Day two of the Mid-Season Invitational started with a bang and ended on a whimper.
An exciting clash between Europe and North America featured some serious throwing, but NA’s skill at baseball surpassed EU’s, leading to a European win for G2 Esports.
However, excitement gradually fizzled throughout the day, especially after T1 completely annihilated Team AZE in the fastest game of MSI 2022. At least Brazil vs Turkey delivered.
The snooze fest – Dear T1 and RNG, can you stop bullying the other teams?
Note to Team Aze: don’t give Faker’s his Ahri; it's illegal, and you don’t stand a chance to win against him. What were you thinking with that solo queue composition? This is inting at its finest before the game even started.
Watching T1 perform to such a high level is enjoyable, especially for macro and micro purists. However, T1 vs. Aze looked like a challenger team running circles around a bronze team—not enjoyable for the average viewer.
#MSI2022 pic.twitter.com/AIqNfs0QPM
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) May 11, 2022
Meanwhile, although the gold graph did not show it, Royal Never Give Up and PSG Talon gave us an okay match. After yesterday’s performance, the PCS representatives somewhat bounced back despite their eventual loss to RNG.
PSG displayed a fighting spirit and a willingness to fight for their lives to stay in the tournament. Their gameplay improvement after a top lane change (Azhi for Hanabi) is encouraging ahead of May 12’s match against fastPay Wildcats.
Unfortunately for the teams in Group B, they are playing for second place as Royal Never Give Up is levels ahead of them.
Vulcan has had enough, tries to catch a plane to North America mid-game! Sort of.
EU > NA is becoming a worrying trend for North American fans. Once again, they had to play each other today, and it wasn’t close until it was.
G2 were comfortably ahead with a 9k gold lead until they activated Full LEC Fiesta Mode and threw at Baron Nashor. However, EG’s ability to choke also struck and it proved way stronger than G2’s. At least NA is better than EU in choking?
Another noteworthy moment was when Vulcan had enough of his team and decided to go catch a plane by himself.
Good news for NA fans: Evil Geniuses won their first-ever international game. It looked as if they lashed out their frustrations at ORDER considering how brutally EG dominated. Let’s give it out for (by far our favorite LCS player, bants and all) jojopyun!
at least we beat oce unlike c9
— Jojopyun (@jojopyunlol) May 11, 2022
CBLoL vs TCL delivers once again
The everlasting minor region international rivalry gave us an exciting game as is tradition. The uprising RED Canids faced off against fastPay Wildcats, and the biggest winners of the game were the fans of both regions: both teams played their hearts out.
Some fiesta moments aside, the game was clean, especially at the start macro-wise. Wildcats did have an advantage, which they threw for a bit, but one team fight towards the end decided the whole game.
With both regions being even in the group (1-1), and PSG Talon struggling to find their form, we might witness a surprise into the Rumble stage: why not even a tiebreaker between them?
