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

You speak a strange language that I don’t understand…and yet I was engrossed by your tale.

6 Likes

The last team fight was perfection. Shocked AV, and they were still shaking their heads as to what happened after the game.

You should call VFL games.

Week 5, Friday. (about) AV 7 - 15 BMR.
BMRs win.

  • We knocked off one of the equal top-of-the-ladder teams.
  • Ry0ma was having a dog of a day until the last 2 minutes when he pulled off a triple-kill
  • We won the game before the 3 dead enemy players got back on the field.
  • Essentially, we won 1 big moment, and that was game.

Week 5, Saturday. (about) BMR 14 - 17 MMM.
BMRs lose.

  • Messy game from both teams. Was close until about halfway through the 3rd quarter.
  • Mammoth (MMM) convincingly beat us in multiple team fights.
  • The big moments that they won, mattered more.
  • Momentum rolled us in the end.

We’re now 5 wins and 5 losses.
(We’ve actually gone all 5 weeks with: 1 win 1 loss)

Side-comment: FBI has been called up to Golden Guardians senior team in the LCS (American League).

  • He’s done okay so far.
  • LCS would be considered a top-3 or top-5 league. (Oceanic would not be top 10.)
  • LCS allows senior and academy teams to exchange players at will. OCE does not allow that, I think. So FBI may be rolling in and out depending on form.
2 Likes

Game vs ladder leaders the Chiefs.

The draft was interesting. We have taken to picking our bottom lane and support champions first and then picking our remaining champions depending on who the opponents have chosen. The reason for this is that Mimic (top lane), Wilder (jungle) and Ryoma (mid lane) are very strong players, and can cope with not playing thei best champions. However Rogue and Looch are really benefitting from picking first and getting the champions they like.

The compromise though is that the opposition end up extremely happy with their champions. They interviewed the Chiefs coach after the draft and he was delighted.

It’s probably worth just sharing that when we lost Balkhan and FBI at the end of last split that we didn’t really have a lot of time to proactively find replacements. Looch had pretty much stopped playing league of legends and moved on to other games. However we dragged him out of retirement and put him in a different role to what he played previously. As he gets stronger and gains confidence, then so does the team.

Anyway, to the rift.

3 minutes in to the game and Wilder comes over to support the mid lane. Ryoma stuns his opponent and Wilder finishes him off. We’ve got first blood in a nice clean 2 v 1. 0.4k gold up.

5 minutes in and we catch their jungler sneaking through our jungle. We say no, dead jungler. And we just head over to the first drake (ocean) and take that as well. 0.6k gold up.

6.5 minutes in and Mimic gets a solo kill in the top lane. It was close but he was better. So those three kills are the three roles where we let them pick first. Great start and a credit to the ability of our guys. 1.0k gold up.

9 minutes in and Wilder wanders across and helps Ryoma kill their mid laner again. Easy as. 1.8k gold up.

10 minutes in and this time Ryoma wanders over to help Wilder invade their jungle. They find their jungler and kill him. 2.4k gold up.

Wilder then wanders up and starts the rift herald. But he gets interrupted by 1 of them and he dies. They start up the herald, and we come over to interrupt them. Team fight ends up in 2 of us dead and 3 of them dead. Everyone walks back to their lanes to lick their wounds, and somehow after all that the rift herald lived. 2.5k gold up.

13 minutes in and there is a bit of interest in the infernal drake. They get it and we show more interest in getting turret plates for the gold. We also manage to finally take down the rift herald.

15 minutes in and we drop the herald to attack their mid lane turret. Mimic starts a fight in the mid lane, and everyone pretty much converges on this part of the map. It ends up with 2 of them dead, 1 of us dead, we took down the mid lane outer turret, and Mimic and Ryoma are running for their lives, chased by three of them. But Ryoma gets tired of running and turns around and goes them. We take down one of them, and Looch comes across to clean up another. Sweet. 5.5k gold up.

While all that was going on Wilder drops their bottom lane outer turret and wanders over to take the infernal drake.

