When EDward Gaming beat SK Telecom T1 at the 2015 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational, talk immediately turned to regional strength. South Korea had been decimated by talent loss and internal restructuring. By contrast, China had received a massive influx of top-tier, proven League of Legends players from South Korea. In that moment, Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu and Heo “PawN” Won-seok’s contributions to EDG’s victory further proved how much stronger China was because of the 2014-15 Korean Exodus. The 2015 League of Legends World Championship, and the entirety of the 2016 LoL Pro League season, proved otherwise.

Royal Never Give Up’s 2018 MSI victory revisits the question of China’s strength — especially compared to South Korea, the default strongest region for at least five years — with a winning Chinese team that did not rely on South Korean players in its lineup. The top teams in China with hybrid rosters have, for the most part, paid much more attention to how their lineups will gel and synergize as a unit, rather than picking up South Korean pros seemingly at random.

This brings us to Invictus Gaming. iG was one of many organizations that joined in the 2014-15 offseason frenzy that brought the first large wave of South Korean professional players to Chinese shores. The two star players iG picked up were former KT Rolster Arrows jungler Lee “KaKAO” Byung-kwon and mid laner Song “Rookie” Eui-jin along with former KT Rolster Bullets support Won “Mafa” Sang-hyeon as their coach. What began as a shaky foray into the world of hybrid rosters that ended in an embarrassing 2015 Worlds showing has now, through many iterations, become one of the strongest teams in China. Arguably, iG are the best team in China — they lost to RNG in the 2018 LPL Spring playoffs without starting top laner Kang “TheShy” Seung-lok — giving a new depth to outside perception of the LPL’s strength.

Would Invictus Gaming have won MSI?

Introducing Invictus Gaming

One of the oldest League of Legends organizations in China, the 2018 roster of Invictus Gaming is centered around Rookie and the mid lane. Rookie has been the backbone of iG since his 2015 arrival — both during and after KaKAO’s time on the team — but it wasn’t until 2017 LPL Summer that the current lineup of iG started to fall into place. Lee “Duke” Ho-seong began to split time with Kang “TheShy” Seung-lok, who would later become iG’s starting top laner over Duke. Although iG still had a middling record during the regular season that summer, the team ramped up and improved through the 2017 LPL Summer playoffs, finishing third overall with a 3-2 victory over Team WE. iG then nearly qualified for the 2017 League of Legends World Championship as China’s third seed, but fell 2-3 to WE in the final qualifying series. At the time, many fans lamented that iG would once again miss an international event, especially given how much the team had improved as a unit over the course of 2017 summer.

The last missing piece for iG seemed to be AD carry Yu “JackeyLove” Wen-Bo. JackeyLove debuted with the team during the 2017 Demacia Cup Championship in late December, but his solo queue performances and rumors of his prowess with the team during scrims built up JackeyLove as the next great Chinese AD carry. Alongside EDward Gaming’s Hu “iBoy” Xian-Zhao, who had his own impressive international debut as a rookie in the 2017 Worlds group stages, and RNG’s Dai “Able” Zhi-Chun, JackeyLove was hailed as another rising star in the latest crop of young, talented AD carries in the LPL.

JackeyLove didn’t take the LPL by storm as expected — iBoy is still the best of the trio for now — but he was a step up from Chen “West” Long. In short bursts of momentary mechanical brilliance from the AD carry, the 2018 LPL Spring regular season laid a roadmap for what JackeyLove can become if he continues to improve. On iG, he’s surrounded by all of the tools he needs to succeed including a fairly strong bot lane partner in support Wang “Baolan” Liu-Yi, jungler Gao “Ning” Zhen-Ning, the always-reliable Rookie, and TheShy, who came into his own as one of the LPL’s best.

iG had a remarkable 18-1 run in 2018 spring, dropping only one series in the season: the first match of the entire split against RNG. The team’s stumbles seemed to only come when iG tried out new strategies. By their own admission, the members of iG were concerned that the team depended on crushing early leads, and drafted towards scaling teamfight compositions to practice in their later games against teams like Topsports Gaming. iG were aware of their own weaknesses as a team going into the playoffs, and were working to correct them, but none of these flaws seemed large enough to bet against iG in any series. Most predicted iG not only to beat RNG in their semifinal, but were already talking about how iG would match up against Kingzone DragonX at MSI. Then, TheShy injured his hand and was designated inactive. Even with Duke in the top lane, iG was still expected to win the LPL. Instead, they lost to RNG 2-3 in the semifinals.

