Life on the Fields of Justice

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IMMABUR!

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I really hate picking LeBlanc before the enemy team picks their mid.  There are so many champs that can go mid, and I’m always curious which will be a strong counter to LeBlanc.  This game was no different.  When the enemy team picked Blitzcrank, Cho’Gath, Xin Zhao, and Volibear, I was scratching my head pretty hard.  I was hoping Cho’Gath mid, because I had recently matched up against one, and did really well to avoid his skill-shots and beat through his passive by simply zoning him from creeps.  No such luck.

Volibear mid.  Who plays Volibear mid??  I swear this is the result of Volibear showing up in the Euro LCS.  Blast you, Gambit Gaming!  When Volibear killed me really early in lane all I could hear echoing through my head was “IMMABUR!”  Ya, I got baited by his silly passive.  After that I knew that I could win lane just by using ult to make his passive start healing him, then backing off and going again when I got my ult back.  Also, I knew I would be too slippery for a clumsy old bear.  The lane turned into a breeze.  I had my Soul Stealer, I just spent the rest of the game looking for kills to put all the other lanes behind.

Choppes man-handled top, Iggie dominated as AD carry, Czarni still hasn’t learned how to die in ranked games, and nubehound died just to make me feel better.  Even though we were up like 20-2 at one point we were unable to take objectives with how hard the enemy team could initiate.  After their team made a big stop and forced us away from an inhibitor Xin Zhao actually had the gall to say “we can win” to which I replied “I believe” referencing the document on HotshotGG’s desktop before the Season Two World Championships.  I made sure to crush his dreams.  Here’s a very brief run-down of what happened:

hunting Xin

 

I see Xin Zhao walking from mid towards bottom lane.  You can see our whole team gathering in their bottom jungle just after we stole their red.  This is late in the game, just about a minute or two before we destroyed their Nexus.  I see that he’s going to walk to defend the bottom tower.  We already have mid and top inhib down, and they just had five players mid clearing out the creeps.  Going into this blind was a bit risky, but I was hoping that I found Xin and no one else.

found Xin

 

After I blink over the wall I see that I have found myself a lonesome Xin Zhao.  I think if he would have been expecting this he could have ulted me back over the wall, which would have been really suck for me, but instead I do the best combo a LeBlanc can do while blind.  Led in with W to get over the wall, pegged him with my DFG, and my QR finished him off.

vengeance

 

He had just been responsible for the shut down on me before that, so it felt really good to get a clean kill like that, with my chain fastened securely to one of his team mates to keep them from chasing me too far.  I got two people on my team a level without them even getting an assist.  That’s the real team player right there!  *shakes head*

That freaking bear finished with Youmuu’s, Shurelya’s, and Homeguard Boots of Mobility just to make life awkward.  When he wanted to chase you, he would catch you unless you went over a wall.  Did I mention Ghost instead of Flash?  It was ballsy, but didn’t quite work out the way he would have wanted.

team ranked 14-11 LeBlanc

SM Ranked

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We played some team ranked games where I got to experience one of my worst LeBlanc games ever.  I fell behind in gold, creep score, and kills.  I became such a non-factor that I was more of a support.

The idea behind this game was to have me be the kill potential in a poke comp.  We still had good poke with Morgana, Jayce, Elise, and Sivir, and then I was just a little extra zing to help finish people off.  About eight times this game though I would burst someone down and watch myself not get the kill credit.  I thought it wouldn’t effect me, but I definitely noticed it in my damage output.  Luckily, we had some great damage output from Jayce who was able to execute effectively.

Yup, Gangplank had the summoner name “Sexy”.  It really didn’t seem fair.  Dan made a huge stink about the guy and how his account must have been created in the Dark Ages to get a name like that.  I checked and his lolking number was higher than Dan’s, which means that Dan could have been “Sexy” instead of “SirSpam”.  Sigh.  Imagine us using our IGN’s at work and us all having to call Dan “Sexy”!!  Hahaha!  That would have been great!

team ranked 13-11 LeBlanc

Karma Carried

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I needed a first win of the day and decided to just throw myself into the ranked queue.  It’s slightly depressing that you have to accept matches like five or six times because people don’t accept.  I guess it is better to have them drop at that point than during the game.

