In the Grip of Nostalgia: World Championship 2014 or RIP Samsung

Recently the Korean League of Legends talk show, the True LoL Show had a few episodes with some ex-Samsung players on it (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). As well as gaining some insight into how the players felt about their new home of China, I also felt the pangs of sorrow that came with the disbanding of the two best LoL teams at the end of 2014.

Thus I decided to go through some of my photos of the World Championship semi-finals and finals and post them here. 

Samsung White as they proceed to murder their sister team in a soul crushing semi-final

Impressive fireworks at the final to make people forget about the one sided match they are about to watch

Dandy explains how they pretty much expected to win and how he's the best jungler in the world (not actually - I can't remember what he said)

RIP Samsung. I miss you.

Photos from OGN in Korea, Spring 2014

It should come to no surprise to any one reading this blog that I really quite like League of Legends and I like it quite enough to travel a fair distance to places to see it played. Recently I traveled once again to South Korea to watch some games of OnGameNet's Champions and Masters tournaments. South Korea is acknowledged by the League community to have the best and most competitive teams in the League scene. This makes any tournaments that come out of South Korea probably the most exciting to watch and definitely worth the trip to see if you are a big fan of League of Legends. I have definitely said this before in previous blog posts about my previous trip to see the final of OGN Champions Summer last year.

Moving right along the main purpose of this post was to post some pictures of the times I was there. 

Just after Najin White Shield beat CJ Entus Blaze to make it to the Final of Champions Spring

Samsung Blue just before their Masters match against CJ Entus. They would later win Champions Spring 2014 and then go on with their sister team to win Samsung the first OGN Masters title. 

Also don't be deceived by the last picture, it only looks like there are empty seats because it was a break and half the crowd always leaves during the breaks. It was packed. There were people trying to cram themselves in through the door. The CJ Entus fans will always turn out in force. And Samsung has quite a few fans too.

Samsung surrounded by their many fans after winning their match against CJ Entus in OGN Masters. Not really sure why I took a photo from behind like this, it looks kind of cool I guess.

I thought I had more pictures but most of them are blurry and not very good. I just wanted to post the nicer ones in a blog post because I felt like posting them up somewhere that wasn't twitter and if people want to see them they'd be here. 

Thanks for reading! I think you are awesome. Follow me on twitter @gerarda and feel free to tweet me feedback or similar.

League of Legends in 500 Words or Less: Brief Introduction to Roles in LoL

In League of Legends the current meta game (‘meta game’ generally refers to the perceived optimal strategy that is widely adopted by players in game) dictates that there are five very distinctive roles that are played on each team. Each one has their own responsibilities and in search of a better word, role in a team. The specific objectives of each role differ depending on a team's composition, enemy composition and sometimes (especially in solo queue) mere circumstance.  The roles are as follows:

Top: Starts the beginning of the game in the top lane. This lane is a solo lane and top players aim to farm as many minions as possible. Often (but not always) top laners will aim to have a high survivability in order to protect the more vulnerable members of a team. Top laners often also build to have reasonably high damage output to aid disabling the enemy carries.

Jungle: Starts the beginning of the game in the jungle. Gets gold and experience from farming jungle camps as well as supporting laners by ganking and helping kill enemy laners. They also play a key role in securing neutral monsters like the buffs, Dragon and Baron. Junglers help to control the overall map,  as they are a constant threat to enemy laners while hidden in the jungle.

Mid:  Starts the beginning of the game in the middle lane. This lane is also a solo lane and players aim to farm as many minions as possible. It is usual to see high damage champions in this lane, usually champions who rely on their spells/abilities to do burst damage. These champions often scale with ability power but it's not uncommon to see attack damage casters in the mid lane. Often mid laner champions scale in damage with levels and this is why they are put in a solo lane so they can get solo experience and be the highest level on a team.

AD Carry/Marksman: Starts the beginning of the game in bottom lane. A marksman's job is to provide the sustained attack damage on the team. A marksman's damage almost always scales with attack damage and often are reliant on auto attacks to dish out tonnes of damage in the late game. Marksman champions tend to be very venerable and rely on their team mates to keep them alive so they can output maximum damage. Marksmen scale with items so getting a high creep score is very important.

