It was an awkward evening for european League of Legends fans, with the stakes of a Winner's Finals seeming to strangle every player's ability to play LoL to their best ability. In the end, when only the win was on the line and every aspect of League of Legends but pure pushing gone, it was Fnatic who came on top in a dramatic fashion ; a Cinderella Nexus destruction i.e. a victory without any teamfight.

A Match to forget for the two teams

There was a lot to learn and a lot to show for this match, however, both MDK and Fnatic have decided to hide their cards and play a match well below the performance they showed in the first round, which qualified them for this victory. What can strike as a surprise however is that no player particularly played underwhelmingly this evening, it was a true collective failure. The 5 legs were indeed a game of whoever commited the less mistakes, with frequent pace changes, numerous catches and several gold leads blown away.

Game 1 set the tone for the whole BO5, after 20 minutes of relative peace, where the two teams laneswapped to funnel one of their carries : Óscar "Oscarinin" Muñoz Jiménez's Rumble on one side, David "Supa" Martínez García's MF on the other, FNC two back-to-back blunders gave away the game for free to MDK. The mistakes mostly rely on Yoon "Jun" Se-jun's atrocious positionning, but they are also deeply rooted in a passive and aimless map play from FNC.

Game 3 was the prime of example of a game where no one wanted to win, with almost every player finding its inting moment, Oscarinin and Supa in the early game, Álvaro "Alvaro" Fernández del Amo later on and then Bartłomiej "Fresskowy" Przewoźnik despite him demolishing the game so far. Fnatic were unable in this game to set up their teamfights as Oscarinin was perpetually stuck on mini Gnar and MDK's splitpush prevented FNC from moving efficiently on the map, but when MDK gave away freekills, FNC simply ran midlane and finished the game.

Game 4 and 5 were however complete fiestas, after 26 minutes of solid map play and a masterclass of zoning in a key teamfight around drake, MDK ceased to respect the tempo and immediately lost their advantage. FNC, using this opportunity to gain a lead for themselves, tried to bruteforce a finish, giving MDK the comeback over FNC's comeback, evening the series. Game 5 is a repeat of game 4 in terms of macro mistakes with FNC only winning through Oscarinin's flank TPs on Kennen, and then MDK forgetting that the nexus is the main objective.

What happened ?

Game 1 and 2 were far from being outstandingly solid, they were short and saw one team executing its gameplan with little resistance. The two junglers were able to give us one game each where they would carry their team to victory, both on the same champion : Maokai. Vi, who was expected to be the main jungle priority (she was indeed picked in the first two games) was dropped after losing twice. The engage against peelback jungle matchup was heavily favouring the peelback team, a proof that aggression was very difficult during this BO5.

The first two games were also weirdly paced, with very passive early games and close to no decisive teamfights, it was as if the two teams entered the third game with no warm up.

And, as we could have expected, Alex "Myrwn" Pastor Villarejo has been the one to shake things up after two boring games, dropping his K'sante in favour of a Nidalee, he solokilled Oscarinin's Gnar in game 3 at the second wave to launch a much more chaotic game. Alongisde Marek "Humanoid" Bràzda's small but costly mistakes on the midlane matchup, this allowed MDK to enable their sololaners to move around the map, a major contrast to the stasis of the first two games. FNC's response to fight fire with fire didn't help to calm the game, and pushed 10 non warmed-up players into instant chaos.

Huge macro mistakes

While we could see the 3rd game as a 1st game by soul, which would mean that the next ones would be more organized, things didn't happen this way. Bad map setup and terrific macro decisions actually enhanced the chaos. In fact, Game 4 started as game 1, with early game boredom but without the small mistakes that would give a team an easy victory.

After the first fight, there isn't that much to analyse or describe, neither Fnatic nor MDK knew how to play the map or the tempo, recalls were disynchronized, waves were pushed in an anomy, and while this firstly favoured MDK's superior sidelaning (with Leblanc and Nidalee), once Supa and Alvaro made a huge misstep into FNC's jungle, it was over for the spanish crew. Fnatic should have thus won the game with little resistance as MDK's comp had an unplayable 5v5 problem, but Razork's teammates seemed to forget that the rift had three lanes.

We then went into game 5 not exactly knowing what we just saw, and as MDK's initial snowball progressed through clever skirmishing and Supa-Alvaro's map movements, many expected MDK to close out the BO5 with, for once, a solid game.

But MDK disrespected Kennen's potential TP, placing three players far ahead in midlane while Tristana's top wave was still crossing the river (plus Elyoya was clearing vision), giving FNC a golden opportunity to start a fight with a flank despite having no control on the map. However, contrary to the fourth game, the fear of making the crucial mistake froze the 10 players into stasis mode, leaving little blood to be spilled on the ground, something that, to its extent, led to a fight-less nexus destruction.