Royal Never Give Up began their second week of LPL Summer Split games with a clean sweep over kk0ma’s Vici Gaming today.
RNG’s ADC Lu “Betty” Yu-Hung was on fire on Aphelios and Ezreal. Even though the MVP votes went to his jungler and support, Betty was the solid base that gave RNG a lead from the bottom lane and allowed them to secure early dragons.
The first game began with RNG targetting bans toward Vici’s predominant carries in the mid and bottom lane. Four out of their five bans were targeted at Deng “Forge” Jie and Hu “iBoy” Xian-Zhao. This helped RNG’s early game since both Forge and iBoy were forced onto suboptimal picks, allowing RNG’s counterparts to snowball.
Even though RNG were ahead in kills and objectives, the gold difference was only around 2,000 to 3,000 at a time. Vici didn’t give up and kept looking for picks to get back into the game.
After RNG obtained the Ocean Dragon Soul, VG’s hopes were shattered since they could no longer fight RNG. With constant lane pressure and strong siege potential, RNG pushed into VG’s base and picked up the first win of the series.
In the second game, VG banned two picks that destroyed them in the first game: Aphelios and Syndra. RNG didn’t falter, though, and went with VG’s picks from the first game: Akali and Ezreal. And both Xiaohu and Betty had ludicrous performances on these champions.
The early game went in favor of RNG again. But this time, VG decided to focus on early dragons as well to avoid the 20-minute Dragon Soul situation from the first game. This only delayed the inevitable, however, since RNG grouped up and kept destroying VG in every teamfight.
After picking up the Baron, RNG grouped up and shattered VG’s hopes, ending the series with a clean sweep.
This win puts RNG in first place in the 2020 LPL Summer Split standings. RNG have looked good early in the split, but this is a tradition for them. They usually begin each season with high hopes but crash the dreams of fans in the second round of the regular split. They’ll need to find consistency if they want to challenge the top four kings of the LPL: JDG, FPX, IG, and TOP.
RNG’s next match is against LNG Esports, who managed to reverse sweep FPX yesterday. You can tune in to the official Riot Games LPL channel on Friday at 4am CT to see if RNG have what it takes to beat LNG.
