RGE vs MAD: LEC Spring Playoffs Winners’ Bracket Preview

After going over all the other series in this LEC 2021 Spring Playoffs, we’re going to be looking at the remaining battle between Rogue & MAD Lions. Let’s see how the teams have done so far and what we can expect going into Playoffs.

MAD Lions found their identity after the roster swaps

MAD Lions found themselves with two new members in 2021, following a disappointing Worlds performance. The new jungler Javier ” Elyoya” Prades Batalla and top laner İrfan “Armut” Berk Tükek came to replace Zhiqiang “Shad0w” Zhao and Andrei “Orome” Popa, hoping to fight for the top spot.

After a few weeks of adaptation, the team managed to find their own identity once again. Elyoya would dictate the MAD’s tempo with high-speed clearing junglers, while looking for opportunities on the map, especially around mid and bot.

With the help of the support Norman “Kaiser” Kaiser, they would look for ganking or roaming opportunities in order to gain control of whatever objective they wanted. Thanks to very varied champion pools across the roster, the team always had some card up their sleeve.

If anyone between mid-laner Marek “Humanoid ” Brázda and ADC Matyáš “Carzzy” Orság was enabled, they would play standard front-to-back teamfights to take the game home.

This amount of investment on the bot side of the map, though, puts top lane on a very weak spot, where Armut is basically left alone to fight. The Turkish player, however, demonstrated that he can fill the spot perfectly, with many different top lane champions.

What’s more surprising, though, is the fact that he was able to destroy a lot of the competition alone, with insane carry performances. (like the game on Aatrox vs. Astralis)

Despite all the positives, the team is not flawless, otherwise, they would be first in the Split. Like we mentioned earlier, all the pressure on mid-bot makes MAD Lions gameplan very predictable. Teams that are able to anticipate the moves can definitely punish them.

Furthermore, MAD Lions have the tendency of losing against hard-scaling team comps. Their draft puts them at a disadvantage the longer the game goes. This is crucial because they’re against Rogue, which is probably the best team in the LEC when it comes up to scaling.

Rogue – The number 2 of the LEC

Rogue has probably been one of the more delightful surprises of this split: they were the only ones who could contest G2 for the top spot in the LEC.

After swapping out Finn “Finn” Wiestål for Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu in the top lane, as well as Oskar “Vander” Bogdan for the new rookie Adrian “Trymbi” Trybus in the support role, the team became even stronger compared to last year.

Trymbi performed really well despite a rough start when he had to adapt to his new team. Thanks to the presence of many veterans, he managed to fit in and improve over the course of the split.

The real key player, though, was Odoamne. The Romanian top laner continues to show that he’s one of the best players in the league, despite being in the scene for many years already.

His versatility and insane carry performances allowed Rogue to move away from their standard playstyle, the scaling draft. The team has very strong individual players that can finally execute different comps: some were successful, others not as much.

Nevertheless, Rogue have established themselves as the second-best team in the league, after G2 Esports. The roster improved quite a lot compared to last year, fixing some of the issues they had, whilst maintaining their high level of play. Overall, this year’s Rogue is a better version in every way and we’re hoping they can raise their peak even further, to make the LEC even more entertaining.

With that being said, my prediction for this series is 3-2 for Rogue. Rogue evolved from last year and they beat MAD Lions in both games played during the split. If we’re looking at the players individually, Rogue has the stronger members in basically every single role. However, the objective trade, and the way MAD plays through top lane may cost them several games especially if Armut gets going. I can see MAD Lions getting away with one or two games, which means we could potentially head into a Game 5.

If you are looking into LEC Betting, this match is a good place to start. Placing a wager on the series going longer then 3.5 games games will net you a 2.1x return on your investment over at GG.BET.

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