Monthly Archives: March 2013
AHGL: Zenimax
There was a lot of hype leading into this game. People were all waiting for our AHGL match against Zenimax. We had managed to go undefeated, and they had accomplished the same feat until the previous week when they fell to Twitch. This was going to be the clash of the titans, and we were super excited to have such fierce competition in the league.
The first game started with some interesting bans. They targeted Lux, which made sense because we use her a lot. They banned out LeBlanc which does make perfect sense when you look at my ranked stats. The last ban was targeted at Senor Choppes with a Jayce ban. I could see the logic in all of these bans as we normally play a very poke-based comp and try to wear a team down with the poke from Lux and Jayce, and they didn’t want to experiment with LeBlanc’s trickery.
We decided to run double globals. I still wish we would have picked up Pantheon for that triple threat, but with Riven in top lane we knew that we would win that lane for free. I picked up Twisted Fate and Czarni jungled Shen. This gave us the ability to pressure their team regardless of where they were on the map. However, Unit02 got to pick his comfort pick of Maokai, and GoTWooD got to try to counter pick Twisted Fate with Talon. I’m not sure that Talon is a counter to Twisted Fate. Ultimately, I only have one ability that I can’t cast when silenced, and before Talon pounces on me I can lock a gold card anyway. Plus, my ultimate reveals him when he tries to stealth using his own, and his movement speed boost is completed wasted by the fact that I can teleport to his location after he uses his ultimate. Ultimately, Talon was probably a bad pick, but it just allowed him to be aggressive early.
All three games had Maokai camping mid early game. GoTWooD basically got free lane pressure in every game because of his dedicated jungler working to shut me down. It definitely worked early in this first game. I tried to apply pressure bot, but my assists weren’t making my 0-2 score look any better.
We started to fall behind in this first game, but just as we were making our comeback nubehound’s computer died. Complete shut down. When he tried to boot he was greeted with a number of errors telling him that he couldn’t boot back up. We were in a bit of a panic. I called nubehound and he asked “Do you have a computer I could play on?” Sadly, I didn’t. I didn’t have League installed on another machine. However, after another restart his computer booted normally and we went on our merry way. It felt like we were starting a second game, because we had waited more than 13 minutes for him to get back online.
As soon as we unpaused Zenimax disappeared from their grouping in the mid lane. I saw them heading towards our blue. Nubehound must have seen it too, because he walked over there to see what they were up to. His death pushed the score to 7-6, with us ahead by just one kill.
Then the game was over. We started winning some pivotal team fights, and we never looked back. We literally didn’t die after that point. We really got to flex our team work muscles. I did have some fun plays and got to do the Twisted Fate split push thing. Once Twisted Fate gets to that tipping point where his abilities clear out a full creep wave he gets very entertaining to try to play against. I actually had Maokai, Darius, and Talon chasing me to stop me from split-pushing, but while they chased me down bot lane my team took middle inhibitor and then I chased Darius down to hear the announcer yell “Legendary!” Oh how I love that sound.
The second game never happened. Katarina got to spiral out of control and pick up kill after kill. It got to the point that we should have just surrendered. We had a few ways to take Katarina out of her ultimate, but Katarina isn’t built around that ultimate anymore. She can lane with just health potions, and she never has to leave lane and Xerath has no kill potential against her because of her Shun Po. Again, GoTWooD got a free counter pick against me after they banned out LeBlanc and Twisted Fate this game.
This game was a total flop. We decided to go poke comp because we had the Jayce and Elise picks both up. I picked a super harassing mid with great poke and then our ADC was Caitlyn, so we had good poke from our AD with good disengage with her traps. For support we probably needed another way to put pressure on the enemy team, like a Zyra, Morgana, Blitz, Thresh, or any other champion that has a long skill-shot ability. Instead, we got Taric, a melee, aura-based champion. It just didn’t fit the play style of poke.
However, Zenimax had the chance to counter pick our poke with WuKong and Katarina anyway. It didn’t look like a game we could win, because we just wouldn’t have the tools to deal with their dunk engage.
This leads us into the third and final game of our best of three series!
Going into the third game we knew the pressure was on. We had to win to keep our undefeated streak alive. For the third game we again saw LeBlanc, Twisted Fate, and Lux bans. They really didn’t want to have any fun with my mid champs! Also, for the third game in a row I let GoTWooD counter pick me. When he picked Orianna I breathed the largest sigh of relief. I don’t know where people are getting that counter pick information, but this wasn’t the first Orianna to get picked against my Malz. Oh and I love the match up.
Of course, Maokai camped mid again. I actually walked over to ward the bushes at level three and thought better of it, so I walked around and warded over the wall. Of course, Mao was standing right there. He eventually left, and just walked around to the other side of mid. That’s when Czarni got sandwiched between Maokai and Orianna and gave up First Blood and gave Orianna Red Buff. Oh fun! This was just the tip of the ice berg for where this game was going. We started spiraling down hill fast.
This is where my lane opponent was when the game was looking most grim. That’s a 6-0 kill stealing Orianna ruining my fun in mid lane. I guess GoTWooD wanted a repeat of the previous game, but we weren’t going to let that happen. It was at this point that we knew we needed to rally together and start putting pressure down on the map to get the global gold lead back in our favor.
We grouped in top lane and started to fight back. Very quickly we got ahead and started flexing our muscles in team fights. The next time we forced a Dragon fight we went into the battle up, 8-13, and left at 8-18. The game didn’t get much closer than that, as we finished 32-10, but in the final moments of the game Choppes called out “SNIPE BLITZA!” which was a request that Caitlyn more than obliged to fulfill. Czarni dodged the bullet to make sure that Blitzcrank would die to the Caitlyn ultimate. It was so funny to watch. It was a humorous ending to a true show of teamwork and rallying under pressure.
Great games, Zenimax!
IMMABUR!
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:
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.
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.
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.
SM Ranked
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!
Karma Carried
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.
