Flash Wolves beat Gambit Gaming in a clean 3-0 victory and is the final team to join the official MSI group stage. After Gambit Gaming’s 5-1 record and strong performance in the play-in groups they were expected to do well, but were clearly outclassed by Flash Wolves, in every sense of the word.
Even though Flash Wolves has historically always been a strong team, they still had to play in the play-in stage due to their awful performance in the last world championship. During the play-ins they had to demonstrate that the LMS is still a major region and not on the same level as the “wildcard” regions, which Flash Wolves clearly showed during the last play-in match.
Despite the clean 3-0 victory for Flash Wolves, the first game in the series was a big tug of war between the two teams, both winning teamfights and throwing their leads right after. The Taiwanese team nearly closed out the first game, but Gambit caught them off guard and cleaned up multiple kills to turn the game around. The highlight of the game was when Gambit Gaming started the baron and Flash Wolves’ jungler Moojin stole it in a miraculous play, giving his team a big enough advantage for a final push shortly after.
.@MooJin_LOL steals the Baron for @flashwolves2013! #MSI2018 pic.twitter.com/D0s75jUJP9
— lolesports (@lolesports) May 9, 2018
Throughout the other games in the series Gambit could not recover from such a crushing defeat, and were clearly tilted during their games. They gave up easy kills, got baited and overall suffered from poor decision making. It was quite obvious that Gambit had a “play not to lose” mentality instead of being the aggressive team we saw in week 1. With stellar team fighting and strong individual plays Flash Wolves was easily able to beat Gambit in the second game. The Russians were trying to bring back their aggression in the last game with an early tower dive for first blood, but this ended disastrously as Flash Wolves cleaned up an easy 3 kills in the aftermath of the dive.
.@GambitEsports dive the bot lane for first blood, but @flashwolves2013 collapse for three kills in response! #MSI2018 pic.twitter.com/HQWVX2nCnw
— lolesports (@lolesports) May 9, 2018
With this conclusion the last 2 teams for the MSI group stages have been decided. Those being the Flash Wolves and EVOS Esports, who came out on top with an upset victory over SuperMassive yesterday. They will join the ranks of Royal Never Give Up, Fnatic, Team Liquid and King-Zone DragonX in the group stages to see who can advance to the play-offs and take the trophy home. The group stages will start tomorrow with the first match where Fnatic is taking on Royal Never Give Up.