Once I finally had a queue with nine other people willing to accept I was put into last pick.  I knew what this meant, and started planning my supports accordingly.  First pick just locked Hecarim without saying a word.  Next two picks were Karma and Rumble, who wanted mid and top respectively.  I had seen a lot of Karma play in higher elos who would play either mid or top, so I had to trust this guy.  Later I saw that he didn’t have any Karma games in ranked.  Whoops!

When it came to the last two picks Caitlyn locked very quickly, but had Cleanse, which gave me hope.  I picked Lulu after juggling a few thoughts on Alistar and Taric.  The enemy team picked Taric last, which really surprised me.  They already had a Nunu and a Shaco, so I was set on them running Nunu support.  Maybe lane Shaco, jungle Taric?  Solo top Taric, Nunu support?  I had no idea.

Solo top Nunu wrecked our Rumble so hard.  Rumble started 0-4-0.  We didn’t care.  We picked up First Blood in bottom lane, and did it right as three huge creep waves got to the enemy turret.  We immediately recalled so we could buy and get back to lane without missing much experience.

When we got back to lane Caitlyn walked into the bushes and just started auto attacking non-stop.  I caught on very quickly what had happened when I saw her miss CS and not move between autos.  Caitlyn had disconnected.  My mind went into panic.  At least she was attacking, which made her seem alive and showed presence and would push the lane so that Varus and Taric didn’t move in closer.  I walked in and stood next to her, fearful that she would get targeted by the enemies.

After an agonizing wait Caitlyn finally started walking down the lane towards our base with the announcement of “A summoner has disconnected.”  I felt like I was in the Hunger Games and the odds were ever in my favor.  Or maybe it wasn’t the odds, maybe it was karma.

Cait was gone for awhile, but I took the time to get some CS.  I knew it wasn’t money wasted because I would need it the longer this game went on.  I actually was surprised how well I last hit at tower.  I probably had two or three waves come into tower range and I managed to get most of them.  I had two points in both Glitter Lance and Help, Pix! so the damage was spread evenly enough that either could last hit for me.  It worked well and I ended up getting 25-30 CS waiting for Caitlyn to come back.

Caitlyn apologized when she reconnected, and came back to lane and we continued to do well.  Shaco pressure was definitely a thing in our lane, and it held us back a little bit, but Shaco could only do so much.

I was pulled top to rescue our failed top lane and ended up getting a kill on Shaco as the rest of the enemy team pushed mid.  I recalled and let them know I was coming.  I saw Cait get snagged by Lux and figured she was a goner.  I honestly looked back at myself on the Nexus platform and started walking to defend the turret.  No kill call out.  Cait had used Cleanse, but wasn’t safe.  I walked towards her as fast as I could.  Varus had jumped into our base and was fighting with Caitlyn.  When she was about to drop I popped my ultimate and Help, Pix! on her just in time to save her life.  Then I simply wrote “hi” and we walked out of the base to chase down the rest of the enemy team.

We were able to siege mid because Karma’s AoE heal was so massive that our whole team would get filled up rather quickly.  The burst she was putting out was amazing.  We stood in their base until the Nexus went down.  Caitlyn and Karma got a lot of credit for kills this game.  Before we moved onto Baron I had enough for Bulwark and three pink wards.  I just never had to go back with Chalice and Karma heals.  It probably would have really helped my team to let me use my Homeguard boots, but oh well.  A win is a win, right?  Ultimately, Karma carried.

solo ranked 21-15 Lulu

Amazonian Scrim

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I want to apologize for piquing your interest and then dropping the topic on these Amazon scrims.  I haven’t had a chance to play League lately, and so a lot of my drive was just absent.