18 minutes in and Mimic is dancing around under his top lane turret with three of them in the area. To quote the commentators, Mimic just says to them, I’m so strong that I’m going to stay and you three are going to leave… and they do. What are the rest of our guys doing? Well they are taking down the bottom lane inner turret. 6k gold up.

20 minutes in and Ryoma takes down their top lane outer turret. We start up the barren, but get interrupted and it costs Mimic his life.

Not to worry, we take their top lane inner turret, and kill one of them in the process. We take their mid lane inner turret, and it’s just their base to go now. 8.5k gold up.

25 minutes and we try the barren again. This time we take it down with not a lot of resist from Chiefs. We get away with all 5 members keeping their baron buff, and we take the patient route and start to setup minion waves in preparation to attack their base. However they group up and find 3 of our guys and take them out.

So ummm, I think that ■■■■■■ us off a little bit, and the whole patience thing gets thrown out as a silly idea. If it’s team fights you want then we are up for it. We respawn and wander straight down mid lane and engage. Their jungler dies first, mid laner next, and then their bottom laner and into their base we go.

Mid lane inhibitor turret and inhibitor get taken down, and then the two nexus turrets and the nexus and the game is over.

We belted them. We were quite simply very very very impressive. That’s the first game we have played where you sit back and think, maybe we can win this split.

4 Likes

2 wins this week!

Coming into the start of last week, there were 3 teams tied for top-of-the-ladder (AV, MMM, CHF). We then played 3 of them in a row for (2 W, 1 L).


Week 6, Friday. CHF 8 - 17 BMR.
BMRs win.

Brilliant game. We smoked the Chiefs.

  • The win was set up by a master trap laid our coach (SoulStrikes). It went something like this:
  • We manipulated the character selection for both teams…by letting CHF take all of the most powerful characters.
  • We then selected a team specifically to exploit the weaknesses of those characters.
  • We knew exactly who they would pick, what they would do, where they would go and when they would be there.
  • Must have studied a lot of CHF previous game footage, we were ambushing them all over the map.
  • At one point we led 4-12 in kills. At another point 0-6 in turrets.

Week 6, Saturday. DW 14 - 24 BMR .
BMRs win.

  • Long game (40 mins). Strange game.
  • Looked like we were dominating early game, but we didn’t get any value for it. Like scoring behinds instead of goals.
  • At around 27 mins, they pull off a big play and by 31 mins they have wrecked half of our base and are leading 57k-51k in gold. (It’s normally very hard to win when your base gets wrecked, bc you have to stand back and protect it.)
  • At 32 and 34 mins, DW completely mess up and then gold has flipped 60k-62k back in our favor.
  • At 40 min, we launch a sneak attack by teleporting the entire team into the enemy base and wreck it before DW can get back. And that’s the win.


Yays, 2 wins!

Side-note: Mimic got a haircut.

3 Likes

Bombers vs Direwolves. This is 4th vs 5th. The 8 point game. These are the guys looking to take our spot in the finals. Big game.

In the draft we have done the same thing as yesterday and locked in our bottom lane first with the same champions picked.

Our coach was interviewed after the draft and basically said our early game is good but our mid game needs more learnings. Our strategy is to be strong through the mid lane with jungler support and synergy.

6 minutes in and we gank their mid laner with our jungler supporting our mid laner. Good plan coach. 0.3k gold down.

They take the mountain drake, and we show no real interest at all.

8 minutes in and we gank their mid laner with our jungler supporting our mid laner. Again. Good plan coach. 0.6k gold up.

13 minutes in and we have a crack at the rift herald. We do get interrupted but kill one of them on the way out. Herald survives. 0.7k gold up.

14 minutes in and we are back at the rift herald. We take her down this time and deploy her into the mid lane. They take our bottom lane outer turret and get an air drake. We take their mid lane outer turret and their mid lane inner turret. Good plan coach. 0.3k gold up.

