On the 14th, G2 took down Griffin in day 2 of the group stages in the 2019 LoL World Championship. With a solid early game lead, G2 was playing the game at their pace, and despite Griffin fighting back in the mid game, it was not enough to take down the kings of Europe.

After the game, Marcin ‘Jankos’ Jankowski and Martin ‘Wunder’ Hansen were interviewed by Laure Valée and Jeesun Park in the Riot Games English broadcast and the LCK broadcast respectively, so the following are their words from both channels.

Congratulations! To be honest, I don’t recognize you at all: Wunder playing tanks, Caps playing Orianna, G2 playing a standard, front to back composition? What happened?

Well, after our scrims, we decided to play a bit safer, and it worked out.

Griffin is a team where all 5 players have carry potential. They don’t like to make flashy, mechanical plays in the early game, and slowly build leads in a methodical way. Knowing this, how did you prepare against Griffin?

We didn’t specifically prepare for Griffin, we just played our game. Based off our scrims vs. the Eastern teams, we were able to predict their draft. I feel like all of them play the same style, so we’re able to predict what they’ll look for, and prepared well for it. I kinda feel like all the teams were choking on stage. Except for the SKT vs RNG game today, I feel like the teams are underperforming, so over time, the performances will improve.

Speaking of scrims, I wasn’t happy about the Twitch clips I saw on Reddit, where you were talking about scrims vs. the Eastern teams. What happened?

I feel like in Europe, no teams could challenge us in scrims. Eastern teams really pushed us to our limits in scrims, and some days were really rough. I was actually happy that we lost some games in scrims, because we learned a lot from our losses, For this game, if we don’t lose early game, I don’t see ourselves losing at all. I think we had a great early game, but threw a bit because of a couple bad mistakes. We just had an outscaling composition, so we just won.

Is it perhaps that maybe, just maybe, you didn’t take scrims against the LEC teams earlier this year?

I’m not too sure how to answer that question, because we felt that we didn’t need to take them too seriously, but at the same time, we did. We would be winning a lot, to the point where it didn’t matter. However, against the Eastern teams, we were losing early games, which didn’t happen as often against the LEC teams. At the same time, while the LEC teams couldn’t close out the game against us, the Eastern teams knew how, so I’m just happy that we get to practice against good teams.

Congratulations on your victory. Ever since MSI, there’s been much hype around G2, so coming into Worlds, did you feel the pressure?

Regardless of whether we were MSI champions or not, it was our first game, so there was a lot of pressure. We were able to defeat the champions of Korea at MSI, but if we’d lost to the 2nd seed of LCK, it would’ve looked a lot worse for Europe. Now that we’ve won, we’re happy to know that we’re able to beat them in a best of one, so the tournament still looks bright for us.

What are your thoughts on Ornn in the current meta?

I think Ornn’s a champion good at absorbing a lot of pressure. They played Renekton-Taliyah, which are champions that has a lot of gank potential, and wants to play around top side, so I think Ornn scales pretty well, does well with less econ, and against Renekton 1 vs 1. It’s a bad pick into ranged champion, so I think it’s a good situational pick.

A lot of people are saying that the current meta heavily favors G2. Do you agree? 

I think that there’s a lot of champions that you can play in this meta, which is definitely good for us. It’s good for any teams that have a deep champion pool, but for us, I agree that it definitely favors us.

This year’s Worlds is in Europe, so it may hold a deeper meaning for you. Looking ahead, do you have any resolutions going into this tournament?

Although I’m really happy it’s in Europe, it doesn’t change much for me. I just want to win Worlds, no matter where it is. Compared to MSI, the Asian teams look much stronger, but I think we have a good chance of winning.