Team Liquid Leaves Good Impression Despite Losing Against KT Rolster

Unfortunately for NA fans, the North American number 1 team Team Liquid has lost their first game at Worlds 2018. However, the performance that they put up against KT Rolster was not all that displeasing to see.

It would have been very unrealistic for Team Liquid to win the first game against KT Rolster as they are Korea’s number 1 team and one of the favorites to win the tournament. This became apparent quite quickly in the game as KT seemed to be playing at twice the speed that normal teams play at. Within a few minutes, the team had already built up a lead for themselves primarily through Score’s exceptional jungle pathing. However, Team Liquid decided they wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Despite losing hard against Score, Team Liquid’s jungler Xmithie managed to create an advantage for the team when he executed a beautiful gank on bot lane that gave Doublelift and Olleh an advantage quite early on in the game. This was fantastic for Team Liquid as Doublelift doing well is one of the most important win conditions for the team. Team Liquid also managed to secure quite a few dragons although this ultimately proved to be their downfall as well.

First Blood of the #Worlds2018 Group Stage goes to @TLOlleh! pic.twitter.com/i40ubZtNrj
— lolesports (@lolesports) October 10, 2018

During a late phase of the game, Team Liquid tunneled slightly too hard on securing the dragon which ultimately led to a lost team fight, which was also due to some individual mistakes. Just from that one team fight, KT managed to close out the game as Korean teams will often find victories within the smallest advantages.

Team Liquid also focused a bit too much on drafting a late game composition. While this is by no means a bad strategy, as plenty of late game comps can win games, it’s quite hard to reach late game against a Korean team that can win games from the smallest of advantages. Team Liquid also suffered from some small individual misplays that happened throughout the game.

KT Rolster, on the other hand, was thoroughly impressive. Everyone expected the team to play well but seeing the number 1 Korean team execute a nearly perfect game is still a sight to behold. It will definitely take a great team to take KT Rolster down and while Team Liquid did not manage to do that quite yet, simply going toe to toe with KT for a while is an achievement by itself.