Support: Starts the beginning of the game in the bottom lane with the Marksman. A supports job is to keep their Marksman safe in the laning phase so the Marksman can farm. Supports help control vision on the map and provide their team with a lot of utility but usually no damage. The bottom lane is traditionally the duo lane due to being closer to dragon in the early game, so that teams will have more members in order to secure Dragon in the early stages of the game.  

Words: 498

Thanks for reading! This post is part of my League of Legends in 500 Words or Less series, post #4, please read the intro for more information. This is just a quick intro to the roles used in League of Legends. Not very interesting but I might link back to it later in other 500 words or less. Also follow me on twitter @gerarda, I love feedback! =)

League of Legends in 500 Words or Less: All Stars, All Speculation

There has been a lot of talk about All Stars recently in the League community and I thought I would contribute some 500 words to this discussion. As the expected time for the All Stars tournament draws closer (2013 All Stars was held in April) discussions on who should be in the All Stars team for each region have started to crop up. These discussions are usually intended to be fun discussions about which pros everyone thinks are the best in their role and if they'd work well together as a team. 

However these discussions have spurred more serious discussion on how All Stars is essentially a popularity contest and if it is really in a region's best interest to let fans vote to decide who represents a region.  I have seen threads on reddit talking about giving prominent people in the League community more voting power to decide who goes, so that a vote by say a LCS shoutcaster or a popular freelancer would be worth more than from someone who is "just" a fan. The theory behind this is that these more prominent people know more about the game, the players and will provide a less “biased” view. While on the surface this makes sense, it runs into huge problems, most of them revolving around who gets how much more of a say and by how much. There are so many people who could be seen as prominent members of the community. How do we determine who should have more of a say? Can these VIPs vote for other regions, even if they are only involved in one? The amount of augmentation in pursuit of the “best” team in the All Stars voting system could be infinite. Attempting to inject “fairness” into the voting system is probably not going to work. 

In my mind the “best” 5 players to represent a region is probably the top team of that region. To objectively find a combination of pros that would be the best All Star team (team with a maximum of 3 members from one established team) is probably a near impossible task that cannot be achieved by mere voting regardless who gets more of a say or not. I like All Stars as a community event, where the most popular players that everyone voted for compete against each other. I think it’s a cool event for spectators but not a good gauge of a region’s strength or how they might do at Worlds. Inevitably this leads to the question then, is it fair that the prize for winning be an extra slot at Worlds? My internal jury is still out on this although I am inclined to think that it’s not that important in terms of the outcome or representation of regions at Worlds. What is more important is a good tournament structure for Worlds and how many slots regions get initially. See my thoughts on how the Worlds 2013 format was regionally biased. 

Words: 496

Thanks for reading! This post is part of my League of Legends in 500 Words or Less series, post #3, please read the intro for more information. Also follow me on twitter @gerarda, I love feedback! =)

League of Legends in 500 Words or Less: Wait for What? OGN Masters begins!

Yesterday was the first match of the SK Telecom LTE-A LoL Masters 2014, a new tournament run in Korea by OnGamenet. Similar to last year’s OGN Club Masters this tournament has a longer running format and revolves around the idea of the KeSPA organisations battling it out. The organisations in this tournament are SK Telecom T1, Samsung Galaxy Khan, Jin Air Green Wings, CJ Entus, Incredible Miracle, KT Rolster and Najin emFire. 

Unlike in other tournaments where the focus is on single teams, LoL Masters focuses on the organisations that own the teams. Each organisation has two LoL teams that will work together to bring glory to their organisation's name.  Every match day will pit one organisation against another with both teams taking to the rift to battle it out in three games. The first two games utilizes the traditional rosters of an organisation's teams while for the third game an organisation can field a team of any mix of players they decide on the day. For example yesterday the two organisations battling it out were CJ Entus and Jin Air GreenWings. The first game was Jin Air Stealths vs CJ Frost, the second; Jin Air Falcons vs CJ Blaze. In the final game both organisations chose to use their successful teams of the day; the Stealths for Jin Air and Blaze for CJ Entus. Points are earned or lost depending on the outcome of the three games, and presumably the teams with the most points at the end of the round of initial matches will go in to a playoff stage to determine who goes into the final.  

