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The 2021 World Championship event in League of Legends which is held in Reykjavik, Iceland, is one of the world’s biggest annual esports competitions, organized by Riot Games.
The North American video game developer and the popular esports events organizer behind the League of Legends title started this year’s Worlds series event on October 5, when the first LoL matches in the play-in group phase of the Worlds 2021 tournament were played out.
As the one of major LoL championships featuring one of the best League of Legends teams in the world, the Worlds 2021 competition is planned to be held for nearly a month up until November 6, when in the final match, the winning team will be crowned as the new LoL world champions.
In one of our previous articles featuring Worlds 2021, we already covered some of the details regarding the tournament’s play-in stage, including some of the general information about the LoL world championship, its groups and format of the play-in stage.
The article also discussed one of the best Chinese LoL teams — the LNG Esports‘ winning path, and their rivalry against one of the strongest South Korean LoL teams — Hanwha Life Esports.
Additionally, we spoke about one of the most successfull Japanese LoL teams in the face of the DetonatioN FocusMe esports organization, and finally, covered most of the tiebreaker series during the play-in stage of Worlds 2021 tournament in Iceland.
During the first play-in stage of the Worlds 2021, ten starting LoL teams were equally divided by the Riot Games in two tournament’s starting play-in groups — Group A and Group B.
Besides the final contenders, such as the LNG Esports and Hanwha Life Esports squads, there were also two more additional slots left to fill in the main group stage of the Worlds 2021 event.
The final tickets to Worlds 2021 main group stage were decided in the last qualification or knockout matches of the play-in phase.
South Korea versus Taiwan
The first knockout series of the Worlds 2021 play-in event featured one the South Korea’s best LoL teams, ranked fourth, Hanwha Life Esports vs Beyond Gaming roster from the Pacific or Taiwan region, who came second in both PCS Summer 2021 and also the previous PCS Spring 2021 tournament.
It is also worth mentioning the fact that not long ago, specifically, already during the Worlds 2021 event, we also reported that there was a small scandal which involved the Beyond Gaming team themselves, and particularly their main mid lane player, the 18-year-old Taiwanese talent Chien “Maoan” Mao-An.
In short, BYG’s Maoan, who previously also played for the Malaysian LoL team known as Berjaya Dragons, was issued a competitive ruling, resulting in a suspension from the ongoing Worlds 2021 event.
The Taiwanese mid lane player also recieved a general ban from all of the Riot Games’ official tournaments held in the League of Legends title, due to his suspicious activity which presumably involved some of the prohibited actions related to betting.
So, with all of that in mind and out of the way, we also do note the fact, that the final knockout series between the second best LoL team from the PCS region and South Korea’s fourth best squad were played with the two of the Beyond Gaming roster’s top lane players in their active lineup — Wu “Liang” Liang-Te and Hsieh “PK” Yu-Ting.
The first set of the Hanwha Life Esports squad versus the Beyond Gaming team was quickly played out and it lasted less than half an hour. The HLE team was leading with 18 kills, including first blood, against the Taiwanese three times less number of frags.
Speaking of resources on the map, the gold difference also was in favor of the South Korean LoL team, reaching more than 10k when the BYG’s nexus was finally falling apart.
The Beyoung Gaming team was able to destroy the first turret, but their efforts were not quite enough, as the top and jungle matchups were completely lost by the Taiwanese squad. In particular, PK’s Gwen who was taken by him during the first game, lost her matchup against Park “Morgan” Gi-tae’s signature Irelia pick.
PK together with BYG’s jungle player Huang “HuSha” Zi-Wei ended the set with the saddening statistics of combined nine deaths and zero kills, against the Hanwha Life Esports jungler Kim “Willer” Jeong-hyeon’s score of 5-1-12 on his Nidalee.
With the better map control which resulted in eight turret picks and also three drakes taken, the South Korean team practically never lost their gold lead during the entire first set of the match.
In the final teamfight which commenced around the 29 minute mark, the Taiwanese team first lost four of their members and, due to the prolonged death timers, then immediately started losing their crucial structures in the mid lane and all of their base also fell shortly afterwards. South Korea’s HLE team led the series 1:0.
In the series’ second game, there were two interesting statistical records observed. First, Willer playing on his Lee Sin managed to score 12 kills in the single second game of the knockout series against the BYG squad, the result which is considered the top 3 highest number of the whole Worlds 2021 play-in event.
