Okay. [01:00:16] Speaker C: It wasn't just the Visual update. She got a, a sneaky buff too. [01:00:21] Speaker A: And he smacked APA like Ziggs could do nothing this entire game. And pal Fox really kind of was the difference maker. So, you know, props to him. I think the question I had around Shopify all year was like, okay, pal Fox, this is looking like one of his stinker splits. Contracts is getting a good split, but we're not getting a good split out of Palafox, so it's just gonna be a wasted contract split. But, but now Palafox is turning it on and he actually credited. I got to interview him after the series. He just credited, you know, the mental of the, the coaching staff and like he was like, yeah, I think, you know, into my own admission, I was like a little lazy at the beginning of the split. It wasn't like taking it as seriously. But then the coaches just got me to kick it back into gear and you know, now, now I'm able to perform again. So I was like, yeah, it's cool. And a player just admits that like, yeah, I wasn't really trying game. But yeah, 404 on the LeBlanc and was able to smack around Team Liquid. I think this was the fastest game in the series, if I remember correctly. Maybe game one was faster. [01:01:24] Speaker B: I think so. [01:01:26] Speaker A: No, they were within like seconds of each other. But game four technically was the. The fastest. [01:01:30] Speaker C: Yeah, it was like a 20 sec, 20 second difference. Just about. [01:01:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So I mean, shout out to. To. To shop Firebellion for. I don't know how much of an upset I was calling it an upset this past weekend on broadcast. [01:01:44] Speaker C: It's definitely an upset. [01:01:46] Speaker A: The expectations for Team Liquid just like as an org and like how coin flippy Shopify are. But then actually talking to a lot of the players going into the weekend and looking at the predictions, we had this big prediction graphic that a lot of people actually did have faith in Shopify. So I would still say upset, but I don't think it's like a huge upset. [01:02:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm with you there. I, I just think that like, I think for the way the teams had looked recently, it certainly would have been Shopify Rebellion favored. I try personally, me, when I go for predictions and stuff like that, I put, I put a recency into a lot of like, I put a lot of stock into recency. I don't put all of the stock into recency. Like this is a team that has gone to worlds, that has gone toe to toe to toe with some of the best teams in the world. Right. A team that almost beat T1 at an international. [01:02:35] Speaker A: They just won last split. [01:02:36] Speaker C: Yeah, they won last split. Yeah. Like, I'm not going to. I'm not going to pick Shopify Rebellion over them, man. I'm just not. [01:02:44] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. Especially just like expectations coming into the split being like something to. To factor in as well. Definitely. I think that this is a big deal for Shopify Rebellion. The highest they've placed before. If they're able to win this coming Saturday, it'll be their first finals as an organization, which is really cool as well. So they're really kind of hitting some cool strides. There's actually some fun facts that I can share about this next coming match because that wraps up this past weekend. We have two matches ahead of us. C9 versus Shopify Rebellion on Saturday. And then FlyQuest awaits the winner of that match for Sunday. Now, Shopify Rebellion versus C9. There's a couple historical things here to cover. Number one, the last time C9 won a championship was spring 2023 when Fudge was on the roster. Now Fudge played in Shopify Rebellion. Ain't that funny? Also, last time C9 made it to a finals was summer 2023. They lost to Palafox and Contract. Who are they playing against this time? Contracts. Interesting. Curious. I don't know what it all means, but it's all there. There's a bit of history between these teams. Whether they there's players who played on each other's orgs or you know, have beaten each other in the past. But it's gonna be a fun one. I am voting against the grain here. I have Shopify Rebellion taking this one. Baby. I'm buying into the magic either I'm taking it through 3 1. Yanni and Badger disagree with C9. Yanni has a 3 1, Badger is a 3 2. I'll give my reasoning first and then I'll let you decide who wants to try and tear it down. I have said consistently that this since the beginning of the year when this roster was announced. If this roster, if every player on this roster plays at their peak, they should be the best team in the region. They. They like Peak Fudge, Peak contracts and Palafox. We know how scary they are when they're playing at their best Peak. Bevoy when he won first team all pro 80 carry and peak sales. I admittedly I didn't know as much about him just because the Brazilian player that I hadn't like seen as much tape for. But he's the goat of Brazil. So like yeah, cool. If he's able to play at that level like this team should be, if not the best one of these hop teams in the region. [01:05:10] Speaker B: Region. [01:05:10] Speaker A: They weren't able to hit their peak as a team at any point until these past two weeks. I actually think specifically Palafox stepping up huge. So I'm just banking on the magic continuing and Palafox having another good series here to carry them over. Scene 9 All right, who wants to tear it down? I'll let the two of you decide. [01:05:29] Speaker C: You know what? I'm gonna go first because I'm gonna say I can't really, I can't really tear it down. I actually think that you're your, I think that your reasonings are very valid, Kangas. I actually do. I, I really thought that you were gonna kind of come in a little Mimi with your, with your