Published by chillfast, 1 month ago at 11:51 am on Aug 31st.



The real problem: Fiddlesticks



The gargantuan crowd at the Jamsil Stadium















SK Telecom Team #1 with the OGN Champions Cup

On the 31st of August 2013, rain fell upon a crowd of 20,000 people at the Jamsil Supplementary Soccer Stadium to a backdrop of a massive stage, two soundproof booths and ten young men hungry for victory in the OGN Champions Summer Grand Finals.vswas hyped up to be a battle of epic proportions - and it lived up to expectations. This immense best-of-five series went the distance.KTB came out the gates swinging, taking a commanding lead in the first set of the tournament. Somewhat questionably, SKT T1 chose not to first pick Elise or Ahri, deciding Sona was a higher priority, then SKT’s Jungler Bengi opted to pick Nunu jungle early in the draft, a jungler seen very infrequently in Korea due to his lack of waveclear, allowing fast-pushing compositions such as Ezreal/Fiddlesticks to come out later in the picks and bans - which they did - to take advantage of this weakness. A jungler such as Nasus would have been a much better, and safer option, which I feel could have changed the game.Due to this blunder in Champion select, KT Rolster B managed to apply an insane amount of pressure to the top half of the map in a 2v1 lane early and forced a laneswap from Piglet and PoohManDu’s duo lane, to which KT replied by taking a dragon. KaKao managed to pick up an early lead on his feared Elise Jungle, rushing an early Locket of the Iron Solari (even before upgrading his spirit stone) to spike his team’s power in the early mid-game exponentially. The game continued to spiral out of SK Telecom’s hands and ended in complete decimation on a map-wide scale, losing 5 Dragons and Baron over the course of the match. Even with this clinical destruction of SKT, their AD Carry Piglet’s Vayne ended the game with a score of 9/2/1 - still a threat, just not impactful enough when compared to Score’s 92% kill contribution on Ezreal.The second game of the series saw a very similar composition in the hands of the Bullets - with inSec on one of his his signature top laners Zac, but more importantly Mafa was given his Fiddlesticks for the second game in a row. SK Telecom started the game well, picking up both first blood onto Faker’s Ahri and the first two dragons of the game, but Impact’s Nasus in the top lane fell twice in a row early to Bengi and his Spider Queen’s powerful ganks. Bengi continued his trend of being a terror by finishing off Faker after a sloppy dive in the midlane, allowing him to (yet again) rush a very early Aegis of the Legion, which changed the outcome of the entire game. The team fight directly after Bengi acquired the magic resistance aura item saw three of his teammates fall to below 100hp but survive and win the fight without losing anyone.The main focus of this game however, was not the incredibly powerful Elise - but Tristana in the mid-game. KT Rolster B have always been known as the innovators of the east, and this game was no different. Score decided that to make up for Tristana’s notorious lack of power in the mid-game by building a Statikk Shiv and maxing the Rocketeer’s Explosive Shot and turning her into a serious splitpushing threat. Demanding attention, this led to more and more map control for KTB and saw SK Telecom’s pick-off composition in the dust. The incredible control created by having a Zac and Fiddlesticks on the same team meant that SKT T1 could do nothing to stop the Bullets ripping their base apart. However, up until the second his nexus was destroyed, the powerhouse that is Faker proved that he was a force to be reckoned with, deleting his enemies from the map.It was clear that SK Telecom’s future in the tournament was at serious risk if they didn’t fix a massive problem in the draft: Mafa’s Fiddlesticks and inSec’s Zac. The now-underdogs chose to remove the terrifying scarecrow from the equation, banning him and managing to first pick Zed for Faker. KT responded by picking an identical setup to Game 1, but with Lulu instead of Fiddlesticks. This proved to be the arrow to Bullet’s achilles heel.Without the complete lockdown of a Fiddlesticks fear, SKT T1 trampled KT Bullets in what can only be described as a slaughter ending in a 20 minute surrender - even with an early First Blood onto Score. Faker’s Zed destroyed Ryu’s Gragas in lane in multiple 1v1 situations, and Piglet and PoohManDu pick up a multitude of kills between the duo (including an incredible triple kill for the bloodthirsty support’s Zyra) with the assistance of Bengi.With their lead, Piglet began to roam the map as Vayne, picking up even more kills and cementing the victory. SK Telecom forced KT Rolster Bullets to rethink their winning strategy from games 1 and 2, answering the fast-push strategy with unrelenting aggression and tower dives with Bengi’s impressive Vi play.Game 4 was the closest of the series, even with inSec being able to play his beloved Zac (SK Telecom choosing to ban out Ryu’s Zed and Mafa’s Fiddle for the second game in a row). With Faker back on Ahri, joined with Bengi’s return as Vi, joined by Shen in the top-lane, Twitch and Zyra in the duo-lane SKT had a full pick-off composition. KT Rolster Bullets had a much more team-fight orientated composition with Zac, Elise, Gragas, Vayne and Sona. Throughout the game, kills went back and forth with a fantastic early dragon steal from Ryu on Gragas, utilizing the ultimate’s low cooldown and high damage. KTB continued to control the Dragon, but failed to push many towers early (even with Elise staying in the mid-lane for 2-3 minutes making an attempt to push the tower very early) and Vayne’s short range made it even more difficult to take them later against SKT’s powerful pick-off composition. With a couple of incredibly close and well played Baron fights, and extremely good vision control from PoohManDu, SK Telecom managed to take the win over the Bullets for a second time.For the first time since last year’s OGN Champions Summer the teams found themselves in a Grand Final of the tournament, in the fifth of five possible games - and it was blind pick. This saw both teams pick up Shen as their top laners (wtf 2 shens?) and Zed as their mid laners (which provided incredibly entertaining 1v1 skirmishes).The major difference between the teams was the importance KT Rolster B placed upon Caitlyn - having banned her in every single game leading up to this point, Score decided to bring the Sheriff out to play on Summoner’s Rift against Piglet’s Vayne. Even though Mafa’s powerful Fiddlesticks provided his team with multiple kills in the mid-game, the teamfights that ensued belonged to SK Telecom, Piglet’s incredibly powerful Vayne play and mechanical skill proved too much for KTB to handle.Coupling the incredible Vayne play with Faker’s mind-blowingly good Zed play (example below) and some very, very lucky escapes for their team, and some escapes falling just short for their opponents, SK Telecom Team #1 defeat KT Rolster Bullets in the OGN Champions Summer Grand Final.With this victory, SK Telecom Team #1 manage to send MVP Ozone straight into the World Championships (due to a circuit point advantage) and send both themselves and KT Rolster Bullets into an extra tournament alongside CJ Entus Frost & Blaze to decide who will be granted Korea’s 3rd spot at the multi-million dollar competition in Los Angeles this Fall.After the game, the KDA awards were presented to inSec for top-lane, and the remaining awards were granted to SK Telecom #1's respective players - with Faker picking up the Summer MVP award and a sum just short of $9000.Today, the real winners are the fans - an incredible best-of-five series going the distance, and the best possible situation for some more edge of the seat League of Legends games next week with the Korean Regional Finals!All of the games are available as VODs if you're a subscriber at www.twitch.tv/ongamenet - and if you do go back and watch them, make sure to watch games 4 and 5!