In that particular game, team Hanwha Life Esports also managed to set another Worlds 2021 preliminary stage record, as the South Korean LoL professionals, who were playing with arguably one of the most experienced ADC players in the entire region — Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu, were able to basically outclass their opponents by achieving one the biggest gold per minute rates in the entire event, setting themselves only behind the Cloud9 squad.
The second set ended in 23 minutes, with the final score in terms of kills being 26 for the Koreans against only 9 kills of the BYG squad. The HLE team also took 9 turrets against only 2 of the Taiwanese LoL team.
With two dragons and one Baron Nashor power play, the Hanwha Life Esports squad managed to finish the game in their favor, as BYG’s Liang who picked bruiser-style Kled in his mid lane matchup against Chovy’s Azir, ended the game without a single kill — 0-6-2 score.
Chiu “Doggo” Tzu-Chuan’s Vayne pick could not carry this game for the Taiwanese either, even though he was looking on par with Deft’s MF, at least in terms of the CS numbers. PK’s Kennen finished the game 2-8-3, as Morgan on his Jarvan IV had 14 assists and was actually teamfighting quite well.
The score in the series became 2:0, and on the third and final map in the Bo3 match, the game finished in about 25 minutes with the 11:6 kill score in favor of the Hanwha Life Esports team.
The Beyond Gaming squad were losing more than 10k gold in the end of the final game versus HLE. The Koreans who drew first blood on the map when Willer ganked Liang’s Fiora on top, were also generally pretty good at controlling objectives in this set. The HLE team picked up 9 turret kills, including 8 plates, five of which were taken in the mid lane.
In this final map BYG’s Doggo tried hard to carry the game with his MF, as he never died and farmed very well with about 25% more CS than Deft had, who also managed to die twice during the game. But in the end, the South Korean teamwork ended up being far superior.
Around the 20 minute mark, the Taiwanese LoL team managed to catch and kill Morgan’s Irelia, but shortly afterwards, the South Korean team won the teamfight of their own, when Fiora died and Lee Sin took the Baron at the 23 minute mark. HuSha’s Talon, who failed the game with his 1-4-2 score, was not able to steal the important objective and died.
With the Baron Nashor’s buff on the South Korean champions, BYG’s mid turret and both inhibitors were quickly destroyed. In the final teamfight, three of the Taiwanese team members were killed, and the nexus turrets were quickly gone.
Even though the Taiwanese players were able to respond with three kills of their own, their base was destroyed during the final push.
The Hanwha Life Esports team won against Beyond Gaming with the 3:0 score. The South Korean team moved on to the main group event of the Worlds 2021 championship in Iceland, and the Beyond Gaming organization placed 17-18 place, receiving $40,000 of their prize money.
A new hope
The second and even more interesting Bo5 final series of the second play-in round at this year’s play-ins at Worlds was the Cloud9 vs PEACE matchup.
In this match, the famed North American LoL team of former G2 Esports‘ Luka “Perkz” Perkovic faced the opposing Australian LoL team — the champions of the LCO Split 2 2021 event.
At home, the PEACE vs Pentanet.GG match ended with the 3:0 score in the finals of the Riot’s LCO event which is regularly held in Oceania and is organized by the Australian division of the ESL organization.
Interestingly enough, during the LCO’s regular season, the PEACE team finished only fifth place with a negative 10-11 score against Pentanet.GG‘s 15-6 dominant first place finish.
The PEACE team barely made it to the playoffs and started the action from the lower bracket, where they simply went crazy and defeated all of the other opponents, such as the Chiefs Esports Club, ORDER team, Dire Wolves, and Pentanet.GG during the finals.
In turn, the North America’s Cloud9 team was the last esports organization to qualify for the Worlds 2021 event from the United States’ LCS region. But the C9 team had a long road ahead of them.
The C9 organization managed to jump the Worlds 2021 hype train over the NA’s definite fan favorites — Team SoloMid.
During the LCS 2021 Summer split, Cloud9 were fourth with a 28-17 score. Perkz’s squad then finished third at the LCS 2021 Championship playoffs event, losing to the mighty Team Liquid team in the upper bracket, but then consequently winning against the Golden Guardians, with former Counter Logic Gaming‘s ADC player Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes, and also defeating Evil Geniuses.
The classic and epic Cloud9 vs TSM rivalry was also won by the C9 roster with the 3:2 score, but then Perkz’s squad lost to the likes of the 100 Thieves team.
