Analysis and statistics from day one of the Solomid Series #1 eSports Central

The Solomid.net Series is a tournament in which teams compete in six $3,000USD events to earn their way to a $12,000USD final among the league's top 4 teams. Today marked the beginning of the tournament. We've compiled an in-depth analysis of the on-stream games between Meat Playground and TSM as well as relevant statistics for all games that were played today.

To find out more about the tournament, click here.

Jump to Day 1 Statistics

Point of Interest:
The current League of Legends patch has a few bugs, most notably the first towers attack at twice their normal speed. As you might imagine, this has a large effect on the course of the games played under these conditions. The biggest effects are a greatly extended laning phase and a greater potency added to 'on tower' plays. The strategy of taking top tower as a response to losing dragon also loses its viability as the tower clears minions much faster - which to a lesser extent also affects last hitting on tower. I will refer back to this point during certain sections of in-game analysis and picks.

Game 1:

Picks and Bans:

The bans in this game are considered solo queue bans, which really just means banning champions that are considered overpowered or generally hard to deal with. What we can speculate from these bans are that the teams have no solid targeted bans in mind, and simply want to remove the champions they find most difficult to deal with.

The picks here are much more interesting than the bans. TSM picks, most notably Maokai and to a lesser extent Singed, are great initiators whilst Meat Playground seems to be relying on Lemongod's Blitzcrank pulls as a main form of initiate backed up with a Morgana ultimate. These would be considered very soft initiates, and assuming all things equal, a weaker team from that point of view. The items bought, and the execution of plays will make the pros and cons of these picks much more clear as we get to them.

Sivir returned to the AD spotlight in this tournament, not just in this matchup but in quite a few and the reason for this has a lot to do with the tower bug I mentioned earlier. Sivir is a great champion for pushing towers very fast, and has a very long range poke to boot. Compensating for the lack of time to push towers due to the bug makes a lot of sense. Another speculation that can be applied is that teams are practicing and experimenting other poke AD champions for the dreaded Ezreal nerf.

In-Game Analysis:

The overall game started very even in the early and mid game, as both teams traded plays back and forth quite well. Meat Playground started off with a failed level 1 counter jungle resulting in a first blood, going to Xpecial's Janna. MP's bottom lane duo were very capable of lots of early aggression coming out of well executed Blitzcrank pulls, they would keep this slight lead throughout the early game resulting in a first tower at 12:30, a testament to the Sivir pick.

Reginald was pushing much harder, resulting in a higher creep score than his lane opponent, Pobelter. Nk Inc, jungler for MP, on Nunu kept the lane even with a few successful ganks, which they used to secure a free dragon. Pobelter's build was what I questioned most in his performance. He rushed a fast Abyssal Scepter, which makes a lot of sense considering the heavy AP composition of TSM, but proceeded to go double Needlessly Large Rod instead of a Zhonya's as a second item. This hindered his ability to engage, leaving Blitzcrank as their sole initiator, and not to mention opened him up to a significant amount of damage from Chaox on Corki. Pobelter only purchased Zhonya's Hourglass by the 30 minute mark.

Luckily for MP, Lemongod lived up to his handle and landed a plethora of calculated grabs - mainly targeted at Reginald - that would apply constant pressure onto TSM throughout the mid game despite TSM's significantly better teamfighting capabilities. MP were not immune to these teamfights however and TSM showed their strength and seemingly shut down the pressure from MP with the first 5v5 teamfight of the game over a dragon.

MP's Baron calls left something to be desired, failing once to sneak the Baron resulting in them over-committing and losing a teamfight. The second time they successfully snuck the Baron but were far too low once TSM arrived and got aced. It seemed that MP were desperately looking for a way to combat TSM's superior teamfight capabilities, and Baron is a great way to do this, long enough to gain an advantage.

The game was fairly even despite the difficulty of landing a meaningful Blitzcrank pull through a Maokai and Singed. All it took however were a few of very accurate pulls from Lemongod onto Reginald and MP's lack of a true initiator was no longer a problem (it must be noted that Morgana had finally purchased Zhonya's Hourglass by now) resulting in a successful teamfight for MP and a subsequent Baron and win. Lemongod's performance was a deciding factor in this game and definitely deserves the MVP status.

