ROCCAT opens playoffs with upset win

The top League of Legends teams in Europe descended on Gamescom today to begin the League Championship Series playoffs for the European region. Three teams from the six who survived the regular season will travel to Asia to challenge the world’s best for the Summoner’s Cup.

ROCCAT kicked off the playoffs with an upset by taking down third seed Supa Hot Crew in a 3-1 series.

Supa Hot Crew managed to grab third place in the regular season with a 16-12 record, outpacing the favored SK Gaming in the final weeks of the split. ROCCAT ranked sixth at 12-16, recovering from a 1-7 start to put up a 9-3 record in week four through eight but sputtering at the finish line.

In the playoffs, however, ROCCAT did anything but sputter, showing they had a better game plan than the young Supa Hot Crew team by outplaying the higher ranked squad from the start.

In the first match, ROCCAT pulled out a surprise top lane pick, Alistair, and leveraged it into a victory. Marcin “Xaxus” Maczka scored first blood and put together a 4/0/4 score line on the cow as ROCCAT set the tone for the five-game series with a quick win.

Game two was a bit closer. Supa Hot Crew scored a kill lead, but ROCCAT controlled the map better, leading to an early Baron.

Then, at the 25-minute mark, ROCCAT seized the game with an insane combination.

Marcus “Jankos” Jankowski trapped four member of Supa Hot Crew in his Jarvan ultimate, leaving them as fertilizer for Maczka on the tree warrior Maokai. The ensuing ace would hand ROCCAT a 2-0 series lead.

Supa Hot Crew would fight back in one of their patented 70 minute games, something of a trademark of their late-game oriented play style during the regular season. A match with players reaching 500 and even 600 farm was right in Supa Hot Crew’s wheelhouse, and they managed to force a point onto the scoreboard. But it wasn’t enough against a ROCCAT squad that was clearly better prepared for this specific match than their foes.

The loss puts Supa Hot Crew into the fifth-place match, one of the most important games of the playoffs: The loser falls to relegation, meaning their spot in the LCS could be on the line. Supa Hot Crew will face the loser of tomorrow’s SK Gaming and Millenium match.

ROCCAT advances to the semifinals against the defending champions Fnatic. That’s a dire schedule for ROCCAT, considering the Polish crew failed to win a match in four chances against Fnatic during the regular season. But as they’ve shown today, and in last season’s playoffs, where the team placed third, ROCCAT comes well prepared for specific foes. If they continute to play like they did today, they just might qualify for the world championships.