Source: Riot Games — lolesports

The final two Week 1 games of the EU LCS Summer Split saw our Spring Split champions and runners-up take to the stage. First off, Fnatic took on a Schalke team that looked refreshed under the guidance of their new jungler, Maurice ‘Amazing’ Stückenschneider. Then, to close out the day, G2 faced Splyce’s roster who struggled against Team Vitality’s innovative picks on Day 1. Looking to build momentum coming out of the opening week of the Summer Split, both Fnatic and G2 utilised a ‘gold-funnelling’ strategy focused around their mid laners Caps and Perkz in order to pick up crucial regular season wins.

Competitive play on Patch 8.11 saw the introduction of a new strategy revolving around funnelling both mid lane and jungle farm into a carry, such as Kai’Sa, Karthus or Master Yi. This strategy has been circling around solo queue for a while now, commonly used to boost a player through the divisions.

The game plan focuses on a supportive jungler, such as a Braum, Nunu or Taric, giving up all their gold and experience and funnelling it into the mid lane carry. This is achieved by both players roaming the map together picking up mid lane farm, Scuttle Crabs and jungle camps to gain a huge gold and experience advantage over the mid lane opponent. As a result, the carry is multiple levels ahead of every other champion on the map with a large item disparity, allowing them to out-damage the enemy team with the utility from their jungle ‘support’.

Throughout Week 1 we witnessed teams from around the world draft a number of different gold funnel compositions with varying degrees of success. In the very first game of the LCK Summer Split we saw bbq Olivers and MVP pick up Nunu-Karthus and Taric-Master Yi, in which MVP came out on top. Jin Air Green Wings, Kingzone DragonX, Gen.G eSports and SK Telecom T1 all tried their hand at similar strategies attempting to get the edge over their opponents.

Source: Riot Games — lolesports

On Friday, Europe finally got their chance to showcase their grasp on the new meta with the beginning of the EU LCS Summer Split, and Day 1 concluded with the ‘Match of the Week’ — Fnatic vs Misfits Gaming. The Spring Split champions used their opening game as an opportunity to become the first EU team to draft a gold funnel team composition with Caps on Kai’Sa and Broxah on Taric. Fnatic rounded out their draft with a Janna-Rakan bottom lane and sOAZ on Cho’Gath in the top lane.

In response to this ‘4 Supports 1 Kai’Sa’ team composition, Misfits countered with a relatively standard draft involving Hans Sama using the final pick to lock in Draven. This gave Misfits a strong, pushing 2v2 lane, allowing the Draven to shut down two squishy, support champions who have no kill pressure and no jungler to protect them.

Misfits piled the pressure on Fnatic from the first minute, starting the game with a level 1 invade that disrupted Caps’ early clear. Several more proactive moves in the early game from Maxlore’s Camille enabled Hans Sama’s Draven to pick up kills and the first tower while also shutting down Caps on Kai’Sa. As a result, Draven sat 2k gold ahead of Kai’Sa at 10 minutes, while Fnatic were burdened with a 5k overall gold deficit.

The combination of Misfits’ early pressure and Fnatic’s lack of proactive moves resulted in a 11k gold difference at 20 minutes, the largest at 20 minutes in EU LCS history. Utilising their back line dive with Camille and Shen ultimates allowed Misfits to take out Fnatic’s only damage dealer and from there nothing could stop them from picking up their first victory of the Summer Split.

In the Post Game Lobby, Caps joined up with Sjokz, Ender and Deficio to discuss the problems his team faced in their loss. The Fnatic mid laner said that the team made ‘clear mistakes’ but could have definitely won the game. However, Caps also admitted that there could be some issues with the draft that allowed the team to make mistakes, such as having a single damage dealer and putting the Spring Split MVP, Rekkles, on Janna.

Source: Riot Games — lolesports

Fnatic were given a chance to redeem their poor start to the Split with a Day 2 match-up against FC Schalke 04 who placed 8th in the Spring Split regular season. Schalke came into the second day of Summer after a win against Unicorns of Love with some decisive late-game shotcalling and a strong performance from Nukeduck on Kayle.