The Matchup

One of the most frustrating parts of watching the LPL playoffs was witnessing iG’s inexperience with and inability to play around Duke. It was as if Duke was playing one game, and the rest of iG were playing another. Duke performed well — and wholly as expected — and most of iG played well individually. Yet, iG was never able to make much of the formidable split push pressure that Duke created. RNG was easily able to separate iG on the map and push for their own objectives. Duke never knew how to group with the team well, and iG didn’t make the most of when Duke was able to pressure RNG’s turrets or inhibitors. Since iG generally preferred smaller skirmishes off of the back of their early game leads from Rookie, Ning, and strong side lane matchups, RNG were able to out-pressure them with stronger decision making around when to group as a team.

TheShy’s absence was definitely felt, and even if Duke was possibly a better stylistic matchup against RNG, due to RNG’s strong 1-3-1 setups, TheShy would have still been a stronger option for iG had he been available based on team comfort alone. iG knew how to play around TheShy and didn’t know how to play around Duke in a similar fashion. For this exercise, we’ll assume that iG with TheShy represented China at MSI after beating RNG and EDward Gaming. We’ll also assume that their opponents would be Kingzone DragonX — a Kingzone where jungler Han “Peanut” Wang-ho has stronger communication with his lanes and Kim “Khan” Dong-ha is flanking in a similar fashion to how he performed in LoL Champions Korea (and not the reversion to his lackluster 2017 teleport flanks that we actually saw at 2018 MSI).

Kingzone rely on their bottom lane in a different way than what became meta at MSI. Yet what was an obvious mismatch in playstyle against RNG and Jian “Uzi” Zi-Hao, would not have affected Kingzone nearly as much if their bottom lane opponents were JackeyLove and Baolan. While the assumption for this hypothetical matchup is that iG beat RNG, JackeyLove’s struggles against RNG in the semifinals aren’t easy to forget, nor is his rookie status. It’s difficult to imagine how well he and Baolan would perform against Kim “PraY” Jong-in and Kang “GorillA” Beom-hyeon, even with Kingzone continuing to focus on saving counterpicks or stronger matchups for Khan. It’s also not a slight against JackeyLove and Baolan to say that they’re no Uzi and Shi “Ming” Sen-Ming (they’re not even iBoy and Tian “Meiko” Ye). The Kingzone/iG matchup would be much more top side focused, even in the MSI meta, given how each team likes to play around Khan and TheShy respectively.

This would open up Kingzone’s options a lot more, giving them a game setup with which they’re more than comfortable. Kingzone is a bottom lane focused team in a different way than other teams at the MSI tournament (especially RNG) in that they rely on PraY and GorillA to be stable. In the early-to-mid game, Kingzone transfers that stability to supplement Gwak “Bdd” Bo-seong’s already strong mid lane control, opening up the side lanes for Khan’s split pushing. Bdd, who generally performed well at MSI, regardless of his team’s struggles as a whole, would not overpower Rookie, but would also not fall behind. With less focus on the bot side, PraY and GorillA would be able to transfer their pressure mid, further opening up the map for both Bdd and Peanut.

Calling the iG/Kingzone matchup is trickier than the Afreeca Freecs/RNG matchup because, although Kingzone’s problems at 2018 MSI were not new, Kingzone underperformed at the tournament. Still, given iG’s weaknesses and the fact that PraY and GorillA would not be focused as much in the bot lane: Kingzone 3, Invictus Gaming 2.