Lemongod's MVP Blitzcrank

Game 2:

Picks and Bans:
Unsurprisingly, TSM responded with a Blitzcrank ban. They also proceeded to ban Nunu, a possible issue for TheOddone's Shyvana as it would make counterjungling much more of an issue. MP unfortunately stuck with the very solo queue mentality banning, which is generally a big mistake in professional play - especially after experiencing the team in the game prior.

Meat Playground made a very large switch from their previous composition of having no hard engage to the very hard engage of Skarner, Leona, and Malphite. Malphite was a combination of a lane counter to Shen's ultimate and a hard engage. TSM on the other hand responded with the very smart Sona, as her Crescendo has a lot of capability to shut down champions like Skarner who must either flash or run directly in to engage. TheOddone's Shyvana was also a direct counter to Skarner's early game, as he is very susceptible to early counterjungling and must usually change his desired path (which he ended up doing) in order to counteract the threat.

In-Game Analysis:

Once again the tower speed bug came into effect as would-be successful early dives from Dyrus and TheOddone resulted in an even kill trade for xHazzard. A big factor in the success of TheOddone's ganks was the sloppy warding from MP. Nk Inc's early 'naked oracles' turned out to be very cost ineffective as it provided no real ganking opportunities and set him behind TheOddone's Shyvana in the jungle - which allowed him to get a later, but much more effective oracles. TSM's effective wards, and MP's ineffective ward coverage in comparison, determined an easy early game advantage for TSM.

Pobelter's aggression in lane can only be described as overly aggressive, especially with the threat of TheOddone on the field, resulting in many avoidable ganks that set him much further behind than need be. Shyvana on her own is not generally a very strong threat to middle, but combined with Anivia's Crystallize and TheOddone's snowballing it became much stronger.

Leona engages contributed heavily to TheOddone's Shyvana success. The nature of Leona engages require her to go all in, which is perfect for a Shyvana concealed in the bushes. When Leona would hard engage, with Skarner waiting in the wings, TheOddone was always there to capitalize. The bottom lane control that resulted allowed TSM to take every dragon in the game. TheOddone definitely deserves the MVP title for the control he allowed his lanes to achieve, and the gold lead that followed.

TheOddone's MVP Shyvana

Game 3:

Picks and Bans:

TSM once again took the banning path of targeting the enemy team with a Skarner ban. They would have already come to realize MP's blatant solo queue banning style and capitalized upon it so they could ban exactly what they wanted. Their Skarner ban makes sense when you see their first pick of Blitzcrank as they did not want to make use of Sona in the same fashion as before, as well as removing the possibility of a favorite hard engage from Meat Playground.


Meat Playground definitely wanted to employ an AoE composition with their picks, Leona's Solar Flare AoE stun, Vladimir's Hemoplague, and Amumu's Curse of the Sad Mummy. However, TSM immediately were wise to this and grabbed Maokai for his ultimate, Vengeful Maelstrom, to counteract them. TSM wanted to be much more aggressive as they saw MP's weakness to it in the previous game. Xpecial grabbed a Blitzcrank along with Sivir for tower pushing while Reginald chose his offensive pusher in Morgana. Dyrus' Olaf was a reaction to the front line zoning power of the AoE composition in order to maintain pressure on the Ezreal carry.

In-Game Analysis:

The final game seemed to be a continuation of TSM's aggressive style from the previous game resulting in a very high kill game. TSM did everything they could to slow down Amumu in the jungle getting a first blood and a Blitzcrank grab on his blue (although it did not result in a steal). Setting Nk Inc far behind meant that TheOddone could capitalize on Amumu's slow jungle speed in order to be hyper-aggressive. His hyper-aggression resulted in a 4-0 score by the 6 minute mark.

The third game was the culmination of TSM learning MP's weaknesses through the matchup, and realizing their inability to deal with a very aggressive early style. By the mid-game every TSM member but Dyrus had come to gank mid lane with Reginald at least once (and succeeding), setting a high gold lead and overall snowball for TSM. TSM's aggression worked very well due to their well known team coordination, it would be very hard to pick out an MVP from their team as each member executed precisely what was needed to make quick work of MP.

Dyrus' Trinity Force Olaf

Statistics from Day 1

The next games start Saturday, October 20th, at 11 AM PST / 2 PM EST / 8 PM CEST. First game on Saturday will be Meat Playground vs Team Dynamic in the first round of the losers bracket. You can watch them at www.solomid.net/tournaments.php

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