Week 10: 2 wins and 1 loss
We finish the regular season with 3rd spot at (14 W, 7 L).
CHF and MMM both finish on (16 W, 5 L), with CHF having the better head-to-head record against MMM.
Top 5 make the finals with DW in 4th (12 - 9) and ORD in 5th (9 - 12).
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Week 10, Friday. GRV 10 - 16 BMR
BMRs win.
- GRV are all nerves as they are on the edge of finals and need to win
- They try to start confrontations all over the map and all through the early game.
- We give as good as we get, but we focus on playing the game, farming gold and power-ups.
- The difference in game plan shows late as we become vastly stronger than them in combat.
- We kill 2 of them at 25 mins. With reduced manpower, they can’t stop us taking Baron-buff at 26 mins.
- We force our way into their base at 31 mins. They have no choice but to throw everything they have left at us in a last-ditch defence. It doesn’t work as we take 5 kills in trade for 1 and that’s the game.
Ry0ma (6/2/6) and Mimic (5/1/6) played well. They managed to sidestep early aggression and farm up gold and levels, leading to them being much stronger in 1v1s in the late game.
Note that (6 kills and 6 assists) is a “Kill Participation” rate of 12/16 (75%). This is noteworthy statistic that broadly measures a player’s presence in a game, or his worth to his team.
With this result on the Friday, we are basically locked in to finishing in 3rd position making the 2 Saturday games (sort of) dead rubbers.
In a Friday post-match interview, Rogue stated that we may ‘mess around’ or ‘play for fun’ on Saturday.
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Week 10, Saturday. Game 1. BMR 16 - 29 DW
BMRs lose.
- A bloodie game (30 mins). Games with a combined higher than 1 kill per minute are considered high scoring. This clocked in at 45 over 30.
- We go with a standard formation except for Rogue who chooses Pyke (pirate knife assassin). I considered this a joke pick when I saw it. Rogue has not used this character before and it messed up our team balance.
- Rogue’s job is to protect and support the team, and the ADC in particular (Looch). Pyke aggressively attacks the enemy instead of protecting. This threw off Looch’s game as he found it hard to get involved in the plays with no protection.
- Ry0ma has a nightmare game on Yasuo (samurai swordsman) scoring (3/9/8) whilst his counterpart DW-Getback had the game of his life scoring (16/2/9) on Sylas (spellstealing chain whip man)
- Our play is pretty sloppy the whole way through. Probably a result of us playing a dead rubber.
- Right at the start of the game, at 2 mins, we engage in a 2v2 in the middle, and unluckily they get 2 kills and we get 0. It kind of set the tone for the rest of the game.
- A few more bone-headed or unlucky engages and the enemy Sylas had 8 kills. It’s very dangerous when 1 player gets a lot of kills, as this gives him lots of gold. And he uses the gold to buy really big guns that kill very fast.
- In the late game, the enemy Sylas is capable of killing any of our players in 1 second, and we can’t stop him at all.
Ry0ma would admit in a post-match interview (after the CHF game) that he didn’t prepare for the DW game.
And got slaughtered for it.
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We have the last game of the regular season. (BMR vs CHF)
In the penultimate game of the regular season, 2nd-place MMM faced off against last-place LGC, with final ladder positions already locked in.
MMM had a larf, and picked an entire joke composition team based on League-Of-Legends new game mode called (TeamFight Tactics). (I play a lot of this. it’s really fun.)
MMM picked an entire team of 5 Shape-shifters (characters who transform into giant animals), ignoring current conventional wisdom of picking characters who are strong under the current rules interpretations.
LGC tried to play a normal game using strong characters.
MMM slaughtered LGC anyway using a joke team.
(It’s possible that RIOT may sanction MMM for violating ‘disrespect’ rules here, but they won, so meh)
This set the stage a little for the next game, as BMR and CHF were similarly playing a dead rubber and we could’ve picked any number of joke teams.
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Week 10, Saturday. Game 1. BMR 16 - 1 CHF
BMRs win.
- Not a typo. Sixteen to One.
- Following up garbage with champagne or vice versa in the true Essendon spirit, we turn on the burners and completely torch the 1st-place CHF (Chiefs). Again.
Joke game did not occur.
In a pre-match interview, our coach (Soulstrikes) said “I’m serious face Woosh and I don’t want to disturb the team’s rhythm by playing a joke game.” more or less. Looks like the coach ended any ideas of playing a mess-around game. Or maybe he was annoyed that we got murdered by DW.
Joke characters were not picked, but what happened instead was that each player ended up with their ‘signature picks’ or characters that they are famous for playing well.
On BMRs:
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Mimic chose Aatrox (demon angel swordsman). He has played a lot of this, especially this season and at MSI and is really good at it. It’s also currently one of the strongest characters available to use at the “Top” position.
