After a rather slow Game 2 of the day, Flyquest took on the Golden Guardians, a team FlyQuest beat 3-2 in playoffs this past Spring Split. Despite this past success, a hungry Golden Guardians squad was not to be underestimated.
Today’s featured matchup was between Henrik “Froggen” Harsen, and Eugene “Pobelter” Park. Both players are large carries for their teams, where Pobelter normally sticks to a more Meta approach to his champion pool, Froggen has a lot of pocket picks he likes to pull out. Examples being his signature Anivia, Karthus, and even Veigar.
Clutch started by taking V1per’s Irelia off of the board after his monstrous performance against Cloud9. FlyQuest resorted to standard bans with the Aatrox and Sylas.
Moving into the second phase, multiple Jungle bans were thrown at Lucas “Santorin” Larsen, FlyQuest chose Jarvan IV into Rek’sai, And a Pyke Top counter pick for V1per into Kevin” Hauntzer” Yarnell’s Jayce.
But the most Iconic thing to be known about this draft is Froggen picking his signature Anivia into Pobelter’s Ryze, a champion Froggen has been known for his entire career that rarely makes an appearance these days.
FlyQuest shows they have a very strong teamfighting composition, that wants to get in your face early into the mid game, and match the splitting prowess of the Jayce with a deadly combo in the Pyke and Jarvan IV.
Golden Guardians show their game plan to try and activate Jayce in a side lane, with safe and reliable wave clear and siege control with Anivia and Ezreal.
There wasn’t much action early, aside from strong map movement by FlyQuest that managed to secure three buffs for Santorin. This forced Juan “Contactz” Garcia to play more to his top side, which was his original plan. Moving forward, Contractz was able to continue to protect his Top Laner who was dominating the lane early as Jayce often does. This kept Santorin from establishing a foothold in the only real gankable lane for a Jarvan in this game.
Going into the 7:30 mark, FlyQuest attempted to get an early Dragon with their priority over Mid Lane and Bot Lane. Unexpectedly, Froggen abandoned his wave to assist, forcing a numbers advantage at the Dragon. Due to the fact Santorin started the Ocean Dragon earlier, he sustained a lot of damage as it is the Second highest DPS Dragon. This forced him to use Smite to regain health when Golden Guardians launched their attack.
As the game went on, the Golden Guardians’ wave clear advantage become rather prevalent, forcing down Turret plate after Turret plate, accumulating 12 of 15 plates in all. They were also able to take the Cloud Dragon on the way out after securing the Mid Lane Turret. This left the Golden Guardians with a 4.1k gold lead.
As the third Dragon of the game spawned, Pobelter secured the GG’s Top Lane Tower, but in doing so, left all the priority over the Dragon to the GG’s resulting in a trade.
For the next 5 minutes the Golden Guardian’s slowly whittled down FlyQuest. Small skirmishes resulted in no kills going either way. The Golden Guardians landed crucial poke onto V1per and WildTurtle and managed to brute force their way down the Mid Lane for an Inhibitor at 24:30.
With a smart fake reset, the Golden Guardian’s lulled FlyQuest into a false sense of security. When suddenly the Golden Guardian’s rushed down the baron, securing it within a second of FlyQuest’s arrival then cleanly disengaging.
With the Baron buff, FlyQuest was overwhelmed, doing their best to defend their Bottom Lane Towers, but the poke from Hauntzer’s Jayce and Deftly’s Ezreal proved too much. This resulted in the bottom inhibitor falling.
As the Inhibitor fell, the first real bloody fight of the game began. Two Pyke Executes came through for FlyQuest, but an overchase left Deftly to pick up two kills in return resulting in a 2 for 2 fight.
The Guardians quickly reset to spend their gold, then went back Top Lane with some Baron Buff remaining to Siege. Quickly taking down the second tier Tower and moving onto the Inhibitor. FlyQuest took matters into their own hands and went onto the offensive. A quick kill with a solid spear from V1per landed a kill onto Hauntzer. Afterwards due to a great wall from Froggen, WildTurtle was forced to Flash, and an accidental Teleport sealed his fate.
After this, the Guardian’s cleaned up FlyQuest and took the Nexus for a final time of 30:25.
Overall this was a pretty rough game for FlyQuest. However, it was a brand new look for the Golden Guardians, slow, methodical, and clean. FlyQuest wasn’t able to play to their win condition due to a smart sacrifice coming from Contractz, who sacrificed his entire bottom side to protect Hauntzer.
Moving forward, FlyQuest will need to identify what they wish to do in the early game. FlyQuest’s matches this week left something to be desired in the early game. They need to decide whether their success depends on drafting a simpler means of engage, more gank assistance, or just giving more resources to Santorin.
Overall, this wasn’t the expected outcome of the week. FlyQuest went down 0-2 for Week 1, but it is only the first week. With Wadid waiting in the wings it’s quite possible we see his LCS Debut Week 2 Day 1.
FlyQuest takes on Team SoloMid and Optic Gaming in Week 2. Overall it should be expected that TSM have a strong showing, and Optic will be a must win for them if they wish to avoid an 0-4 start.
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