LMS2016: Ziv Carries AHQ to First Victory over Flash Wolves

Week 1, Day 1: Thursday, January 14

Flash Wolves vs ahq e-Sports Club, Game 1

	FW	ahq
Bans
Team Gold	60.2k	70.5k
Towers	2	11
Dragons/Barons	1 D / 0 B	3 D / 1 B

Role	FW	Kills: 1	Kills: 6	ahq
Top	MMD*	0/3/0	2/0/3	Ziv
Jng	Karsa	0/0/1	0/1/3	Mountain
Mid	Maple	0/2/0	1/0/2	Chawy
Adc	Breeze	1/1/0	3/0/0	AN
Spt	SwordArT	0/0/1	0/0/4	Albis

*First Pick

Ziv  carried ahq to their first season victory over Flash Wolves on Thursday night, shielding his teammates with the massive girth of Tahm Kench.

Team gold stayed within 1.5k of each other for the first thirty minutes, and Flash Wolves stayed slightly ahead of ahq for most of that time.

The game started off with Flash Wolves’ MMD  leashing Karsa  at Gromp and bot lane taking Krugs, while ahq’s bot lane leashed Mountain  and Ziv went straight to lane. MMD pushed Ziv in a bit too far, giving Mountain an easy gank and a first blood for Ziv at 3:37.

Throughout the game, Karsa consistently cleared jungle faster than Mountain and took many of his opponent’s camps, leaving Mountain a bit behind in gold. Mountain took dragon with Chawy  at 9:48 regardless.

Most of Maple’s  Trueshot Barrages missed their marks, often flying right in between or next to their intended targets. Karsa and MMD didn’t finish their Rods of Ages until after the 19-minute mark.

Team gold finally swung a little in ahq’s favor at 22 minutes, after they killed MMD a second time and took two top-lane turrets in a row. Flash Wolves responded by taking down an outer-level turret in the mid lane, but were unable to regain control after that.

Mountain attempted a third dragon at 24:19 after MMD died to Ziv under his inhibitor turret. Maple released (and missed) another Trueshot Barrage, but Breeze  fired off The Culling from the bottom side of the river while SwordArT  chased ahq off of the dragon, giving Karsa a chance to leap into the pit and steal it. SwordArT headbutted Mountain into the pit, and Breeze finished him off handily.

With one down on ahq, Flash Wolves sought to push over an inner turret in the bottom lane. It was the only lane in which Flash Wolves’ minions were pushing. However, Ziv’s presence as an aggressive front liner and AN’s  swift wave-clearing pushed the Wolves off of the turret.

After several minutes of wave-clearing, Flash Wolves continued pushing mid lane – without vision on Baron Nashor, they did not realize that ahq was a stone’s throw away until Maple fired a Trueshot Barrage at the monster. By the time they arrived, AN had Rended the Baron, and ahq began chasing the Wolves.

Flash Wolves scrambled to disengage, but Maple over-extended to chase a kill on Mountain. After a short and unsuccessful chase, he caught by Chawy’s Light Binding as he Arcane Shifted into mid lane to join his team. Despite MMD’s Wild Growth and shield, Ziv flashed forward to stack his passive and Devour Maple, Regurgitating him into the spears of AN.

From here, the game went downhill for Flash Wolves. They were pushed back by Ziv and the buffed minions, leaving the dragon open for ahq. Slowly but surely, ahq pushed advantage with Ziv and Albis , their two heavyweight frontliners. Their tankiness brute forced their way into the Wolves’ base until they took all three inhibitors.

Mountain had another close call with death as he walked into a Headbutt from SwordArT that threw him right into the Wolves. Fortunately for him, Ziv was able to Devour him to safety.

The game was over shortly after.

Ziv’s performance as Tahm Kench was stellar – he played the fat fish well both aggressively and defensively. He was named “Key Player” by the LMS casters for this game.

Flash Wolves chose to be at a disadvantage during the pick/ban phase: They had only one tank, SwordArT’s Alistar. Though Alistar has a lot of crowd control and can withstand a lot of punishment, it was not enough to keep the rest of his team alive, as ahq could easily get around a single tank with their team composition.

Additionally, ahq had more effective crowd control because every champion had at least one slowing or stunning ability, so they had far more maneuverability. The crowd control on Flash Wolves were all focused on MMD’s Lulu, who was very far behind, and SwordArT’s Alistar – once they were disabled, the rest of their team had minimal amounts of disengage.

We can only hope that Flash Wolves learns from this game and pays more attention to their team composition.

Full Match Statistics

Original post at HKABC.