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The London Spitfire have made a huge state in Game 1 of their semifinal series with the Los Angeles Valiant, taking advantage of questionable compositions from their opponents to claim a 3-1 victory.
After claiming the Stage 4 title, Los Angeles Valiant entered the match as warm favourites despite London’s fearsome showing the quarterfinal against the Gladiators. On the first map, Junkertown, it was the Spitfire who came out with the stronger showing.
They were caught up initially on the first choke point, but a crucial self-destruct from Fury (Jun-ho Kim) took out Fate’s (Pan-seung Koo) Orisa and her supercharger, turning the tide and allowing London to get through the door.
It was back and forth from there, but the Spitfire were able to get the payload the full way without being challenged dramatically. In reply, Valiant were able to capture the first point in almost identical time and fashion, and looked to be on the way up after picking off NUS’ (Jong-seok Kim) Mercy late.
But London were up to the task. After defending stoutly early, they outfoxed the Valiant very cleverly later on, retreating all the way back to Point B after the attackers popped both a self-destruct and supercharger at the same time.
With Valiant happy to pursue the seemingly retreating Spitfire, that allowed birdring (Ji-hyuk Kim) to sneak in behind as Widowmaker, get some easy picks and help secure a 3-1 win.
Moving on to Lijiang Tower, the first map was notable for both teams getting punished for odd compositional choices. Agilities’ (Brady Girardi) decision to stick with Pharah against a London team with point control and a Widowmaker was questionable, but his team managed eventually to flip it.
With Valiant in control – and Agilities ruling the skies with Pharah – London made the bizarre decision to switch to Brigitte, which simply didn’t work as LA held on for the first round.
London, however, were able to even it in the second after recovering from an 80-0 deficit to hold off the home team on Garden.
Heading to Control Center, birdring’s McCree constantly picked Agilities’ Pharah out of the sky as Spitfire built a huge early lead. A crucial late switch to Brigitte – this time a smart one – nullified Agilities’ Genji ultimate to see London hold off a late charge and claim the second map 2-1.
But Valiant came out of the halftime break breathing fire. London got forced out of position far too easily by stoic Los Angeles defenders, with some of the flankers ending up all the way at Point B thanks to immense defensive pressure.
Profit (Joon-yeong Park) looked to have turned the tide with a clever dragonstrike from behind the defenders, but a clutch self-destruct from Space (Indy Halpern) turned the tide back in their favour as the defenders wrapped up a rare full hold on King’s Row.
The Spitfire battled in defence, but they’d set the bar far too low and the home side were awakened in a big way as the green and gold wrapped up a simple 1-0 win on Map 3.
That took us to Hanamaura. Valiant had first choke point covered quite smartly, but they allowed Bdosin (Choi-tae Seung) to simply stroll to Point A as Roadhog and claim a full tick before going back to contest him.
They eventually took care of him, but it put their defences in all sorts of disarray and allowed Spitfire to claim Point A and just under five minutes to claim the second one.
But the ultimate mismanagement from King’s Row returned, allowing Valiant to hold out until final minute, where they simply toyed with Fury’s mech-less D.Va and closed out a strong defense.
KariV (Young-seo Park) gave London a taste of their own medicine in reply, sneaking onto the point as Tracer and – while it wasn’t as clean – claiming the first tick without much trouble.
The reversals kept coming through, with some awesome Ana play by NUS helping Spitfire’s tanks see off a triple-support Valiant comp and stop the attackers from making any progress – resulting in a draw.
Whether that late hold proved to be a pendulum swing or not, it was London who came out firing on the fifth map Dorado, taking the first point with startling ease. While the defenders held well on the second point, it was a very cruisy full capture for the Spitfire.
Valiant raised eyebrows with a very strange composition for Dorado – Fate on Reinhardt and Space on Zarya – and that line-up struggled to make an impact.
They laboured very hard to score two points in reply, but they couldn’t get the job done, surrendering a 3-2 map loss and a 3-1 Game 1 loss.