[OGN Summer] Faker & Piglet's Excellent Adventure

Runepages for all 5 games

The Quarterfinals of OGN started with a match between two giants in the Korean e-Sports scene, KT Bullets and CJ Entus Blase. KT Bullets always seem to get nervous in the KO rounds and fail to advance, but statistics were on their side as they have never lost to CJ Entus Blaze. This time KT Bullets were determined to end their history of choking and make it to the semifinals.

Game 1

KT Bullets left Twisted Fate open in Champion select, having repeatedly stated their confidence in their ability to play against him. Nevertheless, it was a big risk as Ambition had never lost on Twisted Fate. Blaze benched Lustboy and instead played Muse as Cpt. Jack’s support. CJ Entus managed to get a good early lead into the midgame, but Ryu on Ahri was able to keep Ambition in check preventing KT B from falling too far behind. In addition, KT B knew exactly what to do for their comeback. They aggressively warded the Baron area and kept the amount of Blaze wards low. This allowed Ryu to catch members of Blaze out of position and turn around the game.



Game 2

Insec, who normally prefers tanky champions, picked Lissandra this game. His lack of comfort showed, especially when compared to his Zac, Shen, or Malphite. Flame became a lategame monster on Vladimir, and the rest of Blaze also did well. There were a few weird moments of Hide-and-Seek which lead to Blaze walking casually to the Inhibitor turret in midlane. KT B tried to stop them, but in the following teamfight Blaze destroyed KT B. From that point on Blaze slowly but surely won the game.



Game 3

This time the tables were turned as KaKAO picked Jungle Evelynn. Contributing to nearly every kill, KaKAO carried KT Rolster B to a strong early game lead. Their Eve and Twitch double invisibility combo allowed them to get a lot of sneaky kills on CJ Entus Blaze. Only Cpt. Jack seemed to be able to pull his weight for Blaze. KT B were already sieging Blaze's Nexus turrets when InSec decided to dive. This was a mistake, as KT B was forced to back after taking excessive turret damage. InSec made a second big mistake at Baron, failing to activate his slingshot in time while his team engaged. The Baron dance that followed was loaded with action, but Blaze was able to turn the game around and get the lead in the series.



Game 4

KT Rolster B had a perfect start into the game after Flame decided to facecheck the tribush in toplane, giving InSec First Blood. Both junglers dedicated a lot of their time to top lane, trading blows back and forth. KT B sneaked an early Dragon and continued to control it perfectly from that point on. With their early dragon lead KT B managed to snowball and tie the series once more.



Game 5

The first Blindpick since Winter Season in OGN. In addition, this was the first game in this series where both teams opted for a fast tower push strategy. KT B used the Shen and Twitch submarine combination to get First Blood on Blaze, Turret and Dragon.
KT B increased their tempo and kept the pressure up on Blaze which pressured their opponents into rare mistakes. KT B is the first semifinal team and the winner of the first Blindpick in this OGN season!

Hello and welcome to our new feature Eulogy Corner, where we will say our final words to teams who have been eliminated from the Champions season. These are our reflections and sorrowful goodbyes to the teams we will no longer see vying for the summer championship. Please, hold back your tears and grab the nearest tissue box.



Ladies and gentlemen, we are here to eulogize the team that only a season ago was almost considered the best Korean team in history. Destroying everyone in their path, they eventually made the finals, got beat by the underdog team, MVP Ozone, and were knocked from their high horse and back down to earth. Having been out scouted and out prepared by the Ozone coaching staff, I am sure the Blaze team was in complete shock, wondering how in the world they dropped a final that everyone believed was theirs before it even began.

As all great teams do, Blaze took the two weeks off from the spring to summer season to prepare insane new strategies, expand from being a team solely focused around Flame and Ambition split pushing, and broke down why they lost in the finals and how they could make sure they would never lose to that roaming Zed strategy ever again. When the summer season began, they wowed everyone by playing pick strategies, aggressive compositions, and stayed away from having Flame split push for 95% of the game until he has 700 more farm than his lane opponent and then call upon him to destroy everyone in a climactic team fight.

Wait, what? That didn't happen? You're telling me that Blaze did exactly the same strategy they used in spring season in Champions Summer? So, let me get this straight, Blaze got absolutely picked apart and made fools of against Ozone in the final, they had a two week break, and then came into the summer season with the same exact split push strategy that failed miserably when they went up against an elite team? Wow, that's pretty stupid. Are you sure that's what really happened?

