A Preview into Week 2 of the OPL

Week 2:

– Avant Garde vs Dire Wolves

-Rich Gang vs Avant Garde

– Dire wolves vs Team Immunity

– Team Immunity vs Rich Gang

Rosters:

Avant Garde: (Top, Porky) (Jungle, Chelby ) (Mid, Kenste) (Marksman, Mazui ) (Support, Junnie)

Dire Wolves: (Top, Perfection) (Jungle, SoulStrikes) (Mid, Sharp ) (Marksman, Chuffer) (Support, k1ng)

Rich Gang: (Top, Rich Homie) (Jungle, Huey) (Mid, chenyboy) (Marksman, dayshifted) (Support,Destiny)

Team Immunity: (Top, JK Smithy) (Jungle, Zahe) (Mid, lQdChEeSe) (Marksman, UberGiantsBro) (Support, tgun)

Avant Garde vs Dire Wolves:

Coming off a rather hard 0-2 loss at IEM Taipei to the Taipei Assassins, Avant Garde may have shaken confidence. It’s safe to say the team looks allot less threatening without the presence of the Veritas and Nada bot lane. Now without the nearly guaranteed victory these two brought to the team a lot more pressure will be put onto Kenste in mid and Porky at top to either win lanes or create some sort of map pressure. However Dire Wolves themselves  will be playing with a new jungler as former Jungler Rippi stepped back into a coaching role. With Shernfire, the intent ended jungler for the Dire wolves being banned due to elo boosting related issues, SoulStrikes has been picked up and is as yet a relatively unproven jungler so many question marks still surround him. Look for this match to be quite telling as to the continued performance of both line ups, with a slight edge going to Avant Garde due to a large amount of practice with the trip to IEM than that of the Dire Wolves Squad.

Rich Gang vs Avant Garde:

This will be another telling series as to the strengths of teams, seeing as the fore-mentioned lack of Veritas and Nada on AV and the lack of Paws for Rich Gang due to an elo boosting related ban.  Due to these changes AV now have Mazui as the marksman and Junnie representing them as support. Rich Gang now have solo queue talent Destiny  playing support, this brings a rather fresh bot lane for both teams bringing an air of uncertainty to both line ups. But a large impact within these games will be which mid gets ahead, both Chenyboy and Kentse have shown promise in their play, however both have also showed numerous weaknesses, over aggression making themselves very susceptible to ganks. As with the first match, it would seem as though Avant Garde would have the edge here.

Dire Wolves vs Team Immunity:

This is a series we have seen numerous times, these teams facing off twice in a best of 3 series both times during the groups stages of the regional qualifiers held at the EB Games Expo. The first best of 3 going to Immunity, following this Immunity lost 0-2 to The Chiefs, seemingly putting them on tilt then to lose 0-2 to the Dire Wolves and get knocked out of the race for qualification. However at the time Team Immunity had Claire playing mid, and Dire Wolves had Rippi in the jungle and Charlie on support. Instead now we have  lQdChEeSe playing mid for Immunity, Soulstrikes playing jungle and k1ng playing support of the Dire Wolves.

These role swaps seem to be allot more dangerous for Team Immunity, this being as Claire was a key factor in Immunity’s victory, he was often the carry of the team, and if lQdChEeSe can’t pick up where Claire left off the Immunity may have some serious issues. On the side of Dire Wolves however, their hard carry over time has tended to be veteran player, Chuffer the teams Marksman. So the roster changes to Jungle and support wont effect this paradigm, seeing as both of these roles tend to be more supportive as a  norm. Look for Immunity to be picking up the win in this series if lQdChEeSe can find his feet with the team, if not then Dire Wolves will take the victory.

Team Immunity vs Rich Gang:

This series will be hard to predict until both teams have played their first game. The effectiveness of the role swaps will have been sussed out already. As well as titling has been a massive issue for the Immunity team for some time now, so if a loss to Dire Wolves may occur then there is a distinct possibility that a second loss to Rich Gang may follow. However with a victory against Dire Wolves it is entirely possible that Team Immunity could find their feet and hit the ground running matching the Chiefs 2-0 in the first week of OPL.