LoL Masters is a chance for the organisations to show off their teams and players in the quest to claim the prestigious title as well as the not insignificant prize money. This tournament is not about trying to be the single best team in Korea or trying to get to the World Championships (results in Masters have no effect on teams getting to Worlds), it's more a vehicle for the KeSPA organisations to show off their teams and get the opportunity to plaster their name and sponsors everywhere. This is obvious right down to the production of the show at Yongsan eSports stadium. The introduction sequence left no one in doubt which organisations were playing in the tournament, the broadcast hamming up the spectacle right down to lifting a curtain to reveal the players for each match.  

While the exclusiveness of this tournament could be seen to have kind of an old boys club vibe where they congratulate themselves on being rich while making more money, it does not mean that these games aren't worth watching.  In Korea, winning is of utmost importance, to fans and sponsors alike, so luckily for viewers the richest teams are usually also the best teams (in Korea and also the world) and their hunger for that first place will mean these matches are exciting matches for spectators. 

Useful links:  Tournament structure/schedule 

                    Leagupedia page 

                    English Stream

Words: 500

Thanks for reading! This post is part of my League of Legends in 500 Words or Less series, it's only the second one but I aim to get better at these over time for more interesting reading, please read the intro for more information. Also follow me on twitter @gerarda, I love feedback! =)

League of Legends in 500 Words or Less: Introduction

I have decided to start a series of posts which I am titling League of Legends in 500 Words or Less. This is mainly trying to establish something for me to do and also so I can put out content more regularly as well as to improve my writing.  I tend to mull on possible topic for way too long and never actually write anything. This short form type of post will force me to do something other than sit around all day.
I am going to pick a topic twice a week (probably Mondays and Thursdays) and write 500 words (maximum) on that topic. It could be about anything, an LCS game that just happened, about a piece of news that just broke, a champion I like, a pro player. Obviously the posts will always be League of Legends focused as this a League blog.
I know not many people (if any) actually read this blog but if there are people who might click on it more than once, there should be something new to read and it wont be a huge commitment. In fact I believe the average reading speed on a screen is ~200 words so it should take most people about two minutes each post. If people who did read these want to reply or do their own they should and then link me the results or you can tweet me @gerarda. Thanks for reading!

Word count: 239

Piglet in a Suit plus a Preview of OGN Champions Winter Finals 2013

I was going to write an in depth preview of the upcoming grand final match between Samsung Ozone and SKT T1 K but then I went on twitter and got distracted by SKT's AD Carry, Piglet, in a suit. Look at him being all cute yet suave in his spare time, but I am sure he's practicing hard for the final with Poohmandu. Oh no wait...Poohmandu is spending the time fixing his car. Well I am sure the others are practicing, right? Faker? Bengi? Impact?

The World Champions

To cut the World Championship team some slack, the final is in over two weeks after the time they last played their 3-0 match against KT Bullets. They have time to relax and deserve a little bit break after clean sweeping their way to the finals without a single loss in their match history. They have not lost a game since the WCG qualifiers, and before that they became $1 million richer after winning the Season 3 World Championships in October last year. And this is from a team that debuted in the professional scene in the OGN Spring 2013 season. Everyone agrees that SKT T1 K is currently the best League of Legends team in the world. If they win on Saturday, they will be securing their second OGN Championship title, the first team in OGN's history to win twice.  It seems there is nothing that can stop them. The only thing standing in their way to securing the title of the being best that ever was is a little team called Samsung Galaxy Ozone.

The Other Team

Did I say little? My mistake, as SKT T1 K is all most people can talk about recently one forgets there are other Korean teams. Yet Samsung Ozone is by no means a stranger to the spotlight. Winners of the OGN Spring 2013 season, third place in the OGN Summer 2013 season, and one of the three teams to represent Korea in the Season 3 World Championship is an impressive list of achievements for a team. The most impressive is of course their victory in OGN Spring 2013. No one thought they could win against CJ Entus Blaze who was on epic winning streak and looked so very strong at the time. It was widely thought that Ozone would need nothing short of a miracle to even win a game in this final.  And then Ozone won. 3-0. Ozone will be the underdogs in this Winter final once again and a lot of people think they will need nothing short of a miracle to even win a game in this final. Can they do it again? If anything, it will be even harder than beating Blaze as SKT T1 K look even stronger than Blaze did in Spring. Blaze was also known to have one single strategy which revolved around carefully farming minions in order to push turrets and also getting Flame fed on empty lane farm. SKT T1 K are not that transparent and will probably be harder to exploit.