We must honor Flame, the glorious pilot of Blaze, who fought valiantly against creep monsters the entire season. Every time you checked where Flame was, he was up in the top lane or in the bottom, battling those evil, monstrous minions, making sure they would never grow in numbers to take over the Rift. He split pushed, split pushed and then split pushed some more this season, showing that if you split push enough, that teams will finally realize that leaving you alone with free farm the entire game as the main carry of your team is a bad idea. So teams camped him, killed him, and slaughtered his poor KDA down the ladder. With their split push strategy figured out, what did Blaze do? Flame split pushed some more. And more. And I'm sure, even up in Champions heaven, Flame is still split pushing, wondering why CptJack has already died twelve times in the first three minutes of a game.

We must honor Ambition, the co-pilot of Blaze, who...died a lot this season. Yeah, what's up with that? When watching a Blaze game, it felt like three things were for certain: Flame would be split pushing forever, CptJack would die in lane at least three times, and Ambition would give up first blood and then never make a comeback. Sadly, Ambition, the all-star of the Korean team, could not live up to expectations this season, losing his perfect 13-0 record on Twisted Fate in the quarterfinals against the KT Rolster Bullets and not making it to the semifinals of Champions for the first time in his career.

We must honor Helios, the man for whom the word 'positioning' has no meaning, getting caught out countless times in the quarterfinals against the Bullets. With all the chips down on the table, in the blind pick ace match against the Bullets, Helios went for his signature champion, Lee Sin, hoping that the blind monk would deliver Blaze a glorious victory. Instead, the Bullets picked Elise, Kakao kicked Helios' ass, and Blaze were eliminated from Champions.

We must honor CptJack, the captain who has the fastest cleanse in the west, but still hasn't figured out that if you walk into Sona's ultimate you're going to get stunned. He played the game of his life in the third set against Bullets, pulling Blaze from the edge of defeat and carrying on his Vayne to an amazing comeback victory. As always, CptJack might play badly forty-two games in a row, but that forty-third game? You better watch out.

We must honor Muse, Lustboy and Hermes, all of whom were randomly switched around all season and created almost every bottom lane possible with the players Blaze had. All three had decent seasons, but I'm pretty sure Hermes must be wondering what he did in a past life to go from a struggling Frost team to a championship contender Blaze team, then suddenly see Frost become a champion contender the moment he left and Blaze become stagnant right as he joined. I feel you, Hermes, and I hope all the fan mail you get from Blaze fans to go back to Frost aren't getting to you too harshly.

Finally, we must honor the real MVP of CJ Entus Blaze, Zed, for without him in the champion pool Blaze might actually have won last season and advanced to the semifinals in Champion Summer. Blaze, who had an entire two month period to try and think of a counter to the roaming Zed strategy and prevent it from picking off Flame, probably had this conversation when heading into the playoffs:

Blaze Coach: Team, it is time to prepare for the Bullets! We are going to have Flame split push a lot, hope that Ambition doesn't give up first blood, and switch around our bottom lane for the twelfth time this season!

Flame: Hey, Coach, shouldn't we think of something if they pull out the Zed-centric strategy that destroyed us last season? I mean, wouldn't it suck if we got to a blind pick match, we went for a late-game split pushing composition like always, and they picked Zed like Ozone did to kill us in under twenty minutes?

Blaze Coach: That would never happen! Now back to practicing last hitting creeps, Flame! You have to split push some more! No one will ever stop you from split pushing!

So, thank you, Zed, for not only killing Blaze once, but twice. I am sure that when they head into the Korean Regionals for a shot at the Season 3 finals, Blaze will surely have a plan to stop you. If not, then I can just copy/paste this eulogy in a few weeks time.



Dear friends and family of White Shield, we are here to say a final goodbye to a team that has been around forever, but still hasn't made a semifinals in Champions. No matter how much they change their line-up, switch their team name around with colors, or try to pawn off the curse known as Expession on their sister team Sword, Shield has never been able to breakthrough from the quarterfinals to the final four of a season. They try hard, but it just isn't enough to get over the hump and have a chance at a finals.

