After a long wait, we finally got to see the representatives of each region battle it out on the international stage, and the first day of the MSI delivered a lot of action. Europe once again showed that they are the better region in the EU vs NA rivalry, while Korea and China had fun playing against minor region teams.
- T1 – Saigon Buffalo
- Team Aze – DetonatioN Focus me
- ORDER – G2 Esports
- Evil Geniuses – G2 Esports
- Istanbul Wildcats – Royal Never Give Up
- Red Canids – PSG Talon
The most unexpected result was Red Canids taking down PSG Talon in a very dominating fashion. It’s still unclear if PSG Talon just had a bad day or the PCS level has gone down considerably. Gabriel Vinicius “Aegis” Saes de Lemos almost single-handedly carried the Canids to victory with his Wukong pick. Red Canids’ Jojo also delivered a solid performance for the Brazilian team which puts them in a good spot for their upcoming match against Istanbul Wildcats.
The LJL team DetonatioN FocusMe crushed LATAM hopes as they dismantled Team Aze from the get-go. A lot of us thought that this year’s MSI would be Latin America’s chance to prove that they are capable of getting out groups in an international event, but I guess we were all wrong. Once again the LATAM representative succumbed to the pressure on the international stage, which makes us wonder if the region is ever going to show a good performance against the other regions.
Saigon Buffalo and Istanbul Wildcats had an unlucky opening day where they had to face the arguably two strongest teams in the world. T1 showed that they will not have mercy against any team in this event, even if they had a shaky early game, T1 was able to lock down Saigon Buffalo by the 15-minute mark and leave them unable to come back into the game.
The Turkish representatives also had a tough time against the Chinese team. Royal Never Give Up started with a huge 3k gold lead and they never let go of it. RNG was able to close the game before the 23-minute mark, making it the shortest game of the event so far. It’s
We also had a peek at what’s looking to be the meta for the rest of the event. Teams went from drafting strong teamfighting champions to picking lane counters and focusing on securing early leads. It’s interesting to see how these will affect the different teams playing in this tournament.
It’s safe to say that teams like T1 and G2 Esports will benefit the most from this meta shift, while teams like Evil Geniuses, Team Aze, and even RNG will be the ones affected negatively the most by it. This means that T1 might have the upper hand against their expected grand final opponent Royal Never Give Up.
We had a lot of exciting games on the first day of the event with a couple of unexpected results. This group stage is turning out to be a very interesting one so stay tuned as we’ll be covering the results as the event goes on.