18 minutes in and Ryoma has gotten bored with mid lane and thought he would go top lane. A skirmish results in one death for each side and Wilder manages to hold them off for long enough while the calvary arrives and our turret survives for now. 0.4k gold up.

19 minutes and we send 3 to attack and successfully take down their top lane outer turret. They send 3 to take down our mid lane outer turret and fail. Mimic says no. 0.4k gold up.

23 minutes in. Really close game this. They pick up a third dragon (mountain) and once again we have shown absolutely zero interest in this objective. They then head up into our jungle and pick a fight. This ends up with 3 dead on both sides. Good times were had by all. They take down our mid lane outer turret on their way back home. Gold is even.

24 minutes in. Again they wander into our jungle and a team fight ends up with 4 of them dead and 3 of us dead. Wasn’t looking good for us at the start of that one but Mimic finished off a couple of them at the end. 0.1k gold up.

25 minutes in and it’s about to all go very wrong. Looch is found out in a 5 v 1 fight and dies in seconds. They head over and start the baron. Ryoma teleports in, so they stop baron for a second and kill Ryoma. Straight back on to baron and they take it and kill another couple of our guys that were hanging around to contest. Hold on everyone, as they head towards our base with 4 players baron buffed. 3k gold down.

They take our top lane outer turret. They take our mid lane inner turret. They take our bottom lane inner turret. A player is dead from both sides. They break into our base as they take our bottom lane inhibitor turret and the bottom lane inhibitor. They leave us alone for a few seconds as they wander back and take the air drake. That’s 4 dragons to them… zero for us for those not counting at home. They take our top lane inner turret. They take our top lane inhibitor turret and our top lane inhibitor. Again, a player is dead from both sides but we are in a world of hurt. 6k gold down.

32 minutes in and they are continuing to be very aggressive. They start a fight in a way that can only be described as incompetent. Half their team go, “■■■■ that” and immediately turn and run away. We kill 2 of them, and clean up another on the chase. 2.5k gold down.

34 minutes in and they continue to play aggressively pushing into our jungle. But Ryoma teleports in behind them and we wipe the floor with them. 4 of them dead and we head over and drop the baron. Our turn now ■■■■■■■ with all 5 players having a baron buff. We then have to run back to our base, because while they are mostly dead their minions aren’t, and have wandered in given most of our turrets are down. Wilder though picks up our first dragon of the game. 1.7k gold up.

37 minutes in. We take their top lane inner turret. We catch one of them out of position and kill them, which somewhat changes our plans a little. We go more direct and take their mid lane inhibitor turret and mid lane inhibitor. Good plan coach. We take the top lane inhibitor turret and inhibitor. Baron buff is over so we back off. This is anybodies game. 4.0k gold up.

40 minutes in and they start up the elder dragon. We laugh at them and teleport into their base. They are caught out of position and we take both nexus turrets and the nexus before they can get back. Game over. Well done Bombers.

We climb the ladder and are now equal 3rd and 2 games clear of the Direwolves. Really good weekend for this team.

5 Likes

Bombers vs Gravitas.

There has been a significant patch added to the game since last weekend. This has changed a few things that the teams will need to work through and get used to. One of the things that has happened is some of our favourite champions are not able to be selected just at present as they are a bit broken. Anyway, everyone has the same champions to work with.

Gravitas are 2nd last, but have found some form of late and won their last two.

Well we popped that bubble. This was an almost clinical performance against a weaker opponent. The sort of performance we might dream that our football side puts out Sunday afternoon. The 100 point win sort of game.

The highlight was 3 of them trying to gank Mimic. He ran away from them… towards their base!!! Lol. Anyway, the Benny Hill theme music was playing, and they eventually killed him. But the rest of our team took the Baron while they were distracted and the game was over minutes later.

26 minute game. 14k gold up. Only lost 1 turret and they only ended up with 2 kills.

Dominant display, and it puts us in clear 3rd place now. We are starting to dream about defending our OPL title.

3 Likes

Good call @samwoods.

2 Likes

Bombers vs Legacy.