Sadly, with their loss in the quarterfinals, White Shield will not qualify for the Korean Regionals, meaning they have no shot of going to the Season 3 finals and that we won't see them in a large tournament until Champions rolls around again in the winter season.

On the lighter side of things, Shield did improve this season. They went from barely making the playoffs last season on the final day of group stages and losing in the first round 0-3, to barely making the playoffs this season on the final day of group stages and losing in the first round 0-3. Oh, uh, I guess they didn't change much, did they?

They did change their line-up, though, moving Save from the Mid Lane to the Top Lane, welcoming the former Brood War player Ggoong as their new starting Mid Laner. Changing up the line-up even more, they pushed Locodoco into a substitute role, bringing in the rookie Zefa and partnering up with their new Support player, Gorilla, who named himself after a gorilla due to his resemblance to the animal.

Unlike their fellow eliminated peers Blaze, Shield were not thought of as a champion contender heading into this season. In short, this was pretty much a rebuilding tournament, seeing what pieces worked correctly and what would needed to be changed into the start of the winter season and the beginning of Season 4. It would have been nice, of course, to make an Ozone-type miracle run through the brackets, play Cinderella and cause a huge upset in the finals, but fairy tales don't happen often and if we're being realistic, a quarterfinal appearance and then out was the most likely expectation for this new team.

The players themselves did well in their first season together as an almost entirely new team, but there were some problems. Zefa, their new ADC, was probably vastly overrated going into the playoffs due to not playing in the only match against a top team, SK Telecom T1, in the group stages. Insstead, the Shield team opted to play the veteran Locodoco against SK Telecom T1, pretty much throwing their former starter to the wolves. Of course, after the games against SKT, Locodoco looked weaker than Zefa, seeing as the rookie was able to pad his stats against weaker sides in LG-IM #2 and MVP Blue, while Locodoco had to go up against Piglet, a player who terrorized him in last season's playoffs and again in this season's group stages.

When Zefa had his first true challenge against Space and Madlife in the quarterfinals, he crumbled under the pressure, not looking nearly as good against Frost as he did against the two weaker teams in his group. That's not to say that he's a bad player or Locodoco automatically deserves his shot back as a starter, but while it's easy to get caught up in the hype of rookies doing well, you have to realize that not every new player is going to become a Faker for your team. Frost showed this the best, switching out their rookie Ganked by mom, who was having a strong season, and replaced him with the veteran Rapidstar, opting for experience over group stage results. The gamble paid off, Rapidstar rolled over Shield's rookie Mid Laner Ggoong in the three game set, and Frost exited the quarterfinals with an easy birth into the semifinals.

Rebuilding. That is the word to describe Shield this season, and hopefully, with a few months off until the winter season, they will take all the experience they learned this season and apply it to the next. They have some intriguing players on the roster -- a good mixture of rookies and veterans -- and they might very well be a high caliber team in their own right if they continue improving. While on paper their exit looks exactly the same as last season, it really isn't. Shield has gone from a forever mid-table squad and are working towards becoming a team that can challenge for the world's top spot, so we'll need to wait until next season if all their moves to their roster and the improvement this season will be good enough to take them to the next level.

Once part of the same family and now rivals in the quarterfinals, SK Telecom T1 and the Falcons of Jin Air enter this knockout round match in polar opposite situations. On one side, you have SK Telecom T1, the only squad this season to go through the round robin group stages without a single loss, having an almost too easy of a time dispatching their group that consisted of Shield, MVP Blue, and LG-IM #2. For the Falcons, they have had a whirlwind season, not renewing their contracts with the SK Telecom T1 organization at the start of the season, picking up new two players with the reformation of Eat Sleep Game, and eventually being picked up by Jin Air halfway through the regular season to give them stability.

Looking back at last season, these two teams both played under the brand SK Telecom T1, the Falcons team the more experienced of the two. Having already won an IEM event, played in foreign tournaments, and established a star and champion Reapered as the captain of the team, they were heralded as the top team in the organization. The secondary team, led by the rookie solo queue superstar Faker, was built single handedly by their coach and former Starcraft 2 player kkoma, bringing in new players like bengi and Piglet and some more experienced players with impact and Mandu. Compared to Reapered's team, the secondary SKT franchise was an experiment, hoping that a superstar on the Korean solo queue server could transition from one world to another.

