Well... A lot.
What started with an incredibly one-sided game for Splyce, finished with one of the biggest Baron power plays in LoL history. The Chinese first seed, FunPlus PhoeniX, stole what was surely a game winning Baron for Splyce and turned it around, eventually taking the nexus themselves.
While the Splyce micro and macro had been beautfiul throughout the entire early game, and even though they had infinite scaling on their side, the one flaw they had was in their Baron set up, and it cost everything. Let's take a look at what it took to get FPX a near 10K gold swing from one single play.
While I just mentioned the Splyce Baron setup was bad, the whole entire FPX early game was bad too, and that is exactly what set them up for a majority of the swing. Because they were so far down in gold, multiple members on Splyce had bounties to be collected. On top of that, FPX had only taken two turrets, so there was a lot of easy standing gold in their reach.
Splyce found a pick onto the FPX support, Liu "Crisp" Qing-Song, and immediately start the Baron, not worrying about the 50/50 due to all of their zone-of-control and displacement abilities. This was a mistake. FPX decided to come at Splyce from four different angles to make it impossible to control all of their zones, and in the midst of the chaos, Gao "Tian" Tian-Liang managed to steal the Baron away.
And since Splyce used their burst on the Baron, they had none for the fight afterward. All they had were the utility spells, but those were useless against the burst and mobility of the comp, and in just 12 seconds, every Splyce member was dead.
Look at all that happened in this one instant. It was so fast, the game registered it as a single play.
With a wave already pushed in mid, FPX immediately took two mid turrets and used the bot wave to take the tier two there as well. Before a single pixel of color splashed on a Splyce monitor, FPX already had a 6500 Baron Power play. Five kills, two shutdowns, three turrets.
Also, because of the way the waves were positioned when Splyce respawned, FPX was able to catch multiple extra minion waves after their reset, netting them an extra chunk of gold from the cs.
And as FPX was shoving back in, Max "Atlus" Anderson mentioned that while it was a crucial play for them to get back in the game, it was still okay for Splyce because, "They're not going to lose their base, it's not even going to get broken here."
And while he was correct for the time being, I don't think cared at all as they ran through the top lane felling yet another turret. With Baron finally all said and done, only the Splyce base structures stood in their way.
By the end of it all, they had a swung the gold 9200 in their favor in those three and a half minutes. Five kills, four towers, a bunch of cs, a Cloud Drake, and all the hopes and dreams of a Splyce 2-0. Just three minutes after they collected all that gold, they used it to end the game.
At the end of Day 3, Group B sits at a four way tie. Day 4 will send two in the lead, and Day 5 is when the Group is decided. Check back here for more Worlds 2019 coverage, and follow our Twitter to see it first!
- Parkes Ousley
- Email : parkes@invenglobal.com
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