The Cloud9 vs 100 Thieves Bo5 match ended with the 1:3 score in favor of the 100 organization, who then continued their run and outplayed the TL 3:0 in the LCS 2021 Championship finals.
Moving on to Worlds 2021 results, the first game in the C9 vs PEACE matchup was definitely an interesting one to watch. The first highlight action of the second round of the play-in stage started on the Summoner’s Rift bot lane, where the PCE’s Miss Fortune and Rakan duo faced off against the likes of the C9’s ADC and support champions — Lucian and Nami, respectively.
The bot lane started really intense, as one of the first small skirmishes which happened on the first level, already ended with the first blood which was scored by Vincent “Violet” Wong’s MF.
On the mid lane, C9 Perkz’s Syndra was ganked several times during the PCE vs C9 match, as one of the first 2v1 plays of the OCE champions against the former G2 Esports mid laner on the third minute mark of the game quickly ended in the second kill on the scoreboard, which was in favor of the PEACE squad.
The heat continued in the bot lane, as the Lucian and Nami duo had priority in the laning phase and in skirmishing against the PCE’s champions Miss Fortune and Rakan, so C9’s duo almost immediately replied with the kill of their own, as soon as they were able to overlevel their opponents somewhere on the fourth minute mark of the match.
C9’s roaming Nami support in mid lane was easily flashed on and was almost single handedly killed by the jungling Xin Zhao, controlled by Leo “Babip” Romer, as the Ryze mid player from PEACE — James “Tally” Shute was able to secure the enemy support kill in his favor.
Afterwards, the second kill came in, as both the mid laner and jungler from the PEACE team kept on roaming through the open C9’s jungle, as they were aiming to flash on and dive the Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen’s lone Lucian, who was left standing without his fellow support under the bottom turret.
Speaking of the top lane in this action-packed game, it was looking pretty even with around 40 CS for each player before the sixth level mark, right when the small skirmish turned out into a kill.
The Wukong player kept just auto attacking and the enemy Gnar, who was then simply forced to flash out. Then the jungling Lee Sin of Robert “Blaber” Huang quickly came in and denied the emergency recall from the PCE’s Hungarian stand-in player Tamas “Vizicsacsi” Kiss, who was desperately teleporting home under his turret. The C9 team quickly decided to dive the lone and flashless enemy top laner, feeding the kill to Perkz’s Syndra.
In the meantime, during the top lane action, PEACE’s jungler was busy soloing the dragon on the other part of the Summoner’s Rift.
Soon, the Gnar player was ganked again on top lane at the 12 minute mark, as the Lee Sin again basically soloed the PCE’s top laner with the little help of his teammates.
One of the skirmishes around the Baron area ended with the Xin Zhao smiting the Rift Herald, but the real teamfight did not happen, as the Miss Fortune’s ultimate was able to entirely zone out the C9 team, standing in the tight choke point in the enemy jungle near the blue buff area.
Later, the second drake was also picked up by the PCE team’s jungler. One of the fights on the Baron area for the second Rift Herald surprisingly managed to end fine for both squads, as no one of the champions died. The Herald objective was taken by the PACE team, who then used it to destroy the top turret on the map.
The late game started with the small lead of the North American LoL team, but the opposing squad from Oceania managed to quickly fight back soon enough. The Cloud9 team were able to take the fourth dragon on the map, as the amount of gold earned was pretty even between both of the teams.
Then, around the 25 minute mark, during one of the game’s late game teamfights, the entire PEACE team were aced by the Cloud9 squad when they were fighting around the top lane. The C9 team, though, were unable to capitalize on the situation and grab the Baron Nashor buff to finish the game in their favor, as the gold was still pretty equal during all of this time.
Around the 30 minute mark, the C9 squad managed to pick up one of the last teamfights in the game, by killing four of the PEACE team’s champions, without any significant losses on the NA team side. The American LoL squad then just pushed mid lane and destroyed the base, finally winning the first game of the series.
Speaking of the next game in the series, the C9 squad moved on to the match point after the second map also played out in their favor. Unlike the first map, which was going on for more than 34 minutes, this time, the NA hope were able to close out the game in a much more quicker 22 minutes.
The PEACE team tried to fight back, as they even took first blood and were also able to grab the Rift Herald. And the PCE mid player Tally interestingly picked Akali in this game, but he was unable to carry his squad to the victory against the NA opposition. Tally’s champion finished the game with the 2-4-1 score and got almost two times less CS than Perkz’s Ryze.