I also apologize for the brief explanation of this first game.  I don’t want to call people out because normally this blog only does that to strangers, but we had a couple key misplays early that cost us too heavily in the rest of the game.  Amazon applied a lot of early pressure with the Hecarim pick, and it did work.  We made sure they weren’t going to get that pick again.  Also, I felt like Thresh was a key factor in their success, so we made sure to take that away from them.

Scrim with Amazon

Going into game two we told ourselves that we would run poke.  In Champion Select we actually baited the Vi pick.  We left it up so that the enemy team could pick it.  I felt like we got to counter pick ever role except for the ADC role.  I picked Kog’Maw with first pick, and then let Amazon pick two champs.  They picked up Miss Fortune and Vi.  We had left Vi up, while banning out Amumu and Hecarim, so we assumed Vi would be their strongest jungle pick.  We immediately countered with Morgana, who they assumed would go mid.  Morgana does exceptionally well in our poke comp because of the disengage powers of her ultimate, snare, and spell shield.  Also, she is the PERFECT counter to Vi because she nullifies Vi’s ultimate, giving her no ability to scale into the late game.  It basically changes Vi’s ultimate so now she Blitz hooks herself into the middle of our team and doesn’t get to CC anyone.

Laning phase opened strong for Morgana and myself because we had such an early Black Shield.  I forgot to mention that it blocks all of Leona’s damage.  It blocks her stuns, her extra passive damage, everything.  It completely shuts down a support Leona in lane.  It got to the point that Leona would go to engage on me, and without any of the CC from her abilities I would walk right through her towards Miss Fortune and MF would be forced to run away, leaving a poor Leona to die for her.

Our mid game had a few hiccups, but was otherwise flawless.  We grouped and started taking towers and the enemy team could do nothing but watch.  To think that we destroyed their Nexus at 24 minutes is really an amazing feat.  Also, feeding your ADC by taking free towers and picking up Dragons is such a bonus.  With the amount of global gold we had it was like everyone on our team was fed.  I can see why most teams will take a four minute tower in a side lane now.  It really made us all so big.

I felt really privileged this game to be the recipient of most of the spell shields and a focus for the Kayle ultimate.  I felt like we were playing a real “protect the Kog” strat when really we just wanted ranged poke.  It also was SUPER helpful that we had five ranged champs and two three melees!

It had been awhile since I had acquired double the gold of the enemy ADC, but it felt wonderful to have it happen in this game.  At the end of the game MF went to trade autos with me while he was standing between her two Nexus turrets.  After two autos from me she Flashed back towards her fountain, but my third auto was already in the air and finished her off.  I was only 12-4 at that point, I had to pick up two more kills on the fountain itself.

Scrim with Amazon game 2

This last game was for all the marbles.  I was a bit nervous as they had bested us in the first game.  We got pretty far behind in this third match up which really sucked as a Tristana player because Akali with a Kayle Intervention is enough to kill me.  Luckily, while Akali was chasing me in the back of the team fight, Riven and Ryze were doing work on the rest of the enemy team.

Ryze got real big this game.  Close to the end of the game Iggie said “I just need a bit more gold for my Arch Angel’s staff” and I interjected and told him that Ryze doesn’t get that anymore, he only needs Manamune to upgrade to Muramana.  Iggie didn’t fight it or question it, he just said, “Ok.”  With that Muramana his damage was literally almost doubled.  He started flipping out over how strong he had become after that one item.  It was a game changer.  He picked up big team fight triple kills, which really helped us push this game over to our favor.

We were down close to 5k gold, but brought it back to tie the kills at 26 to 26.  From there we kept our late-game pressure as high as possible.  Our whole team had immense late-game potential, with Ryze scaling as long as mana items exist, Tristana just gets longer range, one Blitz hook ends the game, Riven buying second lives, and Hecarim tipping the “unkillable” scale, we were a mean looking team to have to deal with.

