We were up for a tough week post Rift Rivals break with our opponents Mammoth being top of the table. It was a much needed win for our Gravitas squad and we knew it would be a hard fought battle if we were to take the match.
With pick ban underway Mammoth opened with an Irelia ban as we banned Karma and Yuumi to retaliate. With Mordekaiser enabled Mammoth sent that one straight to the ban realm where we banned Tahm finishing off our first rotation of bans. Mammoth then benched Sejuani which has proven to be a valuable first pick for us. Mammoth were quick to snap Lux up as a first pick as we followed with Nautilus and Yasuo making our intentions clear very early on. Vladimir and Sivir were Mammoths choices as they looked for ways to get Vladimir backline access with Sivir’s “On The Hunt”. Needing some disengage or engage we ended our first rotation of picks with Gragas to set up Yasuo’s “Last Breath”. We banned Sylas first, not wanting Mammoth to gain access to any of our ultimates while Mammoth banned Lucian to protect Sivir’s laning phase. Our last ban was Aatrox while Mammoth retaliated with Kalista both heavy lane focused champions. Out of bans we picked up Xayah to ensure a solid laning phase and to potentially match Sivir’s scaling while Mammoth finished off their pick ban with Jarvan jungle and Neeko in the top lane ensuring a heavy team fight composition. Our boys finished off with a Corki to go toe to toe with their Neeko.
It was quite the standard early game up until 5 minutes Babip aggressively went to counter jungle Praelus’ raptor camp in which he was punished and solo killed by Haeri’s Yasuo. From then on we had control for a majority of the early game but some good macro from Mammoth means they were able to secure both Ocean Dragons as well as the Rift Herald. At 17 minutes a skirmish erupted where Praelus’ Gragas body slammed over the wall to initiate onto the Lux, both teams collapsed and both teams limped away with both their Jungle and Supports dead. With the gold lead relatively even for a majority of the game both teams were looking for the play to open up the map. 20 minutes into the game our boys thought we had made a pick on Jarvan but that pick was quickly turned around by Mammoth as Sivir and Vladimir tore through our team killing all but Pabu. At 23 minutes Pabu was caught catching a wave in the bot lane which resulted in his death and Baron for the Mammoth squad. After Mammoth had secured the baron they roamed around the map taking objective after objective which ultimately led to them taking our nexus 30 minutes into the game.
Brandon “Juves” Defina and Julian ‘Raid’ Skordos talks about the game
Chiefs were sporting a new roster against us this week and our guys knew how important this clash against The Chiefs was. Despite losing the day before we were filled with confidence after our solid early game the day before.
To start off pick ban we banned Renekton, a staple in the champion pool of Swip3rr. Karma and Sejuani were the bans of choice from the Chiefs as we followed it up with Aatrox and Tahm Kench. Yuumi finished off the first phase of bans for the Chiefs, nothing out of the ordinary so far. Pabu flipped pick ban on its head when he first picked the Mordekaiser while Chiefs locked in Gragas and Lux. Sylas and Nautilus were picked up by Haeri and Praelus as Sylas has seen a rise in popularity across the world when slotted into the jungle. Neeko finished off the first phase off picks for The Chiefs. The second phase of bans had Chiefs take Irelia off the table while we denied them the Gragas and Yasuo combination by banning Yasuo. Sivir was the last ban from the Chiefs and Lucian was ours. Chiefs exited the ban phase by picking Ezreal as we settled with Azir plus Xayah. The last pick for The Chiefs was Corki which meant we would see the standard Azir vs Corki matchup.
The early game was fairly quiet which didn’t see much action until The Chiefs started up the Mountain Drake which was given over by our boys as a trade for Pabu solo killing Swip3rr in the top lane giving us first blood. There was another lull in action where The Chiefs were able to accrue a small gold lead due to Kelptomancy and a solid laning phase. At 11 minutes our boys decided to flip the map and send Pabu bot lane which saw him solo kill Ezreal as well as us take Herald and break first tower top. While all this was happening Claire’s Corki solo killed Haeri’s Azir to set up a big mid lane lead. At 18 minutes The Chiefs managed to crack the game open as they caught Haeri pathing back to defend our tier 2 Mid Lane turret which resulted in The Chiefs acquiring a 3k gold lead. Due to the double Mountain Drakes picked up earlier The Chiefs were able to rush Baron at 21 minutes pushing their lead even further to 5k. It was going to be tough stalling this game out as The Chiefs composition flourishes with Baron and being able to poke us off towers and inhibitors. Our boys were resilient and managed to even stall The Chiefs push with a few kills here and there but the relentless pressure became too much and after acing us in a 29 minute fight they managed to end the game just over 30 minutes.
Brandon “Juves” Defina chats with Pabu after the game
A rough game sees us fall to @ChiefsESC tonight but @SINJuves and @Pabu22 are optimistic in bringing home a 2-0 next week!#GRVWIN #GravitasGlory pic.twitter.com/cS73Mn3kss
— Gravitas (@Gravitas) July 13, 2019