There was nothing nice, or pretty, or funny about this game. But we got the win. This is like a 2 goal win up on the Gold Coast tomorrow. You were never really worried, but not a lot of positives to take out of it except for the 4 points.

Legacy are last at present, and have won one game for the split. I don’t know how to describe what we were doing, but it felt like we were out for a game of kick and giggle. Some things went ok, other things didn’t. Blah blah blah.

It was a pretty even game for the most part. But we had better scaling on our side, so they had to take advantage early. They tried, but couldn’t quite get in front. So we died a bit, but held them.

We did get the first baron, and broke their base. However they chased us out and killed a few of us on the way.

Eventually we came out in front of one of the team fights, and that was it. Wandered straight down the centre and finished the game before they respawned.

I’m sure there will be learnings and stuff that go beyond my comprehension, but if I was recommending a game to watch, it would not be this one.

Anyway, we remain comfortably in 3rd, and look towards a very difficult couple of games next weekend. First up we play Order, who are below us on the ladder but our record against them this split is a dreadful 0-2. Then on the Saturday we take on the ladder leaders Mammoth, and our record this split against them is 0-2. So big weekend ahead.

2 Likes

2 wins again!

This moves us from (5 W, 5 L) to (9 W, 5 L) which looks a lot better.


Week 7, Friday. BMR 12 - 2 GRV.
BMRs win.

  • Us vs a mid-table team.
  • We rolled over them. They couldn’t do anything to stop our momentum.
  • Game was over in 26 mins, which is quick!.

The commentators were quite impressed by the level of our domination there, until the next game returned a ORD 0 - 7 MMM result, which was somewhat more of a thumping.

Week 7, Saturday. LGC 15 - 19 BMR .
BMRs win.

  • Us vs the absolute bottom-of-the-ladder team.
  • LGC (Legacy is the team owned Adelaide Crows. They went into this game with 1 W, 12 L)
  • Very ugly game, they held a slender lead through most of it. We had no fluency in our play.
  • Every time we did something good, they did something good after.
  • They make a big mistake at 30 mins. They have 5 players vs our 4, and they overcommit to try to kill BMR-Wilder. He manages to survive. The rest of BMRs counterpunch and wipe our their whole team. With no one left to protect their base, easy win for us.

Winning is good, but we still look vulnerable.
I also get the feeling that there is not a lot of variety in the way we play. Same could be said of CHF (Chiefs) and I’m not sure about MMM (Mammoth). So it might not be a bad thing.

Side-notes:
Former member, FBI has entrenched his position in the first-string of a North American team (Golden Guardians). The team has traded away the other player that played his role. His team is mid-table at the moment.

Former member, BalKhan’s team is 2nd in the Turkish league, doing very well. He has also bleached his hair like Guelfi and Fantasia.

4 Likes

How would you rank our players?

Eg. Before the split began, there was concern about Looch stepping up and into a new role…

PS. In the interests of full disclosure, I don’t watch the games.

We are sooo getting fined!!?! I don’t know what we did but we ended up with draft penalties in the game vs Order. We must have broken some rule or other I’m not aware of.

Anyway the game vs Order was like kicking 5 goals 30 behinds and losing a game you sooooo should have won. Never the less that is 3 losses to a side that only has 6 wins for the season. Very frustrating.

The game against Mammoth though was totally Amazeballs. We played extremely well and took down the ladder leaders. An excellent win that will build an awful lot of belief in this side.

This side can win back to back splits.

3 Likes

1 W and 1 L for Week 8.
We lost to the mid-rank team (ORD) and we beat the top-spot team (MMM).


Week 8, Friday. ORD 15 - 21 BMR.
BMRs lose.

