Bombers fail to win their second local eSports premiership - you’re cut

Ladder currently sits with Mammoth on two wins, Gravitas on zero wins, and everyone else has gone 1 and 1.

We play Mammoth on Friday.

Didnt get yo watch but glad we got a win, willbe good for morale.

Hoping we do well enough as i’d love to go watch us in the finals at the Melbourne Esports event later this year

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I got to watch both games.


Thoughts on the new team, and week 1 results

SoulStrikes (new coach): The OPL commentators (australians themselves) say SoulStrikes has a reputation as a hard-■■■. He’s pretty much Rodney Eade.
The old coach Westonway was more your Brendon Bolton type.
I have no idea what kind of effect that is going to have.

Mimic (top), ry0ma (mid), Rogue (support): Our returning members from last year. They are all consistently above-average to elite level players.

Wilder (new jungle). This is BalKhan’s replacement. BalKhan was elite during the last season, so Widler has a lot to live up to.
From what I can see so far, Wilder is pretty much the same as BalKhan. No obvious weaknesses, and he does the same job somewhat in the same way. (I’ve only seen 6 of BalKhan’s games, and 2 of Wilders).

Looch (new ADC). This is the biggest concern for our team.
Looch is FBI’s replacement. FBI was known as the best ADC player in Oceania, so Looch has even more to live up to.
Looch was a member of old-Bombers who finished 6th and 5th (of 8) in 2018. Which led to us firing the entire team. Looch later joined Bombers Esports Academy team.
Looch historically played (mid), but we’ve put him in the senior team as the new ADC.
So, we’re promoting a VFL player to the senior team, and we’re playing him out of position.
It’s going to be very hard for him.

Common LoL strategy has the ADC (Looch) and the Support (Rogue) playing in close proximity tandem teamwork. So Looch is not entirely on his own. Rogue’s main job is to help Looch out.
This pairing is known as (“bot lane”) since they assigned to operate in the bottom map lane.
But (FBI+Rogue) had been playing as a pair for 2 years+. That chemistry was very strong; they were even dominant at International-level.
(Looch+Rogue) is going to be a very different look. A LOT is going to rely on how much/if Looch has improved and if Rogue can raise Looch’s game.


Week 1 results.

General OPL link:
https://oce.lolesports.com/

Week 1, Match 1 video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efaBWzoV7gM

Week 1, Match 2 video:
(they have not uploaded it yet)

Match 1: ORD vs BMR .
Bombers lose 13-18 (kills)
We got floggeded. We were never really in this match, ORD got the lead early and that never changed.

  • Looch had a really bad time. The oppoenents bullied him around. Commentators mentioned that character selection really disadvantaged him.
  • ORD were effectively last season’s runner-ups. We were premiers, but we’ve lost half our lineup. ORD’s team cohesion looked a lot better than ours.
  • We were playing red-side.

Match 2: BMR vs AV
Bombers win… about 20-10 (cant check the VOD)
Dominant from us. Felt like win win win win all the way.

  • Looch managed to avoid getting into trouble, but he didnt get a lot of kills himself (which is normally what an ADC does).
  • ry0ma had a field day.
  • We were playing-blue side.


Oddly, blue-side won 7 of 8 games played in week 1…

Seems like Looch very obviously is our weak point, and other teams will be targeting him mercilessly.

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WTF do they do for a preseason?

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about but I’m curious.

Thanks for the write up.

Yep.

I thought Wilder was a bit more circumspect than Balkhan was. That lad was all in all the time. This might prove a good thing, and should suit the new coach.

I am currently overseas in a country that won’t let me use YouTube… but I note that the boys are now 2 and 2.

Lost to Mammoth who have won all 4 of their games this split, but managed to beat the chiefs.

Given the big lineup changes, they are tracking along ok.

I was waiting for RIOT to upload the game videos before posting a report.
But they’re still not up, sheesh.

Week 1, Match 2: BMR vs AV (BMR win 19 - 10):

Week 2, Match 1: MMM vs BMR (BMR lose):

Week 2, Match 2: BMR vs CHF (BMR win):
VOD still not uploaded.

(Seems the Friday night games are uploaded Friday or Saturday.
The Saturday night games, are not uploaded Saturday, Sunday or Monday…)


Week 2
Match 1: MMM vs BMR
Bombers lose 7 - 22 MMM
Steamrolled. Mammoth look a really good team this season. They are currently undefeated at 4 W and 0 L.

  • Kill tally for our team was 5 to ry0ma and 2 to the other 4 players combined. Very uneven contribution
  • The Rogue+Looch combination on (Lux+Sivir) was ineffectual. Kinda felt like it was 3v5 out there all game long.
  • We were playing red-side.