In the end, the risk SK Telecom T1 took by putting their trust in a young kid with no pro experience turned out for the better, Faker bursting on the scene with brilliant performance after brilliant performance, becoming one of the most exciting players in Champions. Piglet and bengi fell into their roles nicely, assisting Faker in his #1 carry role, the entire team helping Faker succeed, and in return, helping SK Telecom T1 #2 do well as a result. Both SK Telecom T1 teams made the playoffs, Reapered's team going up against his old team Blaze in the first round, and the squad led by Faker being pitted up against the established Najin Shield in their match-up.

As the tournament went on, the notion that Reapered's team was the marquee team of SK Telecom T1 was swept to the side -- the inexperienced squad led by the rookie superstar placing higher in the group stages, getting first in Group A, and proving to be a contender for the championship. The narrative continued in the playoffs, Reapered's team getting bounced 3-0 by Blaze, and Faker's group doing the opposite by going 3-0 against Shield in the quarterfinals. They would be knocked out in the semifinals by the eventual champions MVP Ozone, but they had made their presence known in their Royal Road season, even taking third place in a relatively easy 3-0 stomp of Frost in the bronze medal match.

Now, meeting for the first team in a tournament, the old top team in the SK Telecom T1 organization will face the team that outperformed them as their sister team. On paper, it's a complete mismatch, SK Telecom T1 only losing two series in the past two seasons, both times to reigning kings of Korea, MVP Ozone. The Jin Air Falcons, while heading into the knockout rounds with a record of 4-2, were completely and utterly embarrassed by the only top tier team they faced in the group stages, MVP Ozone, getting smashed when the two teams they faced off.

Even looking past the stats, the players skill levels, and everything else, the main reason why SK Telecom T1 are the biggest favorites to win in the quarterfinal rounds is their ability to adapt. Last season, the SK Telecom T1 teams could simply be called Team Reapered and Team Faker, both teams riding the backs of a single player to carry them to wins. If Reapered or Faker had a good game, then their team would also go on to have a good game, leading them to a victory. When they had a bad game, then both teams would falter, and with no one else able to carry in their stead they would eventually lose.

You can't say that about the new SK Telecom T1. Piglet has come into his own this season, being able to carry when needed and fearlessly put the team on his back if necessary. Faker, who was mostly known for picking champions that could carry, no longer feels the need to always pick a champion that can roam, pick up kills, and single handedly propel his team to victory. Bengi, Piglet, and even Impact at times have shown that this team isn't all about Faker, and that if you shut down Faker there are still players on the team that can make you pay if you leave them alone to farm and get big.

For the Falcons, it is still Reapered and four other guys. That isn't to say Miso or Roar can't become those type of players in the solo lanes, but it just isn't there yet. If Reapered has a good game, gets rolling with an early kill in the jungle and has a strong start to his game, the Falcons will have a good chance of winning the game. We've seen if you can stop Reapered early, eliminate his Doran's Blade start and keep him at bay, then the Falcons are in deep trouble, not having the team coordination or individual talent to come back in the mid and late game against strong teams.

The two teams that the Falcons beat in the group stages, Xenics Storm and Blast, have already shown in the NLB -- the minor leagues to Champions' majors -- that they weren't the strongest competition, Blast losing to an amateur team, Must Study Hard, in the first round and Storm getting blown out by the Falcons' sister team, the Stealths, in the second. The team that most closely resembles SK Telecom T1 in the tournament, MVP Ozone, were the guys that made Falcons look like beginners in their series, providing the biggest lopsided victories of the summer.





The Top Laners couldn't be more different. Miso's best comparison would be an extremely raw version of Maknoon, showing no fear when it comes to tower diving, going behind enemy lines and initiating fights. This has worked sometimes, but it's also been his downfall for a majority of the season, not knowing exactly when to engage and when not to, leading to a number of times where he died when he didn't have to. He's had some bright spots -- maybe more than anyone else on his team -- but when he finally went up against a championship caliber team in MVP Ozone he got destroyed, ending the night with 0 kills, 9 deaths, and only 2 assists to his name. Against teams like Blast and Storm his type of all out aggression might work, but facing teams like Ozone or SK Telecom T1 it'll more than likely lead to him dying a lot and being a non-factor in the late game.