decision making as you've been known to do in the past at times. [01:05:47] Speaker A: But like, I like to keep you guessing. [01:05:49] Speaker C: No, I, I actually think that you put forth a really compelling argument here and I, you know, I, I think a reason why I'm not like immediately tearing you down or anything is because it's happened in other regions like this. This Shopify run is, is, is reminiscent of like what team we is doing in the lpl. And I, I, I think back to them and, and it's just, it's really, really crazy, right? They go and they beat a first stand representative. They're playing against a quote unquote super team that has had some consistency issues. Like let's call Spade of Spade for Cloud nine. You know, that's the exact same thing that Team W is dealing with right now. You know, I think it's the exact same thing over there that it is here. Actually. I think that if, if they're firing on all cylinders and C9 is playing their usual inconsistent selves, Shopify can win. But here's the problem. I saw the wave C9 played against FlyQuest and I was pretty convinced with C9's wins. I thought they, they generally did a pretty good job in their wins. Now I think they got put on the back foot sometimes when they really shouldn't. Like, like that game four I. I hearken back to where Masu gets really big on the Kogmaul. You lose that game most of the time. However, the fact that they were able to win that game against an opponent like FlyQuest leads me to believe that if they go down in a similar fashion to an opponent like Shopify Rebellion, there should be no worries about C9. Being able to come back from that sort of deficit. That's why I think ultimately in the end they're going to win. I think that Shopify, if they get advantages, I, I don't know if their advantages are going to be vast enough for them to actually put C9 away. [01:07:28] Speaker A: Okay. All right. Yeah, I, I, I can see that. I, I think that I would not be surprised either way. I think C9 should be favored. I'm just really buying into the Shopify magic. [01:07:40] Speaker C: I respect it. I respect it. [01:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:43] Speaker B: Can I tear down the argument? So this, this thought process, process of when they're playing at their peak, they could be the best team in the region. Couldn't you just say that for C9? And their peak is statistically speaking, higher than what we would expect out of the Shopify roster. I mean, Sven and, Sven and Vulcan are one of the best bot Lane pairings that we've ever seen in na. Loki has the chance to be the best mid in the West. Blabber is the greatest jungler that NA has ever produced as. And then Thanatos is this highly sought after prospect that came out of Korea that was supposed to come over and was supposed to blow the world away and just be like, I'm here. The, the, the best top laner in the west now. Just never lived up to that expectations. And yet still here they are. They're, you know, they came from the upper bracket, they're going to come down and they're going to have this Shopify team come in and, and probably be the favorites against just because the, the long standing history of C9As or organization has had players that have come through. I, I just, I, I just think that like, if you're going to say that about Shopify, you're going to have to consider that for C9 too. I mean, will they show up on the day? That's the big thing that, that's the. [01:09:04] Speaker A: Difference is that I see this Shopify roster hitting those peaks, hitting that stride right now. I don't see this C9 roster hitting that same stride. I think that they've been more consistent throughout the whole split, but I don't think that they have. So I get, you know, I, they did Smash Team Liquid in their best of five, so I guess there is that. But yeah, you're, you're fair in that. Like you can say that about both teams. I just don't think that both of them are going to be playing at their best in this series. Like, like all time best. I don't even Think Shopify Rebellion are necessarily gonna be like oh, at their peak, best that they've ever played. I just think that where they are right now is good enough to take down C9. So let's see if they can do it. Either way, winner will go on to face Fly Quest in the finals. Yanni, you're backing your boys. You think C9 take it all the way with the championship. Badger, you have the more modest another five game series. But. But FlyQuest taking it and I baited you both by putting Fly Quest. It's Shopify Rebellion, baby. They're going all the way. I'm changing my vote to Shopify Rebellion 32. [01:10:16] Speaker C: Hell, now you're just memeing. [01:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:18] Speaker A: No, there's no way that they do this. Yeah. How funny would it be? How funny would it be? [01:10:24] Speaker C: Well, I mean if you were really going to meme it up, you'd say Shopify rebellion 30, right? Or maybe 31. Cuz we'll give a game to Fly Quest. I mean no, it would be. It wouldn't just be funny. It would be all like okay, I want to say it would be awesome, but it actually wouldn't. And here's why. We only. We only get to send one team now. There's a reason why I got excited at the prospect of KT getting sent through lck where I get excited at the prospect of Team W E getting sent through lpl. They each have two slots where you can send a really strong favored candidate it and then you can send the team that got really really hot and like really earned their spot to be there, but is probably playing above their means. If this happens for Shopify Rebellion, I have a feeling that they would be the team that is playing above their means and they would get to MSI and they would get their ran like badly and, and that, that's. That's what upset. We had two slots. If we had two slots, I'd be like, I would