  • Us vs our bogey team.
  • Very long game at 47 mins (normal = 30 to 35)
  • This was very much like a game of tennis that went to 5 sets, we won more points overall, but could not convert the break-points and match-points. ORD managed to out-last us.
  • We were on the verge of winning a few times but couldn’t push it past the tipping-point.
  • BMR-ry0ma was carrying our team. At one point he had 10 kills to 1 death.
  • After that, ORD changed tactics to “kill ry0ma first” (put a hard tag on him). That shut him down completely.
  • We needed to other players to get off the leash here … and they didn’t… therefore we lost.

Despite what the commentators said, I think BMR-Looch and BMR-Mimic had poor games here. BMR-Wilder average. BMR-Rogue good. BMR-ry0ma excellent.

Ry0ma’s (10/3/5) job is just to kill people and he did plenty of that.
Mimic’s (4/3/5) job is to flank the enemy and get them with surprise attacks. It just didn’t work for him in this game. They always spotted him and blunted his strike.
Looch’s (5/2/11) job is to kill people as well. The stats say he did a decent job (he only died twice), but I thought he used an overly defensive character (Ashe. Ice Arrow girl). He was not aggressive enough and did not have the attacking power when we needed him for those ‘tipping-point’ moments.

Week 8, Saturday. MMM 6 - 13 BMR .
BMRs win.

  • Top-of-the-ladder-team MMM (Mammoth)
  • Comprehensive win. This is also the first time we’ve beaten them with these rosters, which is a positive in case we meet them in finals.
  • We played a very different game plan to what we normally play, but we’re good enough to just do it anyway.
  • MMM played CHF (Chiefs) the day before, and Chiefs dismantled them for a crushing win. In the after match interview, a CHF player said “We’ve identified that MMMs weakness is that they don’t like it when you pressure them early and hold a lead against them”…
  • So our coach and our team deliberately pick a set of characters built for early pressure and MMM really fall to pieces all by themselves. (We just copied what the Chiefs did and it worked a treat.)
  • While watching the game, I was thinking a lot of “That’s the first time I’ve seen our team do that”. This is good. It shows that we can flex to different styles successfully.

Ry0ma (7/0/3) was excellent again using Yasuo (Samurai swordsman). This is an unconventional pick in modern Oceanic League, but ry0ma makes it work.
Wilder (2/2/8) used Gragas (Fat man with a giant beer barrel), which is also unconventional. It was chosen because it teamworks well with Yasuo. Wilder got 8 kill assists so it worked out great.
Looch (2/0/5) used Cassiopeia (Poison Snake Lady). This is a very strong character who can currently play Mid, Bot or Top. (Cass is normally banned so neither team can use it because it is so strong.) Keep in mind that Looch is a former-mid-laner who is now playing bot-lane. So Cass actually works out well for him as he can use the tool he likes in the position he has to play. This is also a MUCH more aggressive character than his previous game. He was able to jump into the fights this time around and push that win for us.

We are now 10 W, 6 L
ORD (Order) are now 6 W, 10 L
ORD are 3 W and 0 L versus BMR. * gag *
This was the closest we came to beating them. I want revenge but that was the last time we play them in season, and it looks like ORD won’t even make the finals.

BMRs were also penalised at character selection before the ORD game for (unspecified rule violation). We got done by the umpires again. I can’t find any information on what the infraction was but these rulings are rarely controversial.
After the match, the commentators mentioned that if it were not for that penalty, we probably would have stopped ORD from selecting the Xayah and Rakan character combination, which is very strong for them and had a big impact on the game.

The Mammoth game was good. I like it when we show some X-factor and out-skill on our opponents.
The staple and consistent plays are kinda of dull to watch.
Hopefully we reuse the wild style in our next few games as it’s a heck of a lot of fun to watch.


Side notes:
Our VFL team, Bombers Academy have missed the finals and their competition has ended. There was a 4-way tie for the last 2 finals spots, and we did poorly in the tie-breakers.

FBI’s team has also missed the finals in the North American league in the same way. 3-way tie for 1 finals spot, GGS lost the tie-breakers.

5 Likes

Is what coaching is like?