His opponent, impact, is the ultimate team player. With players like Piglet and Faker on the team, and a very capable Jungler in bengi, impact isn't asked upon to be the #1 or even #2 option on the team. If they need him to be a tank in the front lines to open up holes for the primarily assassins on the team, that's what he'll do. If the team needs him to play a proxy Singed strategy, annoy everyone on the opposite team and sacrifice himself when needed, he'll happily do that as well. Coming from a Support role back in the day on Xenics Storm, impact is the type of Top Laner that will throw his body in front of an oncoming bullet for the rest of his team to succeed.

Compared to Miso, a player that is wild, aggressive and uncontainable, impact is calculated, does whatever the team's planned for him to do, and he completes it to the best of his abilities. Miso is the type of player that will either win you games or make you report him at the end of games. impact is someone that any team in Korea would want on their squad; helpful, good in whatever type of role you want to put him in, and a player who will put the team's needs in front of his own. Faker and Piglet will be the ones racking up the kills and winning the KDA awards, but impact will be the cog in the machine that keeps it going, and that's the type of player that turns good teams into champions.





In the match-up that could very well mean the Falcons pulling off one of the biggest upsets in Champions history or them getting blown out 3-0 in devastating fashion, we'll see Reapered try to beat out bengi in the jungle. For most of the season, Reapered has been going for a Doran's Blade opener, wanting to get in the lead early with a kill against his opposing Jungler and snowball into a lead. This has worked on occasion, but backfired disastrously when he went up against a world class Jungler in Dandy, going with a oddball pick of Jungle Gangplank in the first game and getting killed in the opening minutes of the game. That game would end up with him not getting a single kill and dying three times, putting his team on the back foot to start the game and end in a one-sided loss.

The trend continued in his second game, getting on the consensus #1 Jungler champion currently in Elise, but still not being able to snowball early. He was able to pick up the only kill for his team late in the match, picking off dade after the game was already over. It's essentially been the same story for Reapered's teams the last two seasons: if Reapered snowballs early and does well, so will his team; if Reapered dies early or can't get some sort of lead on his opposing Top Laner (now Jungler), then you might as well surrender at twenty minutes, because Reapered's teams the past two seasons haven't shown the potential to lead when their captain isn't doing well.

bengi, unlike Reapered, doesn't need the kills to get ahead early. He only has six kills in the entire group stages, but enters with an astonishing 84 assists in six games. As we talked about with impact, Faker and Piglet are the super carries on the team, and bengi fits his role well, doing all the dirty work for his Mid Laner and ADC, helping them get the kills and picking up the assists in the process. Bengi is one of the best Junglers in Korea, right up there with Dandy and Kakao for the spot, and Reapered is going to have a difficult time getting an early kill against him or any of his teammates.





Fun fact: In his thirty five matches as a pro, Faker has played seventeen different champions, showing off his gigantic champion pool. His most played champion, surprisingly, is Orianna, only having played her five times with a record of 3-2.

Oh yes, my friends, it's time to talk about Faker. Coming through the solo queue as the #1 ranked player, the hype for him entering Champions was incomparable to anyone before him. Some thought he would fail, not being able to go from a world where it's all about you, to a team situation where even if you're the most mechanically gifted player on the planet, you won't win if you don't work well with your teammates. The transition from amateur solo queue player to a professional worked better than anyone could have hoped for, Faker entering the pro scene and lighting up everyone he played against. The team revolved solely around him being the superstar, making huge plays and racking up victories with his roam heavy champions.

This eventually came to an abrupt end in the semifinals of last season against MVP Ozone, not able to beat a team that was better coordinated and more well-rounded than they were. This season, SK Telecom T1 has become less Team Faker and more of an entire team effort, Faker not always needing to play on roaming, carry heavy champions and opting to play whatever champion works best for the team. He's still getting his kills, 40 on the season, but it's not longer, ''Pass the kills to Faker!' and hope that he's good enough to outplay everyone else on the Rift.

As a team, SK Telecom T1 have grown, becoming more coordinated in the late-game in team fighting and less reliant on their strong laning phase. Faker is still the superstar of the team, but unlike the Jin Air Falcons, he can have an off game and still have his team pick up his slack. Going up against the rookie Roar of the Falcons, who knows what he'll pick? Utility, carry centric, or a roaming assassin, Faker can and will play pretty much any champion that his team allows him to go with in a professional game.

