One of the biggest criticisms levied against Fnatic, and western teams in general, is a weak early game. LPL teams have long been known for their fearlessness in making early game plays and ignoring the unspoken isolated lane farm agreement to snowball leads. This has allegedly become more true of Korean teams. If western teams can “survive the laning phase,” they can topple the Asian giants.

How different are the early games between the top western and the top LCK and LPL teams at Worlds? Has Europe's more aggressive playstyle this year helped them at all? We try to assess what happens differently among teams attending the tournament within the first 20 minutes and see if there are notable trends to highlight separating the top teams representing the western and Asian regions.

The simple investigation will reveal that European teams are closer to LPL teams in their early objective play timing than LCK or LMS teams, but still do not all manage to accrue the gold leads of LCK or LPL teams. North American teams seem to be considerably further behind in both securing 20 minute gold leads and the time at which they make plays for early objectives.

Game Time

If the top Korean and Chinese teams have stronger early games, it doesn’t help them win games faster. In looking at average total game times in wins, losses, and aggregate, LPL and EU teams tend to win faster with all six LPL and EU LCS teams above the median average win time at Worlds. LPL, LCK, LMS, and EU teams tend to have longer losing game times with NA and Wildcard teams having the longest winning times and shortest losing times.

Region Average game time in wins Average game time in losses EU 35.29 39.89 LPL 35.53 38.38 LMS 37.13 38.80 LCK 37.34 39.21 NA 38.30 37.86 WC 40.09 35.27

Because of the nature of teams attending Worlds, there tends to be a smaller samples size of losing games. Only the Bangkok Titans are represented in the Wildcard loss pool since only data from Wildcard qualifiers are used, and paiN didn't lose any games during the International Wildcard Desafio. As a result, we're mostly looking at teams in their wins.

The Top 5 teams for shortest average game time in wins are H2K, LGD Gaming, SK Telecom T1, Cloud9, and Fnatic, with four major regions represented and the first seed teams from Europe, LPL, and LCK. Fnatic are in the Top 5 when it comes to fastest winning game times. This is consistent with Fnatic tending to win the mid game through Barons with the earliest average first Baron time of teams attending the tournament.

As we saw with Fnatic, despite the mix of game times, that doesn't give an interpretation of how hard teams win the early games. As another example, despite Edward Gaming averaging the third highest gold lead at 20 minutes in wins among LPL teams, they had the longest average game time in the region. Even with a statistically strong early game, they took the longest to close.

Average Gold Lead at 20 Minutes in Wins

Team Gold lead at 20 minutes in wins Games AHQ e-Sports Club 3879 28 H2K 3691 18 SK Telecom T1 3674 38 Bangkok Titans 3413 6 LGD Gaming 3350 36 Edward Gaming 3273 40 Invictus Gaming 3076 38 Flash Wolves 3020 28 KT Rolster* 2942 34 Fnatic 2913 24 Counter Logic Gaming 2787 19 paiN Gaming 2783 7 Origen 2453 23 Koo Tigers 2402 33 Cloud9 1988 16 Team SoloMid 1815 17

*Note: It can be argued that KT Rolster had a more snowbally early game with the addition of Piccaboo, but statistically speaking their average gold leads at 15 minutes declined or weren't appreciably different.

With the exception of H2K and the KOO Tigers, all Asian teams average a higher gold lead at 20 minutes in their wins than western teams. This includes Wildcard teams, Bangkok Titans and paiN Gaming. In fact, only two Korean teams have gold leads below 3,000 gold at 20 minutes in wins, and only one European team averages a gold lead above 3,000 gold at 20 minutes in wins.

H2K's high early gold leads usually come from abusing lane swaps when other teams didn't. The KOO Tigers are the exception of top teams coming from Asia in that they're better known for late game team fighting and tend to lose earlier.

Based on gold lead, we infer there is an apparent difference in regional correlation between gold leads at 20 minutes for top teams when they win. The trend is almost reversed for losses. Only Edward Gaming and AHQ sit in the bottom half for gold deficits at 20 minutes, and only H2K sits in the top half for gold deficits at 20 minutes. Regardless of game time overall, it appears generally that the Asian teams have more swinging early games, amassing either a large deficit or lead, and wins and losses are seemingly more likely to be determined in the first 20 minutes of a game in LPL, LCK, or LMS than in North American or European LCS.

Time at which First Objective is Taken in Wins

Region Fist Blood Time First Dragon Time First Tower Time LCK 6.89 15.39 15.22 LPL 6.45 10.09 11.57 LMS 5.93 14.23 12.87 EU 5.89 13.42 8.85 NA 7.41 18.14 11.30

One way to measure the early game is to look at how proactively a team plays the early game. If they tend to acquire extremely early objectives, they're more likely to make a play to get an early lead and snowball rather than giving up objectives and falling behind. This is obviously an imperfect measure, as one often trades early objectives for farm or other resources that can get them ahead. It still correlates with a team's willingness to take control over the course of a game earlier.

This average only includes the three teams attending Worlds for the LCK, LPL, EU LCS, and NA LCS and the two teams representing the LMS and Wildcard regions. As a result, these averages can be heavily influenced by an outlier, but still provide revealing information. First blood and dragon times appear lowest in the LPL, LMS and European LCS, but highest in the LCK and North American LCS. First tower times are lowest in Europe, LPL, and North America.

Perhaps the biggest variance is in first dragon times in wins with LPL averaging a 10 minute first dragon, and North American LCS averaging an 18 minute first dragon in wins. First dragons tend to be taken earlier on average in losing games across all regions; this could be related to losing teams hedging a bet for a five dragon come back and moving to take a dragon earlier than otherwise. Europe's first tower time is also much lower than others, and Korea's much higher.

