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2017 Mid-Season Invitational: Play-In Previews

The World Championships have reached the business end.
Roar Guru
27th April, 2017
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What an awesome way to round out the NA playoffs over the weekend; both series went to five games, and the best talent in the region played for several hours.

Team SoloMid have now won the regional title five times in the nine splits played, and despite their two game losses they looked quite strong as a team.

I’m not going to go into the details of last weekend’s matches, but I totally recommend catching them if you have the time to. They were satisfying for everyone, no matter which team you were rooting for! For now, here is the circuit point standing after Spring:

90pts: Team SoloMid
70pts: Cloud9
50pts: Phoenix1
30pts: FlyQuest
10pts: CounterLogic Gaming
10pts: Team Dignitas
0pts: Echo Fox
0pts: Immortals
0pts: Team Envy
0pts: Team Liquid

At the end of next split, these points will help determine which teams will go to worlds. Three teams will go in total: the winner of the summer split will go as first seed, the team with the most circuit points (or next most, if the Summer winner had the most) will go as second seed, and third seed will be decided through the regional qualifier tournament which is also based on points.

Though the split is over, we are now coming into the mid-season, which is one of the most exciting parts of the League of Legends calendar. International tournaments are few and far between; the Mid-Season Invitational is our only chance before worlds to see where the teams stack up against each other.

This year, the tournament takes place over a whole month, and includes representatives from all major and minor regions. The minor regions will go through a Play-In stage this week, replacing the International Wild Card Invitational; the top two will play against either Team SoloMid or the Flash Wolves, and three of those four teams will move into the group stage to play against some of the best teams in the world.

Right now? Let’s look at the eight teams in this weekend’s round robin tournament.

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Group 1

RED Canids
Region: Brazil
First Game: 4am AEST Saturday

The RED Canids are the home team for MSI, and will undoubtedly have a huge amount of support in the arena. Several players have had experience at international tournaments, and the team is bringing a fully functional 6-player roster to MSI. Head coach Brokenshard has been around the League of Legends pro circuit since 2012, and has only joined the organisation in the last couple of weeks; ex-head coach Gevous will stay with them through the tournament.

Although RED Canids were recorded as second out of eight teams in the CBLoL Split 1, they actually had an even game record with first placed INTZ, and held the head-to-head matchup. They went on to win the playoff finals against Keyd Stars 3-0.

Brazil is one of the stronger minor regions in League of Legends, and as the region’s top team, RED Canids look accordingly clean. Their combined experience and high-energy playstyle should be especially fun to watch against other teams in their group.

Dire Wolves
Region: Oceania
First Game: 4am Saturday

After an undefeated back half of the split, the Dire Wolves were able to take down Legacy eSports 3-1 in the finals to qualify for MSI. Though the team has always had reasonable local results, neither the team nor any individual players have any international experience.

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Dire Wolves took over this split through some significantly improved macro play, and some hard carrying from Shernfire. His season stats belie his bloody, hard-carry style, and focus on playing against him could be make or break for the Wolves.

They have some very scary opponents in this group, who in all fairness are much more likely to get out of the group stage. I will be cheering for Dire Wolves, of course, but most likely they will be playing spoiler to one of their opponents.

SuperMassive eSports
Region: Turkey
First Game: 5am Saturday

SuperMassive are no stranger to these tournaments, having won the IWCI tournament last year to attend the 2016 MSI. The team has some of the most recognisable names in Turkey including Dumbledoge, FabFabulous and Naru, and the rest of the teams in this group will know these names and know that they need to be prepared for this team.

SuperMassive dominated the TCL, coming first in both the regular split and in playoffs. In the regular season, they went 10-2-2; second place by comparison only managed 6-4-4. In both their playoff series, Supermassive won 3-1, which shows some mistakes, but overall an ability to recover from those mistakes, and make changes to the gameplay when needed.

If anyone here is going to beat RED Canids, it’s SuperMassive eSports. They won the IWCI this time last year, and will be wanting to bring a better showing than their last place result at the 2016 MSI tournament.

Rampage
Region: Japan
First Game: 5am Saturday

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We saw Rampage last year in the International Wild Card Qualifier tournament before worlds, however they have only retained two members of their old roster. In the single round robin, the team finished with a 3-4 record, which was respectable, but not enough to take them through to the bracket stage.

In the two-group layout of this year though, Rampage have a somewhat less difficult road ahead. Not only do they have three opponents to prepare for instead of seven, but the double round robin format means that there is an opportunity to re-assess strategies after day one. Of course, Rampage’s opponents will also have that ability, but for a team that came so close to progressing last year, they will certainly be wanting to take advantage of the new structure.

