
Hello everybody and welcome to week 4 of BOL Gold’s Dean’s List! Before we get everyone prepared for the next round of games, let’s take a look back at the standout players and stories from this past Thursday.
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Flannel Ethereal (0-3) vs BDE Corruption (2-1)
Result: Corruption 2-0
While this wasn’t the biggest stomp of week 4, Corruption definitely delivered in a big way against their opponents.
G1 saw Corruption get a gold lead early, which they held onto throughout a majority of the game. LostHavok in particular looked absolutely dominant in his lane, killing his opposite laner three times before ten minutes. The rest of the team was able to use that pressure from top to start dragon stacking before a big teamfight win at 20 minutes. With the help of his team, jungler XIL was able to secure Soul, Baron, and Elder to eventually win the game at 32 minutes.
The next game was a similar story, with Havok again living up to his name early. With Herald being the only neutral that Ethereal was able to take, Corruption just got big teamfight win after big teamfight win to end the game after a 33 minute teamfight.
Minæmi continues to be the shining light on the Flannel squad. Pumping out 43.4k damage in g1 on Sivir and 26.8k in g2 on Jinx shows that, even with the rest of the map losing, he’s still able to do his job and do so effectively. PrismaSire as well is doing a much better job at playing to try and set up his team as well as he can.
The issue for Ethereal here is that their botside advantage never meant anything when top lane was getting smashed as hard as it was. LostHavok had a statement series, winning two tank v tank matchups in dominant fashion. This set up XIL to play however he wanted, and even enabled Pando to just sit back and pump out damage on the Brand.
Corruption is really coming into their own as a team. While VampiricNarwhal isn’t a dominant ADC and Swag hasn’t fully become a demon (stale bread be upon thee), they provide the stability that the rest of their team needs. They’ve definitely solidified themselves as a threat in this league.
It’s more of the same for Ethereal this week. While their on-paper identity is much more clear, the actual “how to get there” has grown harder to identify. On paper, they should be playing around Mina to let them pump damage. Why that has yet to click in successful fashion remains a mystery. From here on out, this team is in “win out” mode, so hopefully they’ll be able to crack that code to start taking some much needed wins.
Player of the Series: Lost Havok - DOMINANT top lane performance. Series scoreline of 16/2/14 (15 KDA), respectable damage dealt in both g1 and g2, and very respectable damage taken in the series gives him the nod here.
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Hyperion Esports (3-0) vs REV Regalia (2-1)
Result: Regalia 2-0
OKAY REGALIA, THOSE ARE MY BOYS, LET’S GO!!
Ahem.
Regalia pulled out a major upset in week 4 with a strong win over Hyperion Esports. While it wasn’t an utterly dominating win, it’s a very good sign for the Revolution squad going forward.
The first game started off fairly quiet with Regalia getting the first two kills in exchange for all six void grubs. In a contrast to their established style, Regalia played for early dragon control while completely ceding control of the topside objectives, which resulted in Ziggie getting a lot of gold in his pockets. Scrambles secured Soul Point at 17 minutes, however, which was immediately followed by a 3 for 1 teamfight win. Both teams traded towers and a few odd picks before a clean ace for Regalia at 24 minutes allowed them to completely take over. A few minutes later, the REV team fought their way into the base and won the game in 29 minutes.
While g1 was a mostly controlled game, g2 was an absolute slugfest. Scrambles and Ziggie traded objectives to control before a big fight at 9 minutes went the way of Hyperion. A few skirmishes followed, giving back Regalia some gold to equalize, before Atilla earned himself a quadra kill at 17 minutes. It was all for naught, however, as Ball Slap managed to shut him down, giving Regalia the angle for Baron. Victory was all but assured from there, as the REV squad utilized the buff to begin their siege. It was all the Lespanx show from there, as the Regalia ADC earned 7 more kills before ending the game in 32 minutes.
This was a statement win from Regalia. If you didn’t have them as a title contender before, you certainly do now. Every single one of their players stepped up in a big way, and it shows.
What makes this win even more impressive is that Hyperion didn’t play particularly poorly either. Dione was still laning well and Ziggie was controlling early game objectives fine, but Regalia was able to match them incredibly well at nearly every stage of the game.
Player of the Series: Lespanx - I was torn between him and Scrambles (damn solid objective control and KP), but over 30k damage in both games plus a series KDA of 19.5 makes it hard to give the nod to anybody else.
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REV Eternal (2-1) vs Mystic Cats Gold (2-1)
Result: MCG 2-1
Absolute. Banger.
G1 was a stomp for Eternal and g2 was a stomp for MCG. No particular notes other than both teams played well at capitalizing off of each others’ weaknesses to bring the series to an even 1-1.