A better measure of whether these trends are influenced by outliers comes in counting the number of teams within a region that appear above or below a median for average first objective times.

Number of teams over category median

Region First Blood First Dragon First Tower LCK 1 0 0 LPL 2 3 2 LMS 2 1 0 EU 2 3 3 NA 0 0 2 WC 1 1 1

By this observation, European and LPL teams are more likely to make plays for objectives earlier than LCK or LMS teams at Worlds. First blood timing seems too be independent of regions with the exception that no North American teams acquire early first bloods relative to the sample.

LPL teams are especially proactive in acquiring first dragons. LGD, Edward Gaming, and Invictus Gaming ranked Top 3 among Worlds attendees for average first dragon time. European teams ranked Top 3 for average first tower.

Some of the differences in first tower come from the lane swap meta variation. In European lane swaps, it's not uncommon for a 4v0 approach to occur where teams trade turrets for free early. In lane swaps featuring LCK and LMS teams, it's more common for the support to roam to aid the top laner. Lane swaps are not very common in North America, but they do follow a lane swap meta similar to Europe's.

LPL teams will often go for top lane and AD Carry 1v1s with support roams where the AD Carry will take the enemy turret and freeze or swap back. Though they don't always take turrets earlier in lane swaps. LGD averages a two minute and 30 second longer time until they take the first turret in games where they send their duo lane to the top lane at the start of the game. In general, early turrets going down is reflective of the LPL's tendency to quickly get out of laning phase and start the mid game sooner.

Team Ranking of earliest First Objective to latest by Region in Wins

Region First Blood First Dragon First Tower LCK SKT KOO KT SKT KOO KT SKT KOO KT LPL EDG LGD iG LGD EDG iG LGD EDG iG LMS FW AHQ FW AHQ FW AHQ EU H2K FNC OG OG H2K FNC OG H2K FNC NA TSM CLG C9 CLG C9 TSM CLG TSM C9 WC BKT paiN paiN BKT paiN BKT

Looking at the rankings of when a team from each region takes an objective first in their wins, there are a few surprises. KT, typically known for having a really strong early game, is the slowest of the Korean teams attending Worlds to take objectives first. This suggests that they get most of their early gold leads in kills or farm. SKT is the most ahead, and their substantial early gold leads and early first blood times suggest they control a lot of their power through laning phase.

LGD has the fastest game time, earliest objective times, and highest gold lead at 20 minutes in wins among LPL teams. They often roam early as a group to protect their jungler, making it easy for them to secure early objectives. Invictus Gaming actually has the slowest early game in wins, but most objective times outside first turret remain fairly even among LPL teams. Invictus Gaming like to leave turrets up for longer to farm lane like SKT. They attempt to rush an "Aspect of the Dragon" buff.

The Flash Wolves take objectives across the board earlier than AHQ by at least a minute. AHQ's average early objective times all fall below the median, aligning them more with the LCK playstyle.

All European teams are fairly proactive in acquiring early objectives, but Origen seems to be the most proactive, and Fnatic tends to acquire objectives later, reinforcing the idea that they have a slower early game and focus more on mid game.

North American teams have slower first blood and dragon times, but will opt to trade turrets earlier. CLG is a bit of an outlier compared to Cloud9 and Team SoloMid, as they tend to have a gold lead on average 1,000 gold higher than either of the other two teams at 20 minutes and have an early dragon time of 16 minutes in wins. They're still slower and tend to have lower early gold leads than Asian teams.

Based on WildCard performances, paiN is just significantly more objective-oriented than Bangkok Titans, who prefer to fight all the time and snowball off kills.

Conclusion

This is a very simple thought experiment, and a deeper investigation would require more telling data. This will only give us some idea of how early games differ across Worlds teams in terms of when the first objectives are taken, how lane swaps differ, and which teams amass bigger gold leads at 20 minutes.

Based on objective timing data, the European teams at Worlds make objective plays on the whole more quickly than Korean teams. That still doesn't explain their tendency to have lower gold leads at 20 minutes in winning games. It's possible that early dragons or turrets in Europe taken before 15 or so minutes tend to be uncontested, so moves may not result in snowball fights necessarily.

It could also come down to the punishing laning phase and higher tendency of LCK and LPL players to trade and deny CS or roam outside lanes for additional pressure. For example, MaRin averages a CS lead of 7.9 at 10 minutes, which is far above any European player at Worlds. He often can get these leads through pressure from bengi. One of the only things holding European teams back as an early game weakness is lane isolation. In the future a, CS lead analysis would be beneficial, but data are currently lacking for LPL teams.

North American teams in general failed most of the metrics measuring strong early games. Cloud9 and Team SoloMid in particular are bottom two for gold leads at 20 minutes in wins, and the average first dragon rate among North American teams attending the World Championship is almost shocking compared to other teams. They also tend to have lower first blood timings than even LCK teams. Most North American teams play extended farming laning phases, which will be easy to abuse for almost any other team attending Worlds that chooses to act first.

LMS trends align more with LCK than any other region in terms of timings and gold leads at 20 in wins. In this case, their mechanical skill and ability to skirmish or control lane shouldn't be questioned, but Europe still will make more proactive objective moves.

The LPL is still the fastest paced region in terms of their top teams all averaging high 20 minute gold leads and securing first objectives quickly. Expect them to hit hard and fast, but this playstyle can also backfire, especially against LCK teams who look to control and snowball through lane, taking some advantage of frequent LPL roams.

Kelsey Moser is a staff writer for theScore eSports. You can follow her on Twitter.

Thank you to Mag1c, founder of OraclesElixir.com, for providing me with data for non-LPL teams on this piece.