Scrim with Amazon game 3

AHGL: Twitch

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I have good news and I have bad news.  The bad news is we lost our first game against Twitch in our best-of-three series.  The good news is my client crashed crazy hard which prevented me from saving a screenshot.  Sadly, it also crashed my LolReplay, so I have the first game’s replay file, and screenshots of the second and third game.  Spoiler, this best-of-three series went to three games.

After miserably losing the first game, we subbed some players out to give Twitch a run for their money.  They were a bit skeptical at first, but after some roster checks they saw that our guys were members of our team and the games continued.

We ultimately just wanted to see if we could get Lux and Pantheon in the bottom lane.  We knew that if we got that combination we would be set.  In the first game Miss Fortune had dominated us with some intense damage and wonderful play.  We were not going to let her have that opportunity to outplay our bottom lane again.

I got to hang out with djWHEAT in mid lane this game.  I really didn’t know it when it happened.  We had figured that because he plays Ori so much it would be a smart ban.  We left it up for him this game, and he did quite well with it.  I would venture to say that laning phase was a bit rough for him.  I started Flask, so I had slightly higher mana regen in the earlier levels, so I abused that to harass him down.  Once I saw him drop to 100 HP and stick around a quick Flash Ignite auto attack combo finished him off for First Blood.  I didn’t want to cause death by Space AIDs.  No, I’d save that for next time.

We jumped out to a comfortable lead and realized it around the 13-4 mark.  They were seeing our team’s full armada right now.  We were synced up and playing well together, however the game was not yet over.

We realized too late that our lack of an AD carry was a very poor pushing option against their area-of-effect comp.  We would need to pull something trick out of our sleeves.

Our opportunity arose when SirSpam and I were pushing top lane.  The enemy team made a five-man siege down mid lane, expecting to take a turret or win a fight.  They vastly underestimated Malzahar’s ability to push.  I spawn minions!  My spells are all area-of-effect (technically) except for my ult.  My minions not only tank turret, they also help to push waves and turrets.  The enemy team fights mid.  Choppes picks up a kill in a 3v5.  The enemy team tries to retreat and my team chases them out to stop them from getting back.  Our push took the second tier turret, inhibitor turret, inhibitor, and both Nexus turrets uncontested.  While I was trying to kill the Nexus they finally got back to defend their base.  By this point the game was mostly over.

Our next objective was bottom lane.  We picked up Dragon, and while doing so we found our old friend, djWHEAT.  First we could only see the Orianna ball poking its head around the corner.  Shortly after that we saw him walk around to get his blue buff.  A Malphite Unstoppable Force stopped him where he stood.  That was followed up with a Pantheon Aegis of Zeonia, a Lux Light Binding, and a dead Orianna.  Now was our chance to push!

We are already pushing up bottom lane.  Pantheon goes for a kill on a person right on the turret.  I’m still sprinting to get to the action, so I cut through the jungle to the outer wall of the team’s base.  I’m pinging for Choppes because he’s now between three enemy players.  I call out and say “If you can get to this point I’ll save you!”  He doesn’t respond.  He doesn’t react.  He doesn’t even walk towards me.  He turns to the next enemy player and chunks them down.  Double kill.  Ok, Choppes, it’s ok, I’m almost there buddy, hold on!  He still hasn’t turned.  Jarvan is the only one left.  Choppes fears no man, especially a Jarman.  TRIPLE KILL!  I just stop walking.  It was one of the sexiest things we had ever seen.  Aced.  Mantheon strikes again.  Welp, 13-1, he just earned himself a ban.

AHGL vs Twitch Game Two

 

We tried to prep for a third game, but without knowing what bans were going to come out we just hoped we could replicate our bot lane from the game before, but we were almost certain that Pantheon would be banned out.  After Pantheon was banned we picked up Kha’Zix to fill his shoes.  We knew the Mantheon would live on in our hearts, but Kha’Zix would have to win bot lane.