Match 2: BMR vs CHF
Bombers win (comfortable score)
Big result for BMR as we’ve historically had problems dealing with Chiefs. (Chiefs have a long reputation as a top-2 team in Oceania since before Bombers existed. Chiefs vs Bombers last season was 2 wins to Chiefs and 1 to Bombers. Bombers record last season was 19 wins and 2 losses, so the only team we lost to last season was Chiefs.)

  • Looch had a good game. Made himself useful. Got some kills = Did his job.
  • We played tempo in this game. Made our plays slowly but surely. Didn’t look for miracle plays. Did the hard work early and mid-game. Built up a lot of pressure on CHF for the end-game and they cracked.
  • Wilder impressed me on the day… but without the footage, I cant remember why.
  • We were blue-team.


We’re now 2 W and 2 L.
We are smack-bang mid-table.

Bad news is we’ve equaled our total number of losses from last season (2).
Word is the team is still trying to gel.


Blue-side side won 7 of 8 games last week.
Blue-side won 6 of 8 games this week.
(2 of the red-side wins were MMM Mammoth.)
Playing red-side seems to be the equivalent of playing “Away”.

Bit old, but good read.

Old too.
FBI interview from America

Red/blue side are different simply due to the pick order and ability to counterpick after opponent has already picked some lanes etc

There’s also their proximity to the Baron\Dragon pits to consider, especially as the game goes on when Baron becomes more of a priority.

Completely dominated Gravitas tonight to go to 3-2.

When we got in front last split we would often over reach. But this split we do not make many mistakes when we are in front.

Worth watching the game to see Mimic jumped by three of them. Special.

Felt that Wilder looked pretty good in the jungle.

This team is building nicely. Not sure they can be as good as last split, as FBI was such a quality player able to play so many characters. But they certainly look more reliable.

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Disappointing loss to Direwolves this arvo leaving us 3-3 and middle of the road.

Feels like we lost this one when we were picking champions.

We had a gold lead for most of the game. We took the first two dragons. We had champions with reasonable scaling.

However, we had no range. As such they just stayed at distance and took our towers. Very frustrating watching all 5 team members sit back and watch tower after tower fall.

I’m sure there was a way we intended to play that game. Fair to say it did not work.

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Destroyed legacy this afternoon taking us to 4-3 after having played each team once.

We won the game before the 25 minute mark, which is pretty much a walkover.

There are 3 teams ahead of us at present all on 5-2. Very close split.

Edit : so the lol website had one result incorrect and Mammoth beat Direwolves and are 6-1 instead of 5-2. I know how keenly interested everyone is in this esports league and felt the post needed correction.

Our match vs Order starts in an hour.

And oh my weren’t we smashed in that game.

They were trying to interview our coach in the first couple of minutes of the game and he couldn’t concentrate on the interview because our players just kept being put in dangerous spots. We died early and often. Made a couple of recovery attempts, and won one of them, but lost the next and that was the game.

Over in 30 minutes. Poor showing really.

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Recapping the last 2 weeks. (Weeks 3 and 4)
All the videos are here:
https://watch.lolesports.com/vods/oce-opl/opl_2019_split2


Week 3, Friday. GRV 4 - 13 BMR.
BMRs win.

  • Did not give the opposition a sniff. Only 4 kills for them is a really clean game from us.
  • Highlight of the game was solo BMR-Mimic being surrounded by 3 opposing players (at about 41:00 in the video). He kills 2 and forces the 3rd one to run away. Insane play.
  • Our first win this season on red-side.

Week 3, Saturday. BMR 11 - 11 DW.
BMRs lose.

  • A strange game to lose. We held the gold and kill advantage for the majority of the game, but we never had a decisive advantage over the opposition.
  • A flaw in character-selection, we had too few players who could start a fight without dying. This allowed the opposing team to blow away our towers and castle without fear.
  • Embarrassingly, we were 10 - 6 up right near the end… only for our entire team to be PENTA-KILLED by DW-Katsurii (when 1 player on the team kills all 5 opposing players in 30 seconds).
  • This is a rare feat, like a soccer or cricket hat-trick.


Week 4, Friday. BMR 16 - 3 LGC.
BMRs win.

  • Conceding only 3 kills is even better.
  • Watching this, it felt more like the opposition couldn’t do a thing right.
  • They repeatedly ran into fights and got all of themselves killed.
  • They handed us the win on a platter and we took it.

Week 4, Saturday. BMR 14 - 25 ORD.
BMRs lose.

