This is a piece reporting on a game of League of Legends (often shorted to League or LoL) on Sunday afternoon featuring Team Solo Mid (TSM) vs Team Liquid streamed live to over 300k viewers. Like most sports, the verbiage is confusing if you’re not a follower, I’ve tried my best to actually report on the game while also including references to help and following the player-based stories.
The following is a brief description of the game itself.
League of Legends is a 5v5 objective-based sport (there is no fixed time per game). Each team picks 5 characters out of a pool of over 100. Games of League can be categorized into 3 phases: early game: where players are pit individually against each other, mid game: where teams start to group and work together, and late game: where objectives and team movements are more important than individual skill.
Teams fight over objectives on the map such as towers or neutral creatures such as the Dragon and Baron. Doing enough damage to an enemy champion results in a ‘kill’ or a short power-play for the other team, during which they can take objectives. Objectives give ‘buffs’ which leads to greater strength for the team that takes them. When the final objective, the enemy’s nexus, is taken the game ends.
The positions for the game are: mid, top, jungle, marksmen and support, with each role playing a unique niche on the team. Each player has a role that they play as well as an in-game nickname, referred to in quotation marks for example, Thariq “trq” Shihipar.
1st placed TSM (8-2) fell in 47 minutes to Team Liquid (5-5) in one of the largest upsets of this season of the League of Legends Championship Series. Highlighted by play from the marksmen Jason “WildTurtle” Tran and Yuri “Keith” Jew, this game was notable for an epic defense as well as highlighting problems with foreign talent in the North American game.
Aspect of the Dragon vs Aspect of the Turtle
Team SoloMid has been notorious this season for giving up early dragons, small objectives that add up over time, in exchange for making plays elsewhere on the map. Normally, TSM is able to use the strength they gain from those plays to contest dragons later in the game, leading to their 8-1 record.
Team Liquid however was able to adequately defend their map during the mid-game[1] while taking dragons, to force a crucial fight at the last dragon. With Team Liquid winning the fight and gaining the “Aspect of the Dragon” buff, which is often known for leading to the end of the game, it seemed like they need only push forward to win.
But in what has been described as “Helms deep-like defense”, TeamSoloMid fought off Liquid as they pushed to their base, with remarkable play from marksman Jason “WildTurtle” Tran, who had one penta-kill, the rarest play in the game, and one quadra-kill in the defense of their base.
WildTurtle gets a pentakill against Team Liquid in a strong, but ultimately failed defense. Pentakills happen on average once every 40 games.
As the score grew even, Team SoloMid finally ventured out of their base, only for Team Liquid to capitalize by rushing to the nexus to the end the game.
Team Liquid closes out the game by going straight for the nexus.
The Great Danes
Team Solo Mid has, aptly, been known for their dominating mid play from Danish prodigy Soren “Bjergsen” Bjerg. This play style often has Bjergsen and jungle and fellow dane Lucas “Santorin” Tao, “the great danes”, working together to get Bjergsen a lead against the enemy mid laner. However, with Bjergsen playing a relatively passive character, the Great Danes were unable to affect the game meaningfully.
This has been a topic of contention for an otherwise immaculate TSM team, can Team Solo Mid win without leaning on their mid laner? WildTurtle’s strong play, despite the loss, has given fans some hope.
The Toucan Has Landed
On the other side, Team Liquid’s new marksman performing admirably in his second start. Yuri “Keith” Jew (also known as The Toucan) was replacing Chae “Piglet” Gwang-jin, a korean player, known for being part of season 3 world champions SKT, arguably one of the best teams in League of Legends history. Piglet has however failed to impress going 2-4 in his starts for the team.
The question of whether team communication or individual skill is more important in League is one that causes large amounts of tension in the community. With teams like WinterFox speaking only Korean, how much longer will the top teams and players in North America be from North America?
In this case, the benching of Piglet for Keith has some breathing a sigh of relief, it seems teams can’t simply export top players from other countries and expect to win. Other korean imports however like Jang-sik “Lustboy” Ham have shown that when well-integrated, foreign talent can bolster a team’s roster, as is often the case in American sports and life.
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MIT has a League of Legends club and a team that represents MIT in intra-collegiate events, more info can be found here: http://web.mit.edu/lolclub/www/
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Game Recap:
Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIkS6-DW9yM
Thariq, great sports reporting! 🙂
This seems like a story that would benefit from annotations and contextualization, because as you mention, there are lots of elements that can be confusing if you’re not a follower. That said, I think you did an excellent job of explaining the game-specific concepts and words!