On the Falcons side, we have Roar. Unlike the rest of his team, he's the only player with a KDA over 4 and hasn't died over eighteen times in the regular season. Opting to play an array of champions in the Mid Lane position, he's gone with the double ADC composition with Ezreal twice, played on the rarely seen Kayle, and even brought Kennen into the Mid Lane. He's not a traditional Mid Lane player with his picks, but he's been successful throughout the season, holding one of the better single game performances of the season with his 1/0/17 game on Ahri.

It's going to be hard to go one-on-one with the most explosive player in Korea, but Roar might be able to do the best job of anyone on his team. In his two games against Ozone, he didn't do exceptionally well, but held his own, only dying once on Ezreal in the blowout game that ended 18-1 in Ozone's favor, and going 2/4/3 on the other blowout game they lost to Ozone, this time playing on Kennen. He doesn't die a lot in lane and isn't as careless when it comes to team fighting as his solo lane partner Miso is, but that might be enough to hold down Faker if he decides tonight is the night he wants to carry his team to the semifinals.





Fun fact: There are a lot of signature player and champion combos in Korea, but Piglet on Caitlyn is one of, if not the strongest pairing in Champions. He is 11-1 all-time on Caitlyn, including a 3-0 record this season. To make things even crazier, he has an insane career stat line of 69 kills, 15 deaths, and 105 assists on Caitlyn in the twelve games he's played on her, coming out with an out of this world 11.6 KDA on the female sheriff of Piltover. On the flip side, Raven is awful on Caitlyn, coming in with a 1-4 all-time record on the champion with 20 kills, 16 deaths, and 18 assists.

If the winter was the season of Pray and Twitch and spring was the season of imp and Vayne, then summer is poised to be the season of Piglet and Caitlyn. With all the talk about Faker, how amazing he was in his rookie season and how SK Telecom T1 was essentially a four man team protecting one player, Piglet has more than come into his own this season, playing like a man possessed and going up to the top of the ADC KDA rankings. With a lifetime record of 17-2 on Caitlyn and Vayne, he's played those two champions primarily this season, going from an ADC that was on the rise to being considered possibly the strongest in all of Korea.

Paired with the wacky Mandu, one of the more peculiar Supports in Korea, the two have strengthened their bond in the bottom lane and have risen up the ranks of best duos in Korea. While Mandu admits that he would love to play an Aatrox as a Support or another out of the box type strategy, he's come into his own this season by playing a phenomenal Nami, the mermaid quickly becoming his signature champion. With a 7-1 all-time record on Nami and a stellar KDA of 5.8, the Falcons are going to need to try and stop SK Telecom T1 from getting their ultimate bottom lane of Caitlyn/Nami if they want any shot of stopping the Hundred Acre Wood Bot Lane.

Although this season has been the emergence of Piglet, you could say the opposite for his opponent Raven. Entering in with more deaths than kills on the season, Raven went from a promising rookie like Piglet last season and instead of going up, has done a nose dive when it comes to his progress as an ADC. For the Falcons to have any shot at all of knocking off SK Telecom T1, Raven needs not only to improve, but play the best games of his life against his former sister team.

A major disappointment, neither Raven or Starlast -- who have never played a professional game without each other -- have made the next step in their careers and have stagnated as the worst bottom lane duo in the knockout rounds. When looking at signature champions for Raven, he really doesn't have any, his best results coming with Vayne at an average record of 11-9 on the champion. Compared to how dangerous Piglet is on Caitlyn and Vayne, Raven really doesn't have a counter for the talent that Piglet brings to the bottom lane.

As harsh as it might sound, Raven and StarLast either need to improve fast, or the Falcons will need to start looking for a new bottom lane that can help them get farther in the tournament. Before, at the start of the Korean pro scene, having a good AD Carry wasn't always needed, the weakest position when it came to Korean depth, but now? Blaze, a team with a world class solo lane duo, was stopped in the finals when imp and Mata outclassed their opponents CptJack and Lustboy. You might be able to get to the quarterfinals or even a lucky semifinal birth with a weak or average bot lane, but it's impossible to win a championship when you have players like imp, Piglet and Space breaking out onto the scene.