Triple Teleport spells for one team?
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The 2018 League of Legends World Championship officially kicked off today with the first day of the Play-In Stage. Twelve teams will be battling it out to claim any of the four qualifier slots for the main event and get that much closer to the Summoner’s Cup. The first matchup of the day featured NA’s miracle squad, Cloud9 going up against Brazil’s Kabum Esports. The match featured one quirky strategy that has somehow crept throughout the rest of the matches in the Play-In stage so far, the creative Teleport strategy.
Kabum’s ADC, Titan, opted to pick up a Flash and a Teleport for his bot lane Lucian pick. The unusual summoner spell pick for the carry is meant to gain more control over the minion wave as opposed to picking up a heal or barrier to increase sustainability in fights or skirmishes. The concept itself is interesting but the execution was ultimately found lacking as Cloud9 inched their way ahead of Kabum in both kills and net worth despite losing two dragons early in the game to their Brazilian opponents.
The uncommon Teleport trend would continue through to the rest of the matches with one matchup even featuring three Teleport spells on one side of the map. In the match between Gambit Esports and G-Rex, the CIS squad GMB fielded in an initiate composition centered around their carry Tristana and three Teleport spells across their Mid, Top, and ADC. The strategy still came up short against the 2nd seeded team from the Taiwan region but not before applying pressure in select moments of the game. Ultimately, the Teleport strat would once again fail as GMB go down to 0-1 early in the Play-In stage.
The most successful usage of this tactic came in the fifth matchup of the day which saw Cloud9 go up against Japan’s Detonation FocusMe. The double Teleport for the Urgot Top pick and the Varus ADC worked in Detonation’s favor for most of the game. The twin roam Champions were able to respond quickly to any trouble on the map with Varus making excellent use of his early Teleport cooldowns to control the waves in the bot lane. DFM controlled most of the game, putting Cloud9 in a precarious position in their final match of the night. However, an over-eager Detonation got caught in a terrible team fight near the Cloud9 inhibitors which lead to a brutal 5-for-nothing exchange. Cloud9 used this opening to barrel down the middle lane to force the lengthy game to an end.
At the end of it all, the unorthodox Teleport strategy has yet to find success in the exciting first day of the Play-In stage of the 2018 League of Legends World Championship. A new set of teams from different groups will be going through their first round of matches tomorrow as Worlds 2018 continues. Will we see more of this uncommon Teleport strategy, and more importantly, will we finally see it succeed on the grandest stage of League of Legends? The biggest international League tournament is sure to bring out the best and most creative strategies from the best teams across the world, what more unorthodox strategy can we expect from the world’s best Summoners?