One of the big differences between League of Legends and football is in League, during the games, the coach is not allowed to talk to the players. The coach can give instructions during champ select, but then the coach goes into another room and comms are turned off. The players have to make “strategic” decisions in game themselves (often based on limited information, as they can’t see the whole map.)

1 Like

Oh no, same as in footy. The players make their own decisions.

Tongue firmly in cheek.

Thanks mate. I really appreciate these weekly updates. :+1:

2 wins for Week 9

Solidified 3rd spot with (12 W, 6 L).
MMM on 13 W, and CHF on 15 W (we have beaten both of these teams)


Week 9, Friday. BMR 14 - 7 AV.
BMRs win.

  • AV (Avant) are outside the finals and desperate to get in.
  • They come at us really hard at the start and manage to push around Mimic and ry0ma (our 2 star players), killing them a few times early.
  • They gain a lead but it does not get too large as we fight back somewhat.
  • AV come at us hard over and over again and eventually it backfires on them (twice) and they lose the game.

Key moment: At 27 mins, they push us out of the middle of the map by grouping all 5 of their team there. We only had 3 people so we retreat a short distance. They make the dangerous decision to attack the dragon with half of their team at half health. This plan is dangerous because our team can ambush them while they are distracted. Which is exactly what happens, and we kill all of them and we kill all of their base and that’s the win.

AV took a lot of risks, because BMR are the better team and they think they need to take risks to beat us. Us meanwhile, can just play solid and we beat mostly everyone.

Wilder was our best player today (3/0/9) using the Gragas (fat barrel man) again. He scared AV away just be showing his face. If he that didn’t work, he just shot them in the face until they ran away.

Looch got to use Vladimir (vampire guy) and Rogue got to use Yuumi (magic healing cat). These are strong characters who are often blocked from play. But AV let us use them today and the duo put in a solid performance.
Vladimir is also a character that works well in bot-lane or mid-lane, and Looch looks comfortable on it.

Week 9, Saturday. BMR 16 - 8 LGC.
BMRs win.

  • Us vs the team with (1 W, 16 L)
  • Much cleaner than last we played them (week 7). They never had a chance.
  • Vladimir and Yuumi were not blocked again, so Looch and Rogue picked them again and played the same characters 2 games in a row (which is ultra rare). Again, very reliable.
  • LGC (Legacy) ganged up on Mimic early and killed him with a 2v1 outnumber.
  • I think that just made him angry as he then killed his counterpart twice, really fast. He ended the game with (8/2/5). (8 kills, 2 deaths, 5 assists)

LGC are just a bad team. There were a couple of moments when they needed to make a decision and they just stood there until it was too late.
Us, we make decisions decisive and fast. On the odd occasion, it’s wrong and we suffer, but overall, it’s a good trait.

Next week is the last week of season and they are going to play 12 matches over 2 days. Every team plays 3 times.
(The Oceanic league has 8 teams, and the season has each team play everyone else 3 times. So 21 games in total. So that’s 2 games per week, with the 21st game added into week 10.)

Looks like the best we can expect to finish is 3rd. But that would be a good result after the team was shaky early in season.

Looch has been using lots of characters in a bid to find ones that he’s actually good on. We may have finally cracked the formula:

  • Give him characters that can be used both in mid-lane or bot-lane (make use of his past experience in the mid role)
  • Give him characters with a better balance of attack and defensive capabilities. (he’s not super good at dodging, so he needs a bit more sustain)

The coach is responsible for character selection so hopefully, this recent trend continues.


On the previous iteration of the team, FBI always used characters with very high offensive capability and weak defensive. He was also insanely good at dodging bullets, so he negated the character’s weakness by not getting hit.

Looch is not as good at dodging. So when he is using a low-defense character, Looch hangs back in a fight and does not help his team enough from that far away. Early in the season, Looch was using low-defense characters and stepping forward, and getting killed so fast. So now in that situation, he hangs back, but does not do much damage.
On a medium-defense character, Looch can step forward, not die and do a medium amount of damage.
It’s a trade-off of defense versus attack. This works better for our team at the moment.

6 Likes