It has been a long and steamy Summer season around the competitive League of Legends scene. The East did not take the MSI 2019 loss well and doubled the efforts to prove they are the best at the upcoming League of Legends World Championship 2019. The West on the other hand celebrated for 3 months straight confidently that “the west is best” and praising G2 and the western meta to the extreme. The divide went so far that eastern teams announced they would be doing their prep for LoL Worlds 2019 in a vacuum and not scrim their western counterparts before the championship. Everyone is clutching their tactics close to their chest in what is going to be a defining World Championship for the future of competitive League of Legends.
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Before we get to all that, the remaining five competitive regions will decide their regional winners and Worlds participants this weekend. The LEC (Europe), VCS (Vietnam), LCL (Russia), LJL(Japan) and LST (South East Asia) are all set to decide their worlds participants this upcoming weekend. As well, do not forget to take a look at our LoL World 2019 Preview.
The last three play-ins contestants will be decided this weekend in the LCL, LJL and LST.
15.09.2019 – 12:00 AXE vs MEGA
15.09.2019 – 15:00 UoL vs VEGA
16.09.2019 – 06:00 DFM vs V3
Down in the LST, Axis Empire upset the entire bracket by eliminating Summer Season winner WIN Esports and advanced to the finals. That result was exactly what MEGA hoped for going into the finals, especially since the only loss they had in summer was against WIN. Now the path to the championship is clean for MEGA, unless Axis throws down another show and upsets both of the top seeds from the Summer Season.
Japan and the LJL are still dominated by DetonatioN FocusMe for almost two years now. The only real contender for the throne was Crest Gaming Act who fell out of contention in the semifinals against V3. In a similar situation like the LST, the one team that could upset the champions got eliminated before the final, and the road to Worlds is almost certainly guaranteed for DFM once again.
The CIS region has the most refreshing match of the three play-ins regions this weekend. The Unicorns of Love are meeting Vega Squadron for the LCL title and a slot at Worlds. Once again the Pink Unicorns have a chance to go to Worlds after being held back in 2015/16/17 in the European Regionals. Granted this is not the EU Unicorns but they do have Fabian “Sheepy” Mallant on board so #closenough.
14.09.2019 – 11:00 GAM vs Flash
15.09.2019 – 11:00 TBA vs Lowkey
We will kick this breakdown off with Vietnam and Team Flash versus GAM Esports. The first seed match in the VCS decides who gets to skip play-ins at Worlds 2019 and secures one of the available two spots. The loser of the match will have to play against Lowkey Esports to decide who makes it in the Worlds play-in stage. We will not see Dashing Buffalo this time around as they got double stomped by both Flash and Lowkey in the playoffs. Instead the likely Vietnamese champion will be a thrill from the past in the form of GAM Esports (fm. Gigabyte Marines), who absolutely dominate the league this summer. When it comes to the play-ins it’s a toss-up honestly between Flash and Lowkey.
My prediction is that the VCS is represented by GAM and Lowkey.
Learn everything you need to know about LoL Betting.
Finally, as you can read from the esports news, we get to the best region in the world. The final LEC participant will earn the spot in LoL Worlds 2019 next to Fnatic and G2. Last week, at the LEC Finals, a “silver scrapes” victory brought G2 the European title and the 1st European seed into Worlds. Fnatic did their absolute best to dethrone the champions but came short at the finish line. Now they are at the King of the Hill in Regionals with a guaranteed spot at Worlds but are they in Groups or Play-ins is yet to be determined.
At the bottom of the hill is Origen who had a miserable Summer Split after losing every relevant match during the season and missed Playoffs entirely. Luckily they had just enough points (70) to make it into Regionals and run the gauntlet bottom to top for a spot at the championship. In between are Splyce and Schalke04 who fell short in playoffs but netted just enough points to make it into Regionals and prove why they are the final LEC team going to Worlds.
First up Origen and Splyce will battle it out tonight in the first series of the qualifier. We haven’t seen much of Origen in the past month. The team has gone incognito entirely after the end of Summer and have quietly prepared for the event. If we are to take the way RFRSH works with their teams, they might show up big similarly to how their sister organization Astralis did in CS:GO after slumping. If this is the case, then OG all the way. But, if nothing has changed in the last 30 days and we are served the same Origen from Summer, then Splyce is definitely the better team in the matchup.
One lucky occurrence for OG is that Splyce’s defenses were shattered by Rogue in Playoffs, as the team cannot handle early game pressure well. If OG follows the same pattern Rogue did and shoot down Splyce early before the game reaches late. OG can come out the victor easily.
After tonight’s bout settles. Schalke04 awaits the winner at step two of the gauntlet. Unlike Splyce, SO4 wrestled control over Rogue’s early game and took the series with relative ease. They ended up running into a very motivated Fnatic in the semifinals and got absolutely shattered as a result. Now they hope to repeat their playoffs success and get a rematch versus Fnatic to prove they are not to be pushed around that easily.
Finally, on Sunday we will have the Regionals Final between Fnatic and whichever team makes it out alive on the way to the top. We have only seen Origen out of the three teams have success over FNC in 2019 as the other two have underperformed badly versus them. If OG makes it to the top they might contest FNC for the 2nd European into Groups. If Schalke or Splyce make it to the finals it should be a guaranteed FNC victory.
The final days before Worlds for Europe kick off tonight at 18:00 CET at twitch.tv/riotgames or right here below:
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