They picked Kayle, and we concluded that Morgana is one of the stronger counters to Kayle, so I was taking Morgana mid.  In the loading screen we were all scratching our heads.  They had already switched up lanes on us once, but now we were lost.  Picture this:

Kayle: Barrier Flash

Xin: Barrier Flash

Anivia: Heal Flash

Jayce: Ignite Flash

Vi: Smite Flash

We were pretty sure that the super annoying bird and her heal were coming back mid, and that Vi was going into the jungle.  Other than that, we were completely lost.  We eventually decided it was probably a kill lane in bot.  The combined slow of Kayle and Xin would be enough to make anyone miserable.  Their burst damage and sustain would be a huge bully, and if you thought you were about to win a fight, they would Barrier and beat you.  Panic ensued.  We didn’t know how to play against this because we had never seen it before.

They sent their Kayle and Xin Zhao kill lane to bot with that double Barrier comp.  I would say that maybe they had never seen Choppes and Iggie before, but they had just dealt with them in the game before.  Resilient players wanted a second chance at playing against Choppes and Iggie in the bot lane after they took away the Pantheon pick.  I should upload more replays so that people could watch Choppes and Iggie do their magic dance.

I only played Morgana because we thought it would be a counter to Kayle.  It actually did decently well against they cryophoenix as well.  Eventually, Anivia was pushing me to my turret, but she loved to harass me after she cleared the wave, and we baited it a couple times to allow my jungler to sneak in behind her.  This really allowed me to roll in mid lane and roam.

My first trip to bottom lane resulted in me ulting and us picking up two kills, but then I didn’t leave.  I just hung out and laned while I waited for Choppes and Iggie to return.  As soon as they did I had my ult back up and figured why not kill this bot lane again?  We had enough CC and burst that the enemy team didn’t stand a chance.  Vi came to counter gank and something amazing happened.  She tried to use her ultimate on me, but I quickly self-cast Black Shield and Vi zoomed over to where I was standing, popped herself up in the air, and then slammed herself into the ground.  I took damage, but I was free to leave.  I had forgotten how broken Black Shield really is.  I had no idea it would counter Vi that hard.  The only thing that breaks Black Shield is magic damage and it expiring, so all of Vi’s CC was blocked because she couldn’t get the shield down.

The best was after I left bot lane I was pretty beat up.  I was probably down to 400-600 HP and just walking from blue side’s bottom jungle up to mid.  Vi saw me just waltzing through and saw how low I was.  I knew the bird couldn’t be far.  Vi tries to gap close and just presses R on me.  As she gets closer I pop my Black Shield.  I block all of the CC.  I snag her in a snare as she tries to do her charged dash.  I walk away almost unscathed.  Again, I’m abusing poor Styles.  The worth of his champion in this game was just fractured.  It’s nothing that he did wrong, we really just got lucky!

The final push didn’t happen in a lane.  We caught Twitch in their jungle near Wraiths and a fight started.  Before anyone could react, Czarni went charging in like a hero.  The enemy team started to scatter, but it was too late.  We egged Anivia, and then just walked away from her.  People started freaking out in our Skype call saying “hey guys, we gotta kill this bird!”  We turn our attention to Eggnivia and finish her off.  We switch from her to the next enemy and chase and chase and chase.  Eventually we pick up the last kill on Vi to hear the announcer call out the Ace.  At this point I started laughing out loud.  I looked around me and saw all four of my team mates standing with me next to the enemy team’s inhibitor in mid lane.  We had dove past two turrets in mid lane and were all standing in the enemy team’s base.  The clock said 24 minutes, and the surrender vote was passed immediately.

It was such a good feeling to dive as a team and follow each other up as we pushed into the enemy team’s base.  At times our team will split when trying to work together which usually results in a free death or an objective lost.  It was great team work.  After the game we were complimented when shiftkeyisbroke suggested that our team be in the A League.  He had played in the A League the AHGL season before and felt that based on the way we played we could hold our own in the A League.  This was such a huge compliment because our team isn’t all gold and platinum players, we just have games where we are able to work well together, communicate, strategize, and do well.  Keep up that good team work, SecurityMetrics!

AHGL vs Twitch Game Three