The PEACE squad managed to take down only one turret against the opposing ten objectives, and also could not get any dragons versus the C9’s three. The Cloud9 team also took a lot more of the turret plates in their favor.
The American squad also had one Baron power play during the second game. It seems that, overall, the C9 team were in full control during the set, as in the end of the game Perkz’s team were up more than 20k gold against the team from Oceania. The NA squad was establishing a close lead of almost 10k already around the 17-18 minute mark.
The third and final game of the match was also quickly won by the C9 team, and it lasted even less than 20 minutes. This set was arguably one of the shortest games of the entire play-in phase in the Worlds 2021 event.
During the second map, the domination of the American LoL squad was far less, as they were able to score only three times more kills than their opponents. But in the third set, the C9 team won the map with the not really close 21-1 kill score and 8-1 in turret kills.
The final game of the series featured the same matchup on the bottom lane of the Summoner’s Rift map as in the first game of the series, when Zven’s Lucian ADC and Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme’s Nami were laning against the likes of the Violet’s MF and Ryan “Aladoric” Gregory Richardson’s Rakan support.
The C9’s bottom lane could boast the combined 10 kills on the scoreboard and more than 20 assists and only died once, against zero frags and 9 deaths of their opponents from the PCE lineup.
The Lucian had almost twice more CS than the MF. PCE’s mid lane player Tally, who picked Irelia this time, also finished the game just dying five times. The gold was steadily progressing all the time in favor of the C9 squad, who in the end were up 16k.
The C9 team won the series versus PEACE lineup and, boasting a solid 75% winrate during the play-in phase at the Iceland’s championship, were confidently heading into the main group stage of the World 2021 event.
Worlds 2021 main group stage preview
Besides the intense play-in matches, the subsequent main group stage of the 2021 World Championship was just recently played out.
Even though the play-in stage of the Worlds event was quite exciting, even more of the top-level LoL matches were played for many more days since October 11, when the main group event at Worlds 2021 started.
All in all, we can definitely say that lots of incredibly condensed and top-notch LoL action was happening right away, to the delight of millions of League of Legends and esports fans around the globe.
When talking about the main group stage seeding at Worlds, after Hanwha Life Esports team and and Cloud9 squad were finally through to the main group stage, all of the Worlds 2021 groups were finally drawn.
The Cloud9 team ended up in group A of the Worlds 2021 main event, with other strong competitors such as the DAMWON Gaming organization from LCK and finishing first at both LCK 2021 Summer and LCK 2021 Summer Playoffs.
Group A also feautred Europe‘s top team Rogue from LEC, who were first at LEC 2021 Summer and third in the LEC 2021 Summer Playoffs, and China’s Worlds 2019 winners representing the LPL league — the FunPlus Phoenix team, finishing first and second places at the LPL 2021 Summer and LPL 2021 Summer Playoffs events, respectively.
On the other hand, the Hanwha Life Esports team were seeded into group C of the Worlds 2021 main event, on par with other giants such as the first team from LPL 2021 Regional Finals — team Royal Never Give Up, the Hong Kong‘s PSG Talon roster, coming first at the PCS 2021 Summer and PCS 2021 Summer Playoffs, and also Europe’s Fnatic team, who were second at the LEC 2021 Summer Playoffs.
Let us also not forget the other two LoL teams who were able to directly qualify to the Worlds main event’s groups, according to Riot Gaming’s tournament format. These were the two top teams who placed first in their respective group A and group B of the play-in phase — teams LNG Esports and DetonatioN FocusMe.
One of the best Chinese LoL teams, the LNG squad went to the main Worlds 2021 event’s group D, which also consisted of South Korea’s Gen.G squad who finished 2 and 3 at the LCK 2021 Summer and LCK 2021 Summer Playoffs, respectively.
The group D lineup also had Spanish organization MAD Lions from EU who were third at LEC 2021 Summer and first at the LEC 2021 Summer Playoffs, and also North America’s Team Liquid squad, who came second at the LCS 2021 Championship.
Finally, one of the most famous Japanese multigaming esports organizations — DetonatioN FocusMe, the team which we were talking a lot about in one of our previously linked articles covering Worlds 2021 play-ins, ended up in group B of the main Worlds 2021 group event.
The DFM squad was accompanied by Faker’s T1, also LPL 2021 Summer second place and LPL 2021 Summer Playoffs winners EDward Gaming, and the US’ LCS 2021 Summer second best squad and the LCS 2021 Championship winners — 100 Thieves team.