  • A very high-scoring game. Lots of dying on both sides.
  • Order got the advantage early and we tried many things to swing the momentum back our way, none of which worked.
  • There was 1 single moment in the game where things looked good for us: Order threw their whole team at us and all of them died.
  • BUT, in the immediate next play, we threw our entire team at them and all of us died. And that was Game.

End of week 4 and we are 4 wins and 4 losses.
And we are 4th.

Interesting:
Our wins have been against: The current 1st, 2nd, 7th and 8th teams
Our losses: current 3rd, 5th, 6th (twice).

So you could say the competition is even, or that we’re inconsistent.

Annoyingly, we’ve lost twice against ORD, and they only have 3 wins in 8 games so far :frowning:

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Cheers for the write-up.

We’ve got a very difficult run of games now. Wins will be hard to come by.

All 8 OPL teams have the Bye this week.

It’s funny how much I am missing this sport.

It’s nice to watch a competitive match where the referee has no bearing on the outcome. It’s very zen.

OPL is back after having a break for a week.

Played Avante Gaming last night and came away with a very satisfying win against a side above us on the ladder.

At 10 minutes in the game was very even. We had pulled a very minor 0.5k gold lead but had let them take an air dragon. Pretty layed back start to the game with no kills from either side, and everyone focusing on farming.

But then Wilder got busy. He wandered down into the enemy jungle and attempted a gank on AVs jungler but didn’t quite pull that off. Wandered up and grabbed Shelley. Then headed up topside and successfully ganked their top Laner after Mimic had baited him in beautifully. They dropped Shelley and took the top lane outer turret at 12 minutes. Really nice passage of play from Wilder and Mimic and we are about 1.5k gold up.

At 14 minutes they take down the infernal dragon without any real competition from us. They were there and ready when the drake landed and we were just those few seconds late getting there and setting up. Not good from us.

At 15 minutes and they are pressuring our bottom lane outer turret. Ryoma and Mimic though teleport in behind them and it is on. Ryoma sacrifices himself to hold them up while everyone else arrives and in a pretty well controlled team fight we take down 4 of them and lose Ryoma and Rogue. We continue straight down and take their bottom lane outer turret. I’d suggest that this was a great set play. Now just under 3.5k gold up and feeling very good about things.

Just after this Looch is wandering up through our jungle to the top lane and stumbles across AVs jungler and just kills him. Nice.

At 17 minutes we are getting in to position to pressure the mid lane outer turret. Wilder makes a nice entry into the fight and we take down both of their bottom lane players. However they get a very good shot on Ryoma just after this and take him out. They then immediately wander down and take their 2nd infernal drake. Our gold lead now 4.5k, but they have all 3 dragons. Close game.

At 23 minutes and the setup around baron is starting to happen as both sides try to control vision. We take down our first dragon of the game as both sides are wandering around the map with all 5 players grouped. There is a big team fight over this baron coming you would think. In the meantime their minions drop their first tower for them.

At 27 minutes AV set up the gank. They teleport in behind Ryoma in the top lane and have him 2 vs 1. But he manages to live long enough for Mimic to teleport in and we should have them split. However the rest of their team arrives before us and they pincer our lads and walk away with 3 kills… and they are straight on to the baron. Not a lot Mimic and Looch can do. The baron goes down to AV but we jump in and kill 2 of them with Ryoma dying in there again somewhere. Gold lead reduced to 2k gold and things not feeling great. We grab a 2nd drake during the fallout, but they are now in and pushing towards our base.

Our top lane outer turret falls. Our mid lane outer turret falls. Our mid lane inner turret falls. Our top lane inner turret falls. Gold has been whittled away and is now even. We are 34 minutes in to the game. The next Baron and an infernal drake spawn in one minute.

Teams are starting to group up again prepping for the fight over the objectives when Wilder flag drags onto two of them and hits the cataclysm. Ryoma jumps in and lands his ultimate against 3 of them and pulls off a triple kill. In the wash up 3 of them are dead, 1 miraculously survived but has no health, and 1 of them is somewhat mysteriously trying to deal with a minion wave?? … anyway, we don’t care what they are doing. We don’t care about the baron or the infernal drake… we walk straight down their mid lane.

Their inner mid lane turret falls. Their inhibitor mid turret falls. Their mid lane inhibitor follows. We wipe out their last two players for kicks and giggles and drop their nexus turrets and take the nexus.

Game is over at 35.5 minutes and they have no idea what just hit them.

Very nice Bombers. Not a perfect game, but a lot to like, and a hell of a finish.

We are now clear in 4th spot at 5-4. AV fall to 3rd at 6-3.

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