Road to the Final
Many people are quick to dismiss this match up as heavily favouring SKT TI K, while this may seem rather obvious due to SKT T1 K dominating streak over League of Legends recently, it is important, I think, to look at how each team got to the final. SKT T1 K found them in a bracket stacked full of the best teams in Korea. CJ Entus Blaze and KT Bullets fought to be their opponent after SKT beat Samsung Blue in their quarter final. KT Bullets is arguably the second best team in Korea and were SKT's opponents in the Summer finals which went to the full 5 games. Blaze, although not as dominating as they were in the Spring season, are still a team to be feared (they went on to win this season's NLB 3-1 against Najin Sword). SKT had formidable opponents on the road to the final, yet all teams they defeated relatively easily.

Ozone found themselves up against teams that were considered weaker than those that SKT T1 faced. Najin White Shield and a struggling CJ Entus Frost were Ozone's opponents. Shield, although a solid team that's improved from season to season has never been a team considered likely to take the Championship. They are, however, the team that has put the only blemishes on Ozone's win record this season, taking two games from them one in group stages and one in the semi final match. This leaves a lot of people arguing that Ozone isn't that strong because they couldn't defeat a weaker team convincingly. This is definitely how it seems on paper and ever since the brackets were announced people were writing off the bracket stage expecting them to be filled with boring games. What actually happened was a semi final series between Ozone and Shield that was anything but boring, both teams playing very well with Shield defying expectations. If you haven't watched those matches I highly recommend you do.

In hindsight, it still could be argued that Ozone had the easiest time leading up to the finals, since all the Champion favourites found themselves in the same side of the bracket. One can lament the structure of the tournament leading to top tier teams like CJ Blaze, KT Bullets being knocked out of the finals brackets so early but that's the nature of the competition and teams have to shape up or go home. If the untouchable status of SKT T1 K is to be believed, they were probably just going to lose eventually anyway.  But then that's a bit of a hype killer.

Head to Head
Moving on, let's see how the teams stack up against each other.
In the TOP LANE:
Impact vs Looper
Samsung Ozone could always pull out Homme for the finals but this seems very unlikely as Looper has really been performing exceptionally well this season. He plays teleport Dr Mundo better than most other top laners, never wasting a teleport and always finding an advantage out of that summoner spell. SKT T1 K will most likely ban Mundo against him unless they can pick it up for themselves. Impact is also an exceptional top laner knowing exactly where he needs to be to protect his carries. He and Looper share a champion pool, both of them playing the current top lane staples Dr Mundo, Shyvana and Renekton. They both also have played Singed, Impact brought Singed back into competitive play in Champion Summer and Looper played Singed (with teleport) in his first ever professional game in the World Championships. Impact also plays a good Jax, a champion that was part of Ozone's only loss to Shield in the semi finals. This should be a pretty close match up with Ozone possibly relying on Looper's teleport plays to get them an advantage.

In the JUNGLE:
Bengi vs DanDy
Elise and Lee Sin  have been the story for both these junglers this season, with Bengi picking up Olaf just as frequently. He and DanDy are excellent junglers often pairing with their supports to create plays for their team, as demonstrated by Bengi and Poohmandu using an Elise/Zyra combo to grab an early dragon to negate KT Bullet's 2v1 advantage in the semi final match. Bengi has also played Nunu pairing it with Caitlyn for the early tower pressure bloodboil provides. Neither these junglers are really "carry" junglers. Bengi has always invested in providing vision control for his team early in game and the season 4 changes to vision have not dampened his enthusiasm, leading to SKT having a superior understanding on how to use pink wards in the new season. DanDy is known as the counter ganking jungler, always knowing where the other jungler is and being there in time to turn a gank around. This match up will be a pretty close one, SKT T1 have looked on fire regarding controlling objectives lately and it will be up to DanDy to predict Bengi's movements and make the right choice on what lane to visit to respond to the unrelenting lane pressure that is bound to come from SKT.