Game. Three.
G3 was a 46 and a half minute barnstormer of a match. The game started slow out the gate, with SinforniaJon and TheDean0 trading early objectives, before a skirmish over the second round of grubs gave Physio and D3adpixel an early gold advantage. From there, the Cats pushed a snowball to secure their second dragon and the rift herald while picking up some key kills along the way.
Despite picking up a stray kill for LeperKoopa, Eternal wasn’t able to get anything going until a big teamfight win at 17 minutes saw REV trade four kills for one. MCG would then trade Dragon Soul for Baron, which then led to them securing four kills of their own. With their game on its last legs, Eternal found a second wind, killing four of the Mystic Cats in a dance to secure their first Baron buff.
The teams traded skirmish wins which resulted in MCG securing Soul, but not without a cost, as they were clean aced in the ensuing fight. REV took the momentum to secure a second Baron buff deep into the fourth quarter.
With the game on the line, Mystic Cats Gold and REV Eternal traded 2-2 in a teamfight, which resulted in a gutsy call by the standing Eternal members to try and continue to siege the MCG base. The gambit backfired, unfortunately, as the Cats were able to kill off the remaining REV members, march it down mid, and secure the biggest upset win in week 4.
What. A. Game.
Player of the Series: Super Hoagie - Hoagie took advantage of the Eternal substitute bot lane in ways that should frankly be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. His Blitzcrank in g2 single handedly won them that game, and his smart positioning and engages in g3 ultimately resulted in the Cats moving up to 3-1 in the standings.
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Conduit Prime (1-2) vs BDE Typhoon (3-0)
Result: Typhoon 2-0
Remember when I celebrated Typhoon last week for having a convincing win? Yeah, they did it again.
Typhoon gave up a total of 6 kills in this series while picking up 41 of their own. G1 was a 33 minute affair while g2 was a solid 28 minute outing, and neither game was really ever close.
Their strategy of enabling Kevin in the jungle while Giraffe plays his lane-dominant picks seems to be refining at a nice pace, while their side lanes can be the explosive x-factor they need at a moment’s notice.
I don’t want to harp on Conduit too much for this week, but this can only really be seen as a disappointment after last week’s showing. Hoodie did decent in g1 (1/3/0, 24k damage on Yorick), but he frankly did abysmally in g2 on his Vlad. I genuinely don’t know how to look at this series from any positive angle for Prime, they just got completely smashed, plain and simple.
Player of the Series: Ya boy Kevin - An argument could be made for Bean here, but since he had a slightly better series scoreline (14/0/11 vs 9/0/8) and a bit more damage overall, Kevin ultimately gets the nod.
It would have gone to Lsword if he didn’t int in g2, js
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Flannel Zephyr (0-3) vs Nameless Rising (0-3)
Result: Zephyr 2-0
Despite both me and Narwhal coming to two completely separate 2-1 Nameless predictions, Zephyr managed to 2-0 their opponents, and I am honestly very happy for them.
The two teams were very even keel with one another in g1 before Zephyr won a few important skirmishes in the mid game to end up closing out the game before 25 minutes.
G2 actually saw Nameless with a 2k gold lead for a majority of the game before a few bad fights at 26 minutes led to them losing a big chunk of their towers. The game ended shortly thereafter, as the Flannel squad secured Nash and earned three more kills en route to their second Nexus of the series.
Bagoot and FNL Tyler finally looked like a coherent duo, which is what literally everybody on this team has been saying they needed to do for the entire season so far. The two of them together were able to secure objectives early and buy time for Regdor to scale and become a late game threat. It’s genuinely awesome to see it all come together for a team like this.
The same cannot be said for Nameless. I have genuinely no suggestion on how this team can improve other than to just stick to a strategy. Their bot lane has played a different style every week, so they haven’t had the time to try and refine anything. The same can be said about their jungler and their mid laner, which doesn’t bode well for a team that’s trying to grow their players’ skills at anything.
Zephyr earned a much needed win to move up the standings and keep their hopes alive for playoffs, but Nameless are just a mess right now. There’s no way to talk about them and sugarcoat it. They are at the bottom of the standings, and it really isn’t a surprise that they’re there.
Player of the Series: Bagoot - Damn good objective control and surprisingly high damage on the Volibear (26.8k g1, 33.2k g2). Paired with two deaths in this entire series, and he had a statement series for himself in week 4.
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With last week’s recap done, it’s time to look ahead at next week’s matches!
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Mystic Cats Gold (3-1) vs Hyperion Esports (3-1)
If you told me in the pre-season that these two teams would be tied at 3-1 going into week 5, I would have called you insane. Reality is often stranger than fiction, however, so here we go!
