After nearly a month of competition, the Finals for the League of Legends World Championship 2018 have at long last been set.
This weekend’s Semifinal round was thought to be intense coming in, but instead turned out to be perhaps the least-exciting round of the tournament so far. Both games these weekend ended up series sweeps, with Europe’s Fnatic and China’s Invictus Gaming advancing to the Finals.
Invictus Gaming took on G2 Esports in the first series of the weekend and quickly disposed of the Worlds 2018 Cinderella. G2 Esports wasn’t expected to make it to Semifinals in the first place but after having defeated the best team from China in RNG the week prior, many thought they maybe stood a chance against IG. Instead, IG’s mid laner Rookie and top laner TheShy pulverized G2 out the gate and then continued that dominance in Games 2 and 3 to sweep their way into Finals. As of this moment, Rookie has likely been the best player of Worlds and seems to be in line for the MVP award in the case that IG wins the Summoner’s Cup.
In today’s series between Fnatic and Cloud9, again, many expected it to be a tight, hard-fought series between both teams that had the potential to go the distance. Instead, Fnatic came out in all three games and dominated the early game to snowball their way to consecutive victories, a sweep, and a chance to win the entire tournament. With the loss, the hopes of North America have now officially died with Cloud9, but the team certainly made history in the progress of finding their way out.
As for next week’s matchup between IG and Fnatic, it sets up to be a rematch of two teams that came out of Group D. In the Group Stage, Fnatic beat IG in two-out-of-three matchups between the teams, though each match ended up being some of the most competitive and messy games of all of Worlds. The spotlight of this Finals matchup will surely be upon that of the mid lane between FNC’s Caps and IG’s Rookie. It should be a fun battle of evenly matched teams with each squad looking to take home the first non-Korean championship in League of Legends since Season 2.
The League of Legends Worlds 2018 Finals are slated to begin next Saturday, November 3 at 4:00 AM EST. It should be a fun end to what’s been one of the best Worlds ever.