SecurityMetrics – League of Stories

Birthday LAN

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My birthday was this month, so we decided to have a birthday LAN to celebrate! Many fun games were played, but too many were played to really document on here. I just figured I’d remember the day and have the happy memory saved.

One highlight I wanted to point out was playing another LeBlanc Howling Abyss ARAM game and moving to 18-3 in the ARAM queue. I was pretty excited about that. It’s rough getting stuck with randoms, but I’ve made the most of it.

Later that evening I played as Xerath and almost pulled off another win, but the other team figured out they could put Black Shield on Katarina while she ulted. Game over!

Thanks to everyone for coming out, and a special thanks to nubehound for hosting. Attendees were weasal, sambev, Czarni, Iggie, Choppes, nubehound, EnderBean, and myself, AdyEndrus.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: Microsoft

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This was a big game that we were all looking forward to. We were both doing well in our Division, which made us look like top dogs. We knew that Microsoft would be some of the fiercest competition we would see because we had played Zenimax in the pre-season and done well against them. Here are the standings going into our Microsoft game:

As you can see we were sitting at the top of the Division, but Microsoft and Zenimax are nipping at our heels. If we’re not careful Zenimax or Microsoft could knock us down from our current first-place birth.

Our first game got twisted on us because we wanted to run a different comp with me in the bottom lane, but when Microsoft banned out three champions that Choppes plays we knew that I should take LeBlanc mid. I was convinced I would be matched up with their mid player, who played Nidalee. Nidalee even picked Cleanse which was characteristic of a person who was scared they would die to LeBlanc. However, Microsoft sent Cho’Gath mid instead, which the announcers said was a “good counter” to LeBlanc.

In Champion Select we ran into a slight hiccup because with Pantheon out our bot lane composition was up in the air. However, Jake offered to play Kha’Zix which could make bot lane work. We figured why not! We could give something new a try!

After I started 3-0 I decided to get a Soul Stealer and start feeding. It was extremely aggravating to burst Miss Fortune down to 20 HP, cast Ignite, only to look down and see that Ignite didn’t cast. Welp, that sucks!

Czarni’s jungle was fantastic this game. It seemed like he was always there when we needed someone to peel or to tank, but he never died. That’s the idea jungle, one who out-farms the enemy team’s AD carry, never dies, but still has a massive impact on the game. The announcers were really pleased with the activity they saw from Vi.

SirSpam was put in a precarious situation when the lands swapped because he was holding top just fine, but when the lanes swapped he was forced to play the lane as two versus one. I tried to sneak up to help, but for whatever reason Miss Fortune was just barely surviving my burst. Sad day!

We went into a second game, but things got real interesting. They banned out Jarvan IV, LeBlanc, and Riven I think, which left up all of the global ultimates that we wanted to use. We decided to try our global ultimates team against Microsoft. Microsoft had a fresh line up, so it was like playing against a whole new team!

I almost died first blood to a Shaco gank, but using a potion saved my life. The tick on the Ignite probably would have killed me if I had used my Flask, but I used the spare potion I had purchased instead and just barely squeezed out of that one alive. Shen ganked shortly after that and helped me pick up First Blood against Katarina in mid. She did not forget that.

Before the 10 minute mark I was actually diving inside of the enemy team’s base. Here’s a quick picture just to make you laugh!

Yup, 9:57, going for it. After I died I let the other team know that it was worth it. It really shows our attitude in this game. We had complete map control once everyone hit level six. It was pretty great. We could turn team fights around so easily. I can remember being chased only to have Shen ult to me and Pantheon’s circle show up behind the enemy. Oh yeah! Stuff is about to get real!

We ended up taking the game in commanding fashion. Microsoft never backed down and never surrendered, which was a good thing because with a Singed and a Katarina you never know if the game is over until it is over.