Royal Never Give up won their fourth-straight match in the 2021 LPL Spring Split today after beating Victory Five in a hard-fought, three-game series.
Going into this League of Legends showdown, RNG were slightly favored following their dominance over the past couple of weeks. Xiaohu, in particular, has been playing well in the top lane after swapping to the role during the offseason. He played three different champions during today’s series: Lucian, Gnar, and Akali. His performance on Akali in the last game even earned him his third MVP vote of the split.
The first game of the series looked good for V5 early on. The team managed to camp Xiaohu’s Lucian in the top lane, killing him three times in 13 minutes. With all resources focused on shutting down Xiaohu, RNG popped off in other lanes. Once the game got to the teamfight stage, V5 fell to RNG’s superior composition that they used to shut down V5. As the game went by, RNG kept growing their lead before finishing the game after taking down the Baron in the 27th minute.
Going into the second game, V5 adjusted their strategy and took away power picks from RNG. They played much better and kept securing kill after kill before growing a gold lead of more than 9,000. With that huge lead, they used their mid-game composition to finish the game and equalize the series.
After the devastating second game loss, RNG changed their draft and picked up a composition focused on winning lanes without a good frontline. The focus in the early game was on the top lane with Xiaohu’s Akali popping off and securing three kills before the laning phase was over.
Xiaohu used Akali to extend the gold lead his team had by roaming to other lanes and taking down unsuspecting enemies before they realized what happened. With a fed Akali on their team, RNG funneled their resources into controlling the map and secured a clean 32-minute victory.
Following this 2-1 win over V5, RNG (4-0) are in third place in the 2021 LPL Spring Split standings. They’ll be back on the Rift on Friday, Jan. 29 with an important matchup against the undefeated Team WE.
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