Ocelote and SK Gaming take Group A in Tales of the Lane eSports Central

Every now and then something really awesome happens within the eSports community that will put a smile on your face. Tales of the Lane is one of those things. Tales of the Lane is completely funded by the community through donations. The organization was able to get 80,000 Euro in donations and have broken it down like this: 30,000 to the prize pool, 10,000 to organizing the online phase, and 40,000 for renting the Casino de Paris.

The tournament exists in two phases: Group phase and an offline playoff between the last 4 teams. The group phase consists of two groups of 5, the top 3 teams move on. The top team in the group goes straight to the offline event while the 2nd and 3rd team go on to the quarterfinal.

Today was the kickoff of the event with all of Group A being played. The teams consisted of:

• SK Gaming
• ALTERNATE
• Fnatic
• Tt Dragons
• mouz

JUMP TO SECTION

• SK Gaming vs Tt Dragons
• ALTERNATE vs Fnatic
• SK Gaming vs mouz
• SK Gaming vs ALTERNATE
• Fnatic vs SK Gaming
• Building Ezreal
• Group B Schedule

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SK Gaming vs Tt Dragons

A game about the junglers, both Skullomania and Araneae got the kills early on in the game. Araneae had the better ganks by destroying YamatoCannon in the top lane. Araneae also got an early Oracle's Elixir to get an early advantage which allowed him to continuing ganking successfully. Araneae got up to 5 kills quickly and actually never died throughout the whole game.

Despite his level and gold advantage, Araneae went for a quick Shurelya's Reverie and Aegis of the Legion which turned the tides in the first team-fight.

SK Gaming took the first game easily, winning ever lane and destroying the Tt Dragons team after the laning phase.
Araneae's Skarner build after getting ahead early

ALTERNATE vs Fnatic

The game came down to the mid lane matchup between ForellenLord and xPeke. What became a common them throughout the day was that the mid lane was also a race to Athene's Unholy Grail, a race in which ForellenLord won and then immediately went aggressive. Honestly, I can't write words that do justice to ForellenLord's magnificent play with Orianna.

Team-fights in the midgame never seemed to end because the shield from Orianna, masterfully placed by ForellenLord, would stop a kill and give ATN enough time to turn the fight around. All of the aggression in the mid game took Cyanide to a spot where he becamse irrelevant because of the level advantage on ATN; he basically became a stun machine.

ForellenLord finished the game 10/2/11 and over 100 cs above xPeke.
ForellenLord's Orianna that dominated the game

SK Gaming vs mouz

This game was a stomp. Mouz started out with a lane swap that sent Jayce to the bottom lane to face off with Caitlyn and Zyra. SK didn't really care for that and switched Caitlyn and Zyra to the top lane so that they could take advantage of Kev1n against Jwaow. The result was bullying that should be criminal from Kev1n onto Jwaow. He got ahead with some ganks from Araneae and never looked back.

Meanwhile, MoMa never got a big enough lead versus Ocelote and the roaming Ahri got enough pickoffs to stay in the game. The bot lane match-up favored SK Gaming with the Zyra crowd control and poke combined with the Caitlyn poke.

The team-fights came down to the area of effect stuns and damage from Araneae and Nyph followed by Kev1n and Ocelote for clean up.

Great plays by SK Gaming lead to an easy win.
Kev1n's dominating Lee Sin build that went 8/0/7

SK Gaming vs ALTERNATE

This was the game everyone wanted to see because it was a real test for ATN. The game was close but the experienced team was able to pull it off in the end.

SK caught ForellenLord at level 1 which resulted in a big advantage for Kev1n in the top lane on a champion he is god-like on, Irelia. To make matters a little bit worse for ATN, KottenX was in the top lane on Shen instead of the jungle which Kerp took over with Cho'Gath. So ALTERNATE went for the stall by buying gold per 10 items and playing passive. However, SK decided to go straight for items and took advantage of the power difference in the mid game when they had Zeke's Herald on Nyph, Athene's Unholy Grail and Rabadon's Deathcap on Ocelote, and Trinity Force combined with Wit's End on Kev1n. The aggression is what won the game in the long run because they were able to push down the mid inhibitor tower which gave them the map control they needed to push the advantage.

SK Gaming had a minute where they were susceptible to a counter push but they were able to shut it down. By this point, Ocelote already had the Grail, Deathcap, and just finished the Void Staff and his Javelin Toss was doing insane damage from a ridiculous distance. The zoning that the javelins were doing allowed his team to win team-fights and push for the win. The loss moved ATN to 2-1 with the Dragons left to play.
Ocelote's doom javelin build

SK Gaming vs Fnatic

This game was weird because YellOwStaR was playing for Fnatic while SK is standing by the comment that he is still on the team. The game was also a bit of nostalgia for anyone that has followed the European scene because Nyph and Candy Panda were together while YellOwStaR and nRated were together. A sidenote, Fnatic feels like a better Against All Authority and I personally hope this lineup sticks.

The people to watch out for in this game were Ocelote on Orianna and sOAZ on Jayce, both players have proven to be masters of these two champions.

Ocelote beat xPeke in the race to Athene's Unholy Grail but this game was more about the top lane than the mid lane. sOAZ was able to get ahead of Kev1n early on and forced Kev1n to go defensive with his build while he was able to build for a lot of damage. Fnatic started pushing down the towers quickly in the mid game which gave them a good amount of map control. However, they started getting a little overaggressive which allowed SK to get back in the game. Fnatic took baron but SK was able to counter it, splits Fnatic, got two kills, a turret, and a dragon out of the play.

During a 4v4 fight in the SK jungle that went even, Candy Panda was able to capitalize with a very good split push that took down the bottom inhibitor tower. The heroics of the split push brought the game to about even but that didn't last long. Candy Panda got caught out by YellOwStaR which prompted a push from SK Gaming on the top inhibitor turret. Cyanide finds the perfect opportunity to jump in and throw down the Curse of the Sad Mummy on the remaining SK Gaming team, and they melted to the rest of Fnatic.

Fnatic took the game and went 2 and 2 in the group but due to them losing to mouz and ATN, they do not move on to the quarter finals. SK gaming goes 3-1 in the group and advance all the way to the semi-finals at Casino de Paris on November 11th in Paris, France.

nRated built Zyra in a unorthodox support manner and he definitely sacrificed the ward coverage for it.
nRated's support Zyra

How to build Ezreal after the nerf?

We saw three Ezreal sightings on the English stream today and each was built in a different way.

Rekkles was the first one and he rushed The Bloodthirster and Last Whisper. Honestly, he didn't do that great. Of course, he was up against the SK lane of Caitlyn and Zyra which is really difficult to lane against.

Candy Panda brought it out Ezreal next and he decided to go double Doran's Blade -> Phage -> The Brutalizer -> The Bloodthirster. Candy Panda had a good game and some of that might have been due to Nyph on Nunu.

The last person to play Ezreal on the day was YellOwStaR. He was matched up with nRated's Zyra so they had a lot of control in the lane. He decided to build Phage-> The Bloodthirster -> Trinity Force.

It seems as if players are starting to focus more on The Bloodthirster instead of finishing Trinity Force.

Group B tomorrow

The teams in Group B include:

• Moscow Five
• Eclypsia
• Curse EU
• MYM
• I Want Cookie (Shushei's new team)

The play starts again tomorrow or today depending on where you live in the world. The games will start at the same time as they did today: 7 PM CEST / 1 PM EST / 10 AM PST. You can catch the tournament at www.talesofthelane.com

Schedule for Group B:

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