EU LCS Week 5 – Day 2 Tips – H2K and Vitality to rise

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Origen (5/6 with Coral) vs. Team Vitality (1/1 with bet365 and William Hill) – 18:00 CET

Team Vitality will be coming into this game riding a high after defeating G2 Esports in their first game this week, and impressive feat considering G2’s then 7 – 1 record. This proved Vitality are, as we predicted at the start of the split, one of the true contenders for the LCS title this year and in some peoples’ eyes have proved that at this point they are the second best team in the League. Origen are continuing to recover from a very poor start; beating Splyce is not much to shout about, but they are slowly starting to piece together enough wins to move them up the standings.

Vitality will come into this game feeling the much stronger team, and we would agree. Origen have struggled by and large to find the kind of individual performances that warrant a top spot in this league bar Zven, and throw on top of that issues with coaching staff (they have just dropped their head coach), we can’t see them putting up a strong performance. We should see Vitality continuing this week as they have started and take down Origen with their superior macro game.

Recommended Bet:
Team Vitality to win at 1/1 with bet365 and William Hill (2.0)

Unicorns of Love (1/1 with Coral) vs. Fnatic (5/6 with William Hill and bet365) – 19:00 CET

Unicorns will likely be encouraged by their strong performance against H2K, and if not for the struggles of rookie jungler Rudy they may have taken the win on day 1. Vizicsacsi in particular continues to impress with his strong carry performances from the top lane, and his Ryze game was one of the better Ryze performances we have seen so far in either LCS region. Fnatic on the other hand comfortably took down a poor Elements side through simply winning every lane, and their innovative top lane Nautilus, building both Banner of Command and Zz’rot Portal for split push strength, was interesting to watch.

Fnatic have relied a lot on snowballing their lanes this year in order to win games, as their vision control has been awful. Spirit is not a jungler who focuses particularly on vision, and Noxiak was one of the worst supports for warding and dewarding in the LCS (we haven’t seen enough of Fnatic’s new support to make a judgement yet). This could lead them to really struggle against a Unicorns of Love who favour a skirmish heavy strategy, and bearing this in mind along with UoL’s overall better start to the season, we are going to back the Unicorns in this game.

Recommended Bet:
Unicorns of Love to win at 1/1 with Coral (2.0)

H2K (4/5 with bet365) vs. G2 Esports (11/10 with Coral) – 20:00 CET

G2 losing to Vitality will really take the wind out of their sails, and the fact that it wasn’t a particularly close game either will concern them. The better rotational teams, H2K and Vitality, are starting to pull away from more kill focused teams such as G2 and UoL, and G2 are going to have to develop their macro a little more and rely less on Perkz and Trick to carry them with early game playmaking. H2K have a very different concern from game 1, the fact that UoL ran them so close even with a shocker of a performance from their jungler Rudy. Here, they will need to tidy up their gameplay as we peg G2 as a slightly stronger team than UoL.

It’s hard to see H2K losing this one, as they focus on strong macro in the same way Vitality do and G2 simply crumbled against this style on day 1. Kikis being exposed in top lane was another issue, and G2 may want to work harder to protect him in the draft after he was given a difficult counter matchup against Vitality, Malphite into Fiora. G2 will need to target Selfie, who is yet to look as comfortable as Ryu did in the H2K mid lane, to have a hope at success. Honestly though, H2K should be good money here.

Recommended Bet:
H2K to win at 4/5 with bet365 (1.80)

By: Arron “King Dempz” Dempsey – @arrondempers