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Wilder chose Kha’Zix (alien insect assassin). This is the first time anyone in OPL has played this character this season, so I did not know if WIlder was going to be good at it. Kha’Zix has low defence, but can go invisible, so is most effective when played intelligently.
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Ry0ma chose Irelia (6 flying knives ninja girl). He has not used this in pro play that much, but he has a Pro-level PENTAKILL on this character and it suits his style. He has often used a similar character, Akali (green ninja girl) recently, but she was banned out of this game.
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Looch chose Cassiopeia (medusa snake lady). He’s shown this character once before and was very good on it.
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Rogue chose Thresh (ghost with a grappling hook lantern). In years past, this was an extremely strong support character and Rogue has mastered it. But right at the moment, it’s not selected (at all) by pro teams.
On CHFs:
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Thien chose Riven (big green sword girl). Thien is a rookie playing his 7th game at the top level. In his debut game (against LGC), he scored a PENTAKILL with this character.
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Only chose Jarvan IV (walking lance knight). I don’t know if Only prefers this character, but it is very strong in it’s role currently.
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Claire chose Azir (Egyptian sand spearman). Again, don’t know if he prefers this character, but it is strong currently.
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Raes chose Draven (gladiator throwing axes). A rare pick in current times. Raes has historically been one of the few OPL players capable of playing Draven at pro-level.
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Eyla chose Yuumi (magic flying cat). A new character to LoL, but proven to be one of the strongest in its role.
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- Rogue went berserk on the Thresh, constantly landing very difficult precision shots. These shots are either used offensively, meaning certain death for the enemy player if he gets hooked. Or defensively, if Rogue hooks an allied player, he can pull them to safety.
- Mimic and Wilder teamed up to make Thien’s life hell and show the rookie that he still has a ways to go. After Thien scored (8/0/6) with Riven vs LGC (and versus a player using Aatrox). He scored (0/6/0) versus Mimic’s Aatrox. Outclassed by a mile.
- Whenever you watch a CHFs game, commentators talk a lot about Raes. He is CHF’s ADC and their equivalent of FBI, in terms of star-quality players. He often racks up 400 CS compared to his opponents who only reach 200-300. This make him terrifying as he gets the big guns when he gets that much gold. In this game however, he was completely invisible. Did not do a single thing and the commentators didn’t call his name at all. Our ability to make the enemy star player disappear was amazing.
This was very almost nearly a perfect game by us.
- We were so so close to 0 deaths.
- We destroyed 10 enemy towers (out of 11) in exchange for 0 of ours. This is a rare feat as an enemy team can normally manage to break some outer towers.
- We took 4 Dragons to 0.
- We took 1 Rift Herald to 0.
- We took 1 Baron to 0.
The commentators were flabbergasted with the efficiency that we were destroying the 1st-ranked team by.
- Possibly CHFs were taking it easy in a dead rubber, but no team wants to lose by 100 points or a shutout.
- Our 1 death occurred at 25mins (it was Ry0ma getting a little too excited) and the game ended at 29mins, with Looch getting a QUADRAKILL. This would have been a PENTAKILL if the siren had gone 10 seconds later.
- Our 1 kill was conceded to the enemy Yuumi, who is the healer, making it even more hilarious.
Keeping your own team to 0 deaths, is great for the game, as it means the enemy players all have 0 kills, and therefore no money to buy guns.
I imagine CHFs would have wanted to forfeit the game halfway, but it’s probably not allowed in pro-play.
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And that is the season wrapped up.
The final format is a bit out there.
Next week. (Sydney Studios)
Thursday: 4th (DW) plays 5th (ORD) (Best of 5)
Friday: Winner plays 3rd (BMR) (Best of 5)
Saturday: Winner plays 2nd (MMM) (Best of 5)
Next next week. (Melbourne Esports Open)
Saturday: Winner plays 1st (CHF) (Best of 5)
The grand final will be played on a stage in front of a crowd in Melbourne as part of MEO.
Only 1 qualifier will make it to face CHFs.
As for us, we first play the winner of DW/ORD. ORD are an absolute bogey team for us going (3-0) against us in season. So probably better if DW gets through.
I’d honestly say our chances are 50/50 against any of DW/MMM/CHFs.
If we do make the Grand Final, it’d be crazy to fill the stadium with Essendon fans. Might be enough to get us the championship.
The real prize from winning the OPL 2019- Split 2 however, is the ticker to World Championships 2019. As a weak region, Oceanic is only assigned 1 slot of 24 teams, so only the current champion gets to go. Worlds is a BIG deal, and where all players aspire to show their wares. They would also get to play against some of their idols.
I’m a bit sad, that BMRs won’t get to use our super-team (FBI, BalKhan) at worlds. That would really have been hype. Victim of our own success that so many personnel got poached mid-year.
