After the first round-robin of the 2021 League of Legends World Championship group stage, PSG Talon is 2-1 and sits in 2nd place in Group C.

The #1 seed from the Pacific Championship Series dropped its first match of the group against Royal Never Give Up, but bounced back with an upset win over Hanwha Life Esports and continued to roll against a Fnatic who has been weakened by the unavailability of AD carry Elias "Upset" Lipp. 

PSG Talon mid laner Huang "Maple"  Yi-Tang sat down with Inven Global following his squad's big win over Hanwha Life Esports to discuss how PSG took down the South Korean side and the parity between the four teams in Group C. 

PSG Talon just pulled off an excellent win against Hanwha Life Esports. What was the game plan for your team in attacking HLE's weaknesses to get this win?

We picked Yuumi and tried to play a Yuumi system, basically: if your bot lane is able to farm up and develop, then you become very strong in the late game.

In the mid lane, we also anticipated that they would pick the Azir to counter our LeBlanc. We allowed them to do so because we knew it would be very hard for the Azir to leave lane, and that just meant that our bot lane would have an easier time getting to its powerspike. Once we were farmed up, our composition could handle theirs quite easily.

Speaking further towards that bot lane matchup, HLE picked Draven and Pyke to try and kill the Yuumi lane before you scaled. Was that expected as well?

We did anticipate that they would pick this duo. Both Deft and Vsta are very well known in the ranked ladder for their Draven and Pyke, so we did anticipate that as well as anticipating that they would invade at level 1. We had the Teleport on our Talon jungle so he could come into the bot lane and protect it, but we had some mishaps and that didn't really happen. [laughs]

Overall, assuming you're choosing PSG Talon as one of the teams to escape Group C, who do you think is most likely to join you in avoiding elimination in the group stage?

I think right now it is very hard to tell because all of the teams in our group are on such equal footing. I think it depends on the performance on the day. I wouldn't be surprised by anyone beating anyone.

This is the first time in over a year where PSG Talon has gotten to compete internationally with its full starting roster at the beginning of an event. How much of a difference has that made, in your opinion?

We are definitely more comfortable with Unified. When we had Doggo at MSI 2021, we were complete strangers, so I only got to know him at the event itself. We are more familiar with Unified and he is steadily playing better and better.

Is there anything you'd like to say to the PSG Talon fans or fans of the PCS in general?

I hope everyone can continue to support us. [laughs] I will try to find a way to make it out of this group.