Najin Sword vs. SKT T1:
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Nagne plays a mean Gragas, I have to take back what I said about him vs. Gambit, at least as a whole. I'm impressed by someone other than Faker making Gragas look worth picking and Nagne making himself worth a damn.

I expect this would've been about the same with Gambit vs. SKT T1 too if Gambit won the quarters. Both are the hot/cold-kinda teams that either win or lose big. Gambit would've of course done more with mid/top/jungle and less with the duo but overall I would expect a 3-2 either way. And this was definitely Najin Sword showing that they are good enough to be here.

It's worth noting that both teams played the picks/bans really bad as blue. First picks were practically always rendered worthless, and purple won 4/5 games. The "hype picks" weren't performing at all. Shen and Ahri both did very little due to pressure on lane & mediocre match-ups, and Corki didn't do much that other ADs couldn't have done. The only game where Corki was really impressive at all was G4, but that was more Piglet and Pooh than the champions. It's also worth noting that there were on average 2 ADC bans per game, and Corki was only banned once throughout the series. Also interesting is that Zyra/Corki preferred over Leona/Corki; odd, especially with Ahri in the games, G1 showed just how Leona shines against assassin comps. Cain definitely chickened out there, and I think the series could've been different if he played more Leona.

An interesting note, Lee Sin being huge every time he's picked but he only begun to be picked high towards the end of the series. I think G4 was the first time he was firstpicked after dominating the first games.

On a closing note, I'm once again reminded of just why the Blind Pick is so awesome at OGN; no bans/picks goes very far to remove the side advantage, and we'd get to see Pray on Twitch which he didn't get to play at all, and mirror match-ups. It's a fair way to end a series where the advantage of the sides is removed. I do hope it'll be implemented in west in single elimination rounds in the future. And they should stop posting stuff like "Champ X has a 100% win rate in this tournament"; if a team has a 90% win rate, that doesn't mean a whole lot.


Few things about the individual games: Sword forced 2v1 in losing lanes G2. They went through huge effort to get the 2v1s and they lost. Same happened vs. Gambit. Why don't people realize Sword can't play 2v1s! Also, Jax is shut down in a 2v1 just as well as by Renek and Renek farms better there, and is more useful with less farm. And Lee Sin is the superior jungler for the 2v2 too! SKT T1 literally couldn't hope for better lane match-ups in that game and then NjS goes out of their way with deep wards and losing waves of XP to make it happen? WTF!

G3 there was that one moment where Faker kited Expession at the end of the teamfight. Something the commentators missed, the Charm hit a minion, not Expession. Got him 25 gold but very nearly got him killed. Huge misplay if I've ever seen one though granted, that Charm was superhard to hit due to minion/Expession positioning and the angle + Charm hitbox.

G4 Pooh on Zyra participates in an invade with Deadly Bloom instead of Grasping Roots? WTF! Then they fail to secure the kill, **** up and give one instead and then Lee Sin proceeds to be Lee Sin while Piglet/Pooh completely outplay Pray/Cain on a bad match-up. Incidentally, this showcased the weaknesses of Thresh perfectly (he has to get in there and sometimes he can't afford it; his contributions outside all-ins and ganks are minor).