By Neomi Chapelin
Staff Writer
League of Legends is a video game that has been out since 2009, developed by the well-known corporation, Riot Games. Two teams of five face off against each other, queuing up for different roles that are assigned in the unique Summoner’s Rift, the map that is traditionally used to play League of Legends. Ever since 2011, League of Legends has hosted an annual championship for the best teams to duel for a cash prize. This year’s championship was between China’s Suning and Damwon Gaming. The final four games between these two Asian teams took just a bit over two hours, the length of the games slowly decreasing as Damwon Gaming showed just how much they can dominate Summoner’s Rift.
Before explaining just how Damwon Gaming took that winner’s trophy from Suning’s hands, we must congratulate third and fourth place. Third place was G2 Esports and fourth place was Top Esports, demonstrating just how much potential they have for the next year’s championship.
The first game between Damwon Gaming and Suning was almost an hour-long. When the game started, viewers already saw Damwon dominating the lane phase, pushing up, and bullying Suning in almost every lane. The first kill, however, surprisingly went to Suning, with Bin ganking top lane and grabbing the kill for himself with the help of SofM. Damwon managed to grab the Infernal Soul and a top-lane inhibitor by forty minutes, easily taking Baron with no contest. Finally, Damwon Gaming raids Suning’s base to destroy their nexus, giving them a lead of 1-0.
The two teams headed into their second game, this time first blood being scored by Damwon Gaming because of a gank bot-side. At 16 minutes at a fight for Rift Herald, the kills evened out, Suning getting three and Damwon retreating with two. After cinching three dragons for their team, Suning was one dragon away from the Cloud Soul. But due to the results of an unfortunate fight, Suning was forced to retreat, giving Damwon Gaming their first dragon. At twenty-six minutes, top-laner Bin playing for Suning had three kills and two assists, starting the snowball that would ruin Damwon Gaming. By killing every single player on the enemy team, Bin singlehandedly ensured Suning’s victory.
The third game was only thirty-six minutes, staying until Damwon got a pick on Suning’s support. They took the free chance to head for Baron, also killing three of Suning’s team. Taking advantage of the almost one-minute death timers, Damwon Gaming marched for the Nexus once again to destroy it and win the game.
The final game was over within a sad twenty-eight minutes for the fans of Suning. With Damwon Gaming’s Kindred jungle, Canyon racked up three kills and zero deaths by thirteen minutes. At twenty-two minutes, Damwon easily secured the Infernal Soul with no contest from Suning as Kindred now had seven kills with no deaths. With four members of Suning down three minutes later, Damwon secured the baron buff and pushed through the bottom lane. Damwon Gaming’s ADC, Ghost playing as Caitlyn, also built up seven kills throughout the game and killed Suning’s Bin one final time, at two kills and nine deaths (must’ve been payback for the pentakill during the second game). Damwon Gaming finally took home the trophy for Korea for the first time since 2017, a heartwarming victory for their fans, but a heartbreaking defeat for Suning’s.
Joao Ribeiro, a League of Legends player that has been playing for around seven years, expressed his opinion about Damwon Gaming winning the championship. “Personally, I would’ve preferred to see an NA [North American] team come out on top. NA has been underperforming at Words for the last couple of seasons,” Riberio said. In the last five years, NA teams have only made it to the top three once, Cloud9 getting third place in the 2018 World Championship. When asked about what his favorite portions of the game were, Riberio said that his favorite part was not actual highlights of the game, but “being able to interact with Twitch chat and seeing the reactions of the thousands of people watching the same pro players”. Riberio ended the interview by saying that he did not want a specific team to win. “I don’t necessarily root for a team; I’m more of a player-rooter, like Doublelift…” Sadly, Team SoloMid, the team that Doublelift plays on, has not been seen in the top three since 2011, where they secured a spot third place.
