With week 1 finishing up, we need a little bit extra to hold ours attention till groups start up again on Thursday, and we got a great article for that. Over at goldper10.com, Lepidus has outlined the storylines to look out for in week 2, and there is a whole lot to keep in mind. Many teams have come in with high expectations, but they haven’t been met, especially LPL’s #1 seed LGD:
The Wounded Chinese Tiger
Without a doubt, the biggest surprise of Worlds thus far has been the disastrous performance by the three LPL representatives. In Group B, Invictus Gaming dropped two games to foreign teams before finally taking an unconvincing victory over Taiwan’s ahq e-Sports. In Group C, Mid-Season Invitational champions Edward Gaming scored two wins before being stopped in their tracks by a crushing rout from Korea’s SK Telecom, making an eventual title win seem less and less likely.
But most catastrophically, LPL’s #1 seed LGD Gaming found themselves unable to win even a single game in what has rapidly become their own Group of Death. Formerly considered a serious contender to win the championship, LGD have now joined Wildcard Bangkok Titans as the only two teams without a single victory. Despite impressive performances from Samsung Veteran Gu “Imp” Seung-bin, the team seemed at a loss for strategy. Undoubtedly the disappearance of their former coach Chris has spelled disaster for the team.
The Chinese teams have less than a week to lick their wounds and reconsider their playstyle. But both Invictus and LGD face uphill battles, with the latter needing something close to a miracle to escape group stages and proceed to quarter finals. The region many analysts had considered the strongest now boasts the lowest winrate of any non-Wildcards at Worlds, tied with Taiwan at 33%.
With former World Champ imp and the #1 seed, they have plenty of advantages over their group, and they can still go 3-3 and force a tiebreaker for 2nd. That will be no easy task and requires help from other teams. Can they do it though? Has China been exposed? Maybe a break will do them some good. There ate 3 other storylines to keep an eye on and you can read up on these in the full article here.
