How Evil Geniuses Rallied Back to Beat Team Liquid

Jeong “Impact” Eon-young is 0-4. EG is behind 2k gold. There is a fed Camille on Team Liquid waiting to use her R on anyone who stands in their way. This was the unfortunate and nearly unplayable condition EG was forced into versus Team Liquid. If EG were most teams in the LCS, this game is probably over. Somehow though, grasping at a miracle, EG pull the rug out from under TL and makes the run. Here’s a  break down of how.

The Rift Fight:

Courtesy of Riot Games

At the 11 minute mark, EG starts up the Rift. What they didn’t notice, or frankly, didn’t respect is that Impact was about to go Mega Gnar. Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in engaged and Impact hops and uses his R on three people. Daniele “Jiizuke” di Mauro on Yone also uses his R on the clot of Team Liquid members and EG wins the fight.

This abundant lack of respect due to the lead was an obvious throw from TL and caused a 2K gold lead for them to plummet to a 600 gold lead. The one saving grace for TL was that Lucas “Santorin” Larsen did secure the Rift Herald. They proceeded to use this in Top Lane securing them First Turret making the gold lead around 2K again. This fight was the start of the turn for EG and despite the gold lead not ultimately changing, it showed they could win fights.

Bot Lane Fiesta:

Courtesy of Riot Games

At around 17:45 Barney “Alphari” Morris came flying into Bot Lane with predator ready and used the skill button, his R, on Matthew “Deftly” Chen. CoreJJ and Edward “Tactical” Ra follow, leading to Deftly getting eviscerated. During this time Lee” IgNar” Dong-geun, Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen and Jiizuke are roaming down the river while Impact TPs behind. Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen is still up near mid, but is Galio, while Santorin is lagging behind near his Red Buff.

Impact jumps in on the three TL members forcing them to run away. Alphari and CoreJJ move towards the river leading them right into the welcoming arms of Yone, Alistar and Lillia. Jiizuke lands the two man R while Lillia applies her sleep. Jensen using his R, but arrives in a compromised position. Impact instead of playing with Tactical jumps over and lands a four-man Gnar ult.

This fight was a 4 for 1 turning a 2K gold defecit into a 700 gold lead. Importantly, it also showed that despite the state of Top Lane, Impact could destroy TL in teamfights. Jiizuke can slash everyone in sight. Svenskeren can land the big Lilting Lullaby. IgNar can lock down targets for years. And finally, Deftly can literally be dead yet EG can still win. This fight also puts EG in the position to secure Soul Point getting their third Dragon.

Soul Fight:

At 26 minutes, Mountain Soul shows up on the map, ripe for EG to pick. TL naturally are forced to contest the dragon as, well, Soul is Soul. After doing the Dragon Dance for a while, Jiizuke slices his way in and IgNar follows up with a big Headbutt Pulverize combo onto two TL members. During this fight, Alphari is separated and unable to join the rest his TL friends leading to him just jumping on Defly and praying he can get something out of it. This doesn’t work out as he just dies, but Svenskeren does as well. Jensen ends up killing Defly, but Jensen dies to Jiizuke while Impact and IgNar are fighting CoreJJ, Santorin and Tactical successfully. Impact lands a big R stalling enough time for Jiizuke to roam over and use the samurai skills to cleanup Santorin and Tactical.

Courtesy of Riot Games

This fight was just really poorly done by TL. Alphari despite being so far ahead did pretty much nothing. He is the fed player, got camped by his jungler and he didn’t show up later in the game. He was gapped by the former TL Top Lanner. Another issue here is that Tactical did nothing on Samira. Sure, he gets an R off, but what does he do with it? He got no kills and just forces out a Zhonyas. Santorin also isn’t doing nearly as much in any fight as Svenskeren. Even IgNar looked better than CoreJJ in teamfights.

Jensen hasn’t shown up all Spring Split and this game was no different. It was a Galio performance that anyone could have done. TL looked bad, but they looked bad due to how EG exposed their comp and their players. Retaliating after an awful start to a dominant victory. Impact got his revenge on TL and EG got the win.

The most impressive thing about this victory though is how EG avoided the tilt. A lesser team would have tilted out their mind this game. And frankly, it’s hard to blame them. But with a stoic veteran like Impact in the Top Lane, EG were able to remain calm and got revenge for Lock-In.

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