For fans of League of Legends, the Mid-Season Invitational or MSI started on May 10th. You can check out our article about the event here if you are interested. Following our Day 5 recap, it’s time to do a recap of the sixth day's games.
The final day of the MSI Group Stage is over and man, what a crazy day it was! The day started out with Team Aze squaring up against the Saigon Buffalos (SGB) and once again, it did not end well for Aze. SGB spent the entire game schooling Aze and by the end of the game at 23 minutes, SGB had a 20k gold lead with 25 kills to Aze’s 6. SGB’s intense kill-heavy early game was uncounterable for Aze, and once into the midgame Aze was unable to recover losing multiple team fights, leading to SGB’s eventual win. SGB once again displayed their ferocity here and I’m looking forward to what they do in the Rumble Stage.
The next game between Detonation Focus Me (DFM) and SK Telecom T1 (T1) was much less exciting than the stomp of the previous game, but also higher quality in terms of skill for both teams. The game was essentially a slow march to DFM’s inevitable death at T1’s hands. DFM gave up a few kills for most of the early game and was able to match T1 in terms of gold until the midgame, but T1’s slow march to get objectives and control the map eventually pushed DFM to their loss after a decisive Baron fight.
The third game of the night was a doozy and amazing to watch. The Saigon Buffaloes went up against Detonation Focus Me and the match was the bloodiest professional league game I’ve ever seen. The final kill count was SGB with 30 to DFM’s 32 at 37 minutes! That is an absurd amount of kills for professional League of Legends!
To clarify, Riot Games currently balances the game while trying to keep the average kills per minute for both teams combined to 0.7. Keep in mind; this game had an average of 2 kills per minute! The sheer amount of scraping that both teams did was insane. SGB started the game in the lead and had an interesting team comp too, with a Diana jungle and two AD carries! SGB had picked the AD carry Kai’Sa mid to counter DFM’s weird Vel’Koz mid pick, which led to the whole two carries thing. That decision is what won SGB the game.
After SGB lost their lead around 20 minutes due to losing some team fights, they started to get pressured hard by DFM and it was looking like DFM might win, but then SGB’s jungler BeanJ popped off! In a team fight near SGB’s base, their jungler BeanJ saved a team fight, and the entire game with an amazing Dianna ultimate that damaged and cc’d 3 of DFM’s players long enough for SGB’s two AD carries to shred DFM’s team without getting targeted themselves!
SGB won the fight and got back into the game quickly getting into another team fight where BeanJ did the same thing again to win the fight and then the game when they pushed down mid. The game was a slaughter-fest and amazing to watch, especially SGB’s miracle comeback.
After that bloodbath, we had SK Telecom T1 smash Team Aze in a completely expected outcome. Aze did, however, put up some unexpected resistance in the early game, managing to get some kills against T1 staying even until 6 minutes. As if taking offense to give away kills to Aze, T1 then proceeds to take complete control of the map and every objective on it. They then proceeded to grind Aze under their boot, ending the game at 22 minutes with a 20k gold lead and 20 kills to 6! Fortunately for Aze, that would be their last loss of the night.
The penultimate game of Day 6 was between Detonation Focus Me and Team Aze. DFM was in the lead for almost the entire game and it looked like the match would be another showing of Aze’s incompetence. But, all of a sudden, Aze wins an amazing team fight at 28 minutes while down 7k gold! They smash DFM in the team fight and come out of it only down 3k and with Baron buff.
After that, Aze would win another team fight at 35 minutes, get Baron again, then push to DFM’s nexus, winning the game at 37 minutes with 16 kills to DFM’s 19 but still even in gold. This win was a saving grace for Team Aze who have had less than a stellar showing so far at MSI, and while still unable to qualify for Rumble Stage, they still get to go home with one win from an international tournament which is more than many can say!
The last game of the night is one that will go down in the history books of troll draft picks. The game was between the Saigon Buffalos and SK Telecom T1, and both teams had already qualified for the Rumble Stage so there was an air of levity to the game. At least for T1 that is. T1’s support Keria picked Rumble, a champion he has never played in a professional game before, and one that has only been played as support twice in his region! T1 would go on to crush SGB, ending the game at 22 minutes with 17 kills to SGB’s 4. T1 had made masterful use of Keria’s Rumble to command team fights, and I hope we get to see this pocket pick in the Rumble Stage despite how unlikely T1 is to pull it out in a game that matters.
That’s everything for Day 6, and as such, that means the end of Group Stages as well. Check out the next recap to see what's going on at MSI 2022’s Rumble Stage!