love to be able to be like let's send Fly Quest and Shopify Rebellion. Like I'd be all for that. But we get one, it's either going to be Fly Quest or C9. I think that C9 has the advantage because I said it the last time after C9 lost terribly to Fly Quest before, you know, a couple series ago where I was like the loser has the advantage into the next series, right? And they almost did it. Well, guess what? If you lose twice in a row, that clearly means going into the next series you've got two times the advantage. Right? [01:12:02] Speaker A: True. It was oh two. [01:12:04] Speaker C: And then it's multiplicative. It's multiplicative. [01:12:07] Speaker A: Then now it's gonna be in this five game series. It's I guess you have a three two. Yeah. [01:12:11] Speaker C: C nine three two. And then the next time they play it's gonna be a C9 2 0. [01:12:16] Speaker A: Ah, we're gonna completely flip it around. I understand a palindrome of. [01:12:21] Speaker C: And then, and then the next time they play after that we're gonna bring back ties and they're gonna go on one. [01:12:26] Speaker A: Well no, then, then they would have to play best of one because that's the first one that C9 actually won. So then Flag Quest has to win that best of one. [01:12:33] Speaker C: But then they play best of zero after that. Right? [01:12:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Remember when we played best of ones at the beginning of the split Anyway. [01:12:40] Speaker C: So strange. [01:12:41] Speaker A: So yeah, there's, it should not be shopify. Fly Quest is the team that we want to set send to MSI. Yanni still thinks C9 could be that team that does it. Badger, do you have any big thoughts as to why Fly Quest 3 2? [01:12:55] Speaker B: I, I just think, you know, they, they have their silly games, they have their, their Bwopo has the list of the, the you just made the list. List of stuff that he plays and they, they, they're prone to a happy game every once in a while. So you know, I, I, I don't see them clean sweeping whoever they play in finals if it's C9 or if it would be Shopify. But considering I have seen that at this point I think it's just gonna go full five games, you know, 10 games this weekend. Just, just more league is good league. So yeah, yeah, I like it. [01:13:37] Speaker A: I think that either way it should be an entertaining series and I can't wait for this weekend. Also make sure that everybody listening along. If you're local in LA and haven't gotten your tickets yet, I think they might be sold out. But there are a couple of partnerships that LTA has with Regal Cinemas. I don't know how many locations there are, but if you want to go watch like a live finals in a theater, it might be worth just a quick Google search. Check out Regal Cinema me. [01:14:06] Speaker C: It's dope. [01:14:07] Speaker A: It's dope. Yeah. Really cool opportunity. I don't again don't know how many they're partnering with or how many like states have this available but if you're interested, check it out. Google like Regal Cinema lta finals and you should be able to find some information on that because whether you Want to go alone and meet new friends there or like bring some friends along. Should be a cool thing. So can I make sure to check that out? [01:14:30] Speaker C: Can I. Can I also shout one out? It is a watch party. It is not a Regal Cinema one, so I don't know if that's going to. [01:14:35] Speaker A: Okay. [01:14:35] Speaker C: No, no. [01:14:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:14:36] Speaker C: You know we got to shout out the boy David Shinock, right. Who does a lot of stuff on the East Coast. I've had the. I've been fortunate to be able to make it up because these are in New York City and it's not that long of a hike for me. But I'm in Southern New Jersey. It takes me a couple hours. I will not be there on Sunday because I unfortunately work on Sundays, but Sunday, June 15th at 3:30pm Eastern and it's at Playwright NYC. It's 27 West 35th Street. It's a nice venue. I was there for split one finals and it was a really, really good time. Really enjoyed myself. David really knows how to put on good events for these nice community of league players in the NYC area. So if you're really looking for a. A watch party that is a little bit more intimate than like movie theater, go to this. Go to this place. It's a. It's a sports bar. They run out the entire upper area. You know, league is on every tv. [01:15:32] Speaker A: It's good people, good times, fantastic. Love that shout out as well, dude. And also let's even add to it. If you are trying to get your own like community watch party going, let us know in the community. Discord. Give me a tag. It's the King guy tag. Because I have two different Discord accounts. It's a long story. Sorry. But if you take me on it, I'll try and amplify it to anybody else in my network that would live wherever you are if you're trying to host your own. But with that said, thank you for listening to another episode of the League Rundown everybody. Yanni, if they could leave a review with a number of stars, what number would you recommend they leave? [01:16:11] Speaker C: Kangasaka. Question how many games did FlyQuest and C9 play in round two of the LTA north split two playoffs? [01:16:19] Speaker A: Three? Four? Five. Five games. [01:16:21] Speaker C: Five games. [01:16:22] Speaker A: Yep. [01:16:22] Speaker C: A star for each game, baby. [01:16:24] Speaker A: Light it up for each game, baby. Five stars wherever you're listening. That would really help us get noticed more. Or thumbs up or however you can rate the podcast. But whether you have the time to leave a review or not doesn't matter because we still love you. And we will see you next time. [01:16:39] Speaker B: Bye, everyone. [01:16:40] Speaker C: See ya. Oh, yes. [01:16:43] Speaker A: Daddy. Sam.