Fnatic coach Dylan Falco and his team repeated their strategy from Day 1 and drafted another gold funnel composition with Caps on Kai’Sa. Their draft was refined with a pushing, safer bot lane with Rekkles on Karma for wave clear and Hylissang on Morgana providing a black shield to reduce the effectiveness of ganks.

On the other hand, Schalke drafted a composition to invade Fnatic’s power-farming jungle and mid duo with the aid of Twisted Fate and Shen ultimates. Schalke made use of this early on in the game, disrupting Fnatic’s early clear and picking up a 3k gold lead at 10 minutes in the process.

At 15 minutes Caps’ Kai’Sa was 0/3 and Schalke had full control, using this to increase their gold lead to 8k at 20 minutes. However, a momentary lapse in concentration from the Schalke players allowed Fnatic to sneak a Baron with the help of two Smites and Nunu’s consume. From there the game took a 360 as Schalke could do nothing to prevent Fnatic from running down mid and ending the game with Caps finally dealing the damage his team had been waiting for.

Nevertheless, if not for Schalke’s lack of respect for early Baron takes on the most recent patches, Fnatic would have almost definitely lost this game. This was supported by coach Dylan Falco after his team’s victory when he admitted that Fnatic ‘probably didn’t deserve to win the game’. He also stated that although he thinks the strategy is viable in the current meta, Fnatic may not be drafting or playing it out correctly.

Source: Riot Games — lolesports

After two opportunities to show what they are capable of when using a gold funnel strategy, the Spring Split champions left a lot to be desired. Their abysmal early game performances perhaps suggest that they are not ready to bring this game plan out of scrims yet, despite the fact that Caps revealed that they were seeing a lot of success in preparation for Week 1.

Fnatic’s inability to play proactively in the early game or draft winning lanes in order to prevent enemy invades were the main reasons for their failures in the Misfits and Schalke match-ups. Giving up several kills and towers without response during the first 20 minutes of each game resulted in their downfall. On top of this, drafting compositions with a single damage dealer allows the opposition to build a team designed for back line dive to shut down Caps. These negative aspects of Fnatic’s opening week of the Summer Split were compounded when four-time EU LCS champions G2 took to the stage in the final game of Day 2.

Source: Riot Games — lolesports

In contrast to Fnatic’s gold funnel drafts, G2 picked a mid-jungle duo of Braum and Kai’Sa alongside a pushing 2v2 Heimerdinger-Soraka bot lane and a carry top laner in Aatrox. This meant that all of G2’s eggs weren’t in the Kai’Sa basket, creating a composition involving three damage dealers rather than one.

Despite drafting to facilitate invades into G2’s jungle, the pressure created from Heimerdinger and Soraka in the bot lane made it difficult for Splyce to make early moves. Instead it was G2 who were the more proactive team in the first 20 minutes of the game, looking towards both side lanes to collect kills for Perkz on Kai’Sa.

That being said, Splyce did look to make early plays of their own with a level 2 Syndra roam and a couple of Nocturne ultimates onto G2’s carries that were unsuccessful. Splyce’s composition was built to dive the back line of G2 and blow up a single target by combining Syndra and Nocturne ultimates, however this was ineffective due to the gold advantage Perkz created in the early game.

The Spring Split runners-up’s proficiency with this strategy was illustrated at 20 minutes when Perkz achieved the feat of most CS at 20 minutes in EU LCS history, a record that Caps held for less than an hour. Ultimately G2’s control over the game led to them picking up an early Baron and going 10k gold ahead at 30 minutes. As a result, the team ended the game easily with Kai’Sa sitting on 5 and half items, giving G2 a 2–0 start to the Summer Split.

Source: Riot Games — lolesports

All in all, it was clear over the course of the weekend that G2 were in a much better position to bring out the gold-funnel strategy than Fnatic. Intelligent drafting and proactive early moves were they key difference between the two teams during their first two games of the Summer Split.

Fnatic’s over-reliance on Caps as the single damage dealer on their team, leaving Rekkles to play supportive champions, was one of the main reasons why they were unsuccessful in executing this game plan. Meanwhile G2 already excelled in early game decision making in Spring and have seamlessly brought this over to the Summer Split.

Needless to say, G2 look the much stronger team heading into Week 2 with a 2–0 record whilst Fnatic are lucky to be going into Friday’s game against H2k with a single win under their belt.