Gaming
Gaming
Here's how the first week of Worlds 2021 went down
Find out how Cloud9 and T1 fared during their first few games at the 2021 League of Legends World Championship in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The play-ins are over and the group stage has just started, but we’re already seeing a tonne of great new picks and a lot of champion diversity across the battlefields.
Cloud9 showed that Australia’s Peace were no match for them in the play-ins and T1 dominated DetonatioN FocusMe in less than 20 minutes.
Whether you missed any of the early action from the Worlds, or you’re simply curious about the new picks, we’ve got you covered with our recap that focuses on two of the strongest teams at the tournament, T1 and Cloud9.
Play-ins
Traditionally, the play-in stage shows a glimpse of what is still to come. It shows what the teams have been working on behind the scenes and gives us fans the first idea of what kind of meta we can expect during the main event. Of course, the meta is not a static thing – it changes over time as more counter-picks or new champions get discovered. For Cloud9, the play-in stage started strong with a win over DetonatioN FocusMe – the Japanese representative that analysts believed would have a strong showing at this year’s Worlds.
On the second day, Cloud9 beat the PCS representative – albeit in a slightly more sloppy manner. At this point, many thought that Cloud9 would smoothly sail into the first play bye. However, after dropping a game against the Unicorns of Love, they had to play a tiebreaker against the Japanese representatives for first place in their group. DFM looked a lot stronger in their second bout against the LCS third seed and managed to beat Cloud9 in the tiebreaker. This placed the Japanese squad directly into the group stage (a first for the region).
The defeat meant that Cloud9 had to face Peace in a best-of-five series for the final spot in the group stage. While Peace were hyped up to be a strong contender, Cloud9 had none of it. A slow game one and a small gold lead saw Australian fans light up, but Cloud9 turned the game around and put their first game win on the board.
The second game went even quicker as Cloud9 bulldozed over the Australian squad in just 21 minutes. The LCS representatives didn’t slow down and put the pedal to the metal in game three with a 19-minute win and a 16k gold lead. With this overwhelming victory, Cloud9 secured a place in the group stage.
Group stage day one
In the first game of the Worlds group stage, DWG KIA showed off the newest power pick of the tournament – Yuumi. That’s right, the cat is out of the hat and she’s here to stay. Yuumi is extremely powerful if paired up with a duelling jungler. In this meta, supports leave the bot lane as early as they can and roam around the map looking for kills, while their ADC hoovers up all the minions and experience. The great thing about Yuumi is that she empowers the champions she sticks to – making ganks even more powerful than before.
When it was T1’s time to take the stage against DetonatioN FocusMe, they first picked Yuumi again, pairing the cat up with Talon. The game itself was extremely one-sided because of Moon ‘Oner’ Hyeon-joon’s great jungle pathing. Producing one of the highlights of the tournament thus far, Oner made a triple kill by diving into the enemy base while Yuumi kept him healthy. It was a great start for T1 as they demonstrated their aggressive style of play on the Worlds stage.
Cloud9 didn’t have the best start to the group stage as they faced off against Rogue – the LEC third seed. While the American squad started well, they weren’t able to snowball the game. A little bit of over-aggression cost them the early game lead, which helped Rogue to start a snowball of their own.
While Cloud9 defended heroically, Rogue’s combination of Rumble and Qiyana ultimately proved too strong for Cloud9 to withstand. Cloud9 lost their first game and will face FunPlus Phoenix looking for some redemption.
