The anticipation was palpable as the stream for the League of Legends Championship Finals began the morning of June 18, 2011 at Dreamhack 2011 in Jonkoping, Sweden. Without further ado for readers, we’ll be jumping straight into a recap for what you may have missed!
The first round pitted EU team aAa (Against All Authority) against the NA team EG (Epik Gaming). The bans and picks were as follows:
aAa Bans – Akali, Vladimir, Nunu
Epik Bans- Rumble, Nidalee, Twisted Fate
aAa Picks- Amumu, Miss Fortune, Karthus, Soraka, Irelia
Epik picks- Vayne, Janna, Warwick, Annie, Singed
EG started with a south jungle invasion, while aAa guarded their blue for Amumu. EG was content to pick up wraiths and then red buff for Vayne as a tradeoff. The lane matchups were as follows:
Top: Irelia vs. Singed / Mid: Karthus vs. Annie / Bot: Miss Fortune and Soraka vs. Vayne and Janna, with the two junglers being Amumu and Warwick.
There was a decent amount of grappling among lanes as each team vied for First Blood gold bonus, with an early tower dive aAa on top lane to Singed who managed to survive the attack. However, not a few minutes afterwards, Karthus took first blood with an ultimate on Annie, though Vayne was able to counter with a kill on MF. The laning phase had some close calls as junglers tried to gank a few times, but through good synergy on both teams’ parts and skillful use of Flash there were few deaths to speak of.
The next well-prepared gank was on Warwick, as aAa teleported onto a ward for a clean kill. Though aAa was able to pick up the first Dragon kill, Epik got the second. At about 20 minutes in the game was still reasonably even, with the warding fierce on both sides, as each team fought for jungle and map control. However, Epik managed to start to turn it around, winning the next teamfight and picking up Baron as aAa went for the third Dragon.
From here it was a bit of a snowball, as Epik continued to keep the pressure on aAa, eventually taking all the outer turrets and one inner turret. aAa wasn’t idle though; earlier, they’d also gotten a couple turrets as well. But in the end, EG came out on top, forcing and winning a teamfight at Baron, picking up the buff a second time and then pushing mid to get their first inhibitor before picking off the remainder of the turrets. One final teamfight at the top, last turret for aAa’s side sealed the deal, and EG received the first win of the tournament!
I hope this little recap has piqued your interest in watching the remainder of Dreamhack and if not, that it’s sufficiently satisfied your curiosity as to the first round’s highlights (for now). Additionally, if you’re interested I’ve written an overview of the new observer mode that Riot has debuted at the finals under this:
Observer Mode:
–Shows the champion icons for both teams on either side of screen showing what summoner spells, champions, health and mana status each player has. Additionally, cooldown timer for deaths and ultimates are also shown.
–Fog of war perspective can be toggled.
–Center, bottom of screen has player Kill/Death/Assist ratio, minion kills, and items.
–Top, center of screen HUD shows team gold, tower kills, champion kills, and match time for both teams.
Overall, with this new mode one can literally see everything on both teams. Hopefully this new feature will be implemented soon!
Be sure to watch the stream here: http://season-one-championship.na.leagueoflegends.com/
Rian Quenlin
They banned Nunu and picked Vayne? I don’t know about you but I would rather risk taking on Nunu than Vayne, at least with Nunu’s ult you can get the Hell out of the way with Flash before he completely destroys you.
Starblade
Yes, I didn’t think having Westrice as Vayne would go very well for them either… And that proved reasonably true, since if I remember correctly he got quite a few kills that game. With the current metagame, Vayne is still pretty hard to counter, but the latest patch should’ve helped a bit with that.