MCG are coming off a massive win against REV Eternal, while Hyperion are coming off of a wake-up call defeat against REV Regalia. Even though both teams are sitting at 3-1, however, they are two very different 3-1 teams.
I will say the same thing I have said this entire split, if you sleep on Mystic Cats, then you will lose. They are the definition of “better than the sum of their parts,” and the way they play the game together is just so incredibly solid.
However, comma.
Hyperion, pound for pound, shouldn’t really lose any lane. The most I can see is bot maybe going even, but I genuinely don’t think that MCG matches up particularly well against Hyperion.
While it’s really easy to say that it’ll be just a team diff across the board, the most interesting matchup to me is definitely in the jungle. Ziggie is coming off his worst week so far, so a bounce back for him against SinforniaJon could definitely make for an absolute jungle clinic.
Prediction: Hyperion 2-0
Player to Watch: Ziggie
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BDE Corruption (3-1) vs Conduit Prime (1-3)
Full stop, I really, really don’t see how Prime wins this series. Even considering that Corruption has the ability to lose any series when their players just decide they want to, it feels like BDE.C losing to Conduit would be such an underperformance that it isn’t worth talking about.
I genuinely don’t even think it’s worth a lane-by-lane analysis, I genuinely believe every player on Corruption is significantly better than their opposite member. EVEN SWAG. Easy 2-0.
Prediction: Corruption 2-0
Player to Watch (Choke): Swag
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REV Regalia (3-1) vs Flannel Zephyr (1-3)
In contrast to the last match, I actually can see the avenue for Zephyr to win here. If Bagoot and Tyler are able to work together to shut down Ball Slap in lane, then it could snowball into them keeping Regalia from opening up the map. There’s just one small issue with that strategy; Ball Slap is really damn good.
Both teams are coming off of a crucial win in week 4, and both teams need this win for different reasons. Regalia need to win so they can keep their race for first place alive, while Zephyr needs to win to even be able to make the playoffs. It’s entirely possible to me, then, that Zephyr could catch a misstepping Regalia and sneak a win. In much the same breath, however, Regalia could just curbstomp Zephyr through sheer macro diff.
Vegas odds strongly favor REV here, but the payout on a Flannel win is so high, man. While I wouldn’t bet on them myself, the fact that the avenue for victory even exists is a sign that they’ve definitely gotten better since the start of the season. Maybe next week?
Prediction: Regalia 2-0
Player to Watch: Ball Slap
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Nameless Rising (0-4) vs Flannel Ethereal (0-4)
Ethereal wins because they have Mina.
In the honor of Easter, I will follow the advice of my favorite rabbit: “if you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.” Thanks, Thumper.
Prediction: Ethereal 2-1
Player to Watch: Mina
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REV Eternal (2-2) vs BDE Typhoon (4-0)
Nope, I’m not gonna do it. The last TWO TIMES I tried to gas up Eternal and make a crazy prediction in our favor, we lost 1-2. So no. I’m not gonna compliment us at all. I’m not gonna say that we’re Typhoon’s first real test, and that we have a way more explosive bot lane, and we have a top laner that can actually effectively neutralize Bean. Nope. Not gonna happen.
The undefeated BDE squad have been looking progressively cleaner week after week, and while their strength of schedule could be partially attributed to this, Eternal have looked either dominant or competitive in every single series they have played this season so far. There are actually a lot of fun things to analyze about both teams in this matchup, but I’ll narrow it to two: BDE’s mid/jungle, and REV’s bot lane.
Typhoon have the on-paper best mid/jungle duo in the league. Kevin and Giraffe have done such a great job of playing around each other that it really pushes them to the top of the table. Meanwhile, Eternal still has what some people consider to be the best ADC in the league in BillyBadass, and two of the better supports in the league in BooterScooch and YesParade.
In a lot of ways, it comes down to these two duos to decide how this series will be played. If Kevin is enabled to be explosive, then he could completely shut down Eternal’s bot lane. If Billy and Parade (leak, it’s Parade starting on Thursday) past past the point of no return, however, then it’s gonna be tough for anybody to shut them down.
That’s the last I’ll say on the matchup since I absolutely refuse to jinx my team again this week. Maybe betting against myself will undo it? I dunno, maybe it’s worth a shot.
Prediction: Typhoon 2-1
Player to Watch: Ya boy Kevin
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That’s it for this week’s edition of The Dean’s List. Remember, this is all meant to start discussion and to be taken with a grain of salt. If you disagree or if you have any notes on things I may have missed, please be civil and respectful. With that in mind, good luck, have fun, and we’ll see you on the rift!
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