This is not an easy group for Rampage, and with SuperMassive and RED Canids to face, Rampage my well be in a similar position to Dire Wolves. They will need to work hard if they want to achieve more than fighting the Wolves for third place.

Group Summary: On paper, this group has two clear top teams. All these regions have had good results at various IWCI/Q events in the past, but of the two groups this year, group one is the more predictable. Likely result:

Red Canids
SuperMassive eSports
Rampage
Dire Wolves (sorry guys!)

Group 2

Virtus.Pro
Region: Commonwealth of Independent States
First Game: 4am Sunday

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Virtus.Pro is an established eSports organisation, who consistently appear in the upper ranks of the CS:GO scene. Their win in the spring split is this team’s best League of Legends result to date; of all the starting team members, only Blasting has had international experience at IEM Oakland last year.

The LCL finals were a close 3-2 with Vaevictis eSports, as were the semifinals against M19 (formerly Albus NoX Luna). The upset win over M19 has put some serious expectations on this team’s shoulders; as Albus NoX, the team had not only beaten Lyon Gaming, who are also in group two, but went to the Quarterfinals at the 2016 world championships.

This team’s regional games are really fun to watch, with unusual picks, and fast gameplay. This is one of the top two teams in the group: either their regional strength and energetic playstyle will help them overcome their opponents, or their lack of international experience across the organisation will see them fall short of the precedent set last year.

Lyon Gaming
Region: Latin America North
First Game: 4am Sunday

Lyon Gaming is an institution in the LLN, consistently winning the tournament, but they have never quite shown up in international tournaments. They have plenty of experience, and came within a single game of going to worlds at last year’s IWCQ where they were knocked out by Albus NoX Luna.

With only one new player in this time, they will be back wanting revenge. They won the LLN split handily, not dropping a single game in playoffs and only one in the regular split. The problem is, they are this dominant in the region every split, but when it comes to international events this team tends to struggle, with last IWCQ being the exception rather than the rule.

Lyon Gaming have an uphill battle facing them, with both strong opponents to face and internal inertia to overcome. It’s a bit of a shame they got drawn into the same group as Virtus.Pro; I do think they would have an easier time with other teams, but they may yet have revenge on the region that took them out last year.

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Gigabyte Marines
Region: South-East Asia
First Game: 5am Sunday

Another team that has absolutely wrecked their local teams, Gigabyte Marines went 12-0 in the VCSA, and 3-0’d Ascension Gaming in the GPL finals. This is an especially impressive feat given that this is the organisation’s first split.

They’re not quite an unknown; this team has gone through several organisation and sponsorship iterations. They’ve had middling results, performing decently but not amazingly in most VCSA splits, only going to the GPL once before. This year though, they’re like a brand new team; although Archie has been on the team since 2014, all other players have joined since last December, when the team rebranded.

This team plays pretty clean games for the most part. The question is going to be if they can keep it up against the tougher international opponents. I’m excited to see this team play against Virtus.Pro (which will be at 9am Sunday, then again on 8am Tuesday); the GPL winners have a decent history, so we can hope to see some similarly strong gaming from this team.

Isurus Gaming
Region: Latin America South
First Game: 5am Sunday

Isurus Gaming is a fixture in their region, regularly appearing at the top of the local ladder. Like Lyon Gaming, however, they have underperformed at the international events they have attended, and will be looking to fix that this weekend.

Since last year, this has been the first team in the region to take part in a Korean bootcamp, and while the were successful before, they are now more dominant than ever. They went 6-2-2 in the regular season, giving them a bye into their regional finals where they beat Furious Gaming in a 3-0 sweep.

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Isurus’ synergy is unparalleled in their region, and Emp is a world-class midlaner. The question for this team, as with so many of their opponents, is whether they can translate this into wins against international teams.

Group Summary: This group is stacked with teams who have performed well regionally but are unproven internationally. This should make it a more broadly interesting set of games to watch, especially on Tuesday for the second stage of the round robin. Every single one of these standings could change with the right performance, but based on their historical outcomes:

Virtus.Pro
Gigabyte Marines
Lyon Gaming
Isurus Gaming

I’m so interested to see how the new Play-In format works in practice. It’s drawn a reasonable amount of criticism over maintaining best-of-one games, but having a double round robin is a huge step up. What do you think of the format? Which teams do you think will make the most of it, and which are more likely to falter?

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