In the MID:
Faker vs Dade
Both MVPs of their respective winning seasons these mid laners have differing stories. Faker has been labeled "Best Player of 2013" on pretty much any LoL eSports website that bothered to put out a list. Dade on the other hand, despite his amazing performance on Zed during the final of OGN Spring 2013, is notoriously known for is absolutely terrible Gragas play at the Season 3 World Championship.  This Winter season  has shown  Dade can expand his previously limited champion pool by playing a lot of Kha'Zix, Nidalee and Gragas along with Zed, even pulling out a niche Ghost/Flash Ziggs against Shield. Faker has been playing a lot of Leblanc, Nidalee, Riven and Gragas. I expect at least one Gragas ban against Faker and Nidalee and Kassadin are likely to be banned by either team. Also as Yasuo is now available this adds another champion into the mix, and Faker has been playing him in solo queue. Dade is facing a huge hurdle in the midlane that is Faker, and Dade will have to play at his absolute best to show if he can match up.

In the DUO LANE:
Piglet/Poohmandu vs Imp/Mata
Both these botlanes have had a huge impact on the games that their teams have played this season.  Piglet is commonly referred to as the second superstar on SKT T1 (second to Faker, of course). Both Imp and Piglet are famous for their Vayne and Caitlyn picks in the past. Piglet has played both Caitlyn and Vayne this season whereas Imp as not played his famed Vayne yet. This may have something to do with him thinking he is not a top tier AD carry at the moment which he stated in an interview after their semi final win a few weeks a go. Piglet has not shown any such doubts, with his Vayne mechanics proving to be almost flawless in recent games. Despite Imp's own admissions he has been playing extremely well, his mechanics don't seem to be lacking displaying impressive flash mechanics and escapes against Shield and Frost. Imp has also been playing Sivir, Ezreal and Lucian. His safest pick aside from Caitlyn is probably Ezreal and it will not be surprising if he plays it in the final. Imp will need to regain some confidence if he wants to compete against Piglet. Neither of these players will be alone in the lanes (most likely) as they have arguably the best two supports in Korea at the moment to keep them out of trouble. These supports are likely to draw a lot of bans. The choice of support can have a major effect on games currently and Mata and Poohmandu play them all. Both are deadly on Annie and Thresh. Mata has exhibited amazing Leona play recently and Poohmandu always has his pocket Nami, a champion that he is so good on it's a bit ridiculous. It will be very exciting to see which bot lane comes out on top, while I think Piglet and Poohmandu are slightly stronger as a duo, Mata and Imp will be no push over.

The SKT T1 K Factor vs the Samsung Ozone Factor
No matter who wins on Saturday OGN will be crowning a second time Champions winner. SKT T1 are the heavy favourites, generous fans out there are predicting 3-1 in their favour. Why are they so heavily favoured? What do they possess that no other team in Korea has? The simple answer is that they are just so darn good. It is like they have taken apart Summoner's Rift and then put it back together again and know exactly how it works, like they have reached a state of enlightenment about the game that other teams are yet to find. They have excellent mechanical skills, superior game knowledge which allows them a strong pick and ban phase and the winning edge in the strategic game. They work as a team almost seamlessly and they know all the plays and the counter plays their opposing team will do. They don't have any obvious weaknesses. SKT T1 K also has this killer instinct and ruthless vibe about their play, they don't let their opponents relax and they always seem like they are in control. If an opposing team starts to think they are in control SKT T1 will suddenly be there getting an inhibitor at 12 minutes. It's this along with their imposing win rate that gives them a substantial mental edge over their opponent. Samsung Ozone boasts some top players and excellent team work but they have relied on research and carefully planned strategy to overcome their most formidable opponents (which is why their performance at Worlds is so baffling). They will need every bit of their assets to present a challenge to the unstoppable SKT T1 K. I don't think SKT T1 K are unbeatable and as I am an Ozone fan I am highly optimistic about their chances. And I am hoping for that game 5 blind pick. Because who doesn't want to see a blind pick?

OGN Champions Winter 2013 Final is on the Saturday 25th of Jan. at 4pm KST on twitch.tv/ongamenet

Thanks for reading! Congratulations for making it through this very long post. I think you are awesome. Follow me on twitter @gerarda and feel free to tweet me feedback or similar.