Sion counters

I wanna get some more opinions on this because before 4.2 even if your ADC was bad you could at least win if you as a top laner were doing well and your mid or jungler were good as well. But I swear ever since the last patch games for me have been a complete dice roll, either my adc is feeding like they are playing blindfolded or my adc is playing like the life of their entire family is depending on them winning and no matter how everyone else was doing in the game if botlane does well that team wins. I'm genuinely not sure if I enjoy playing this game anymore cause it feels like I'm barely making a difference in my games anymore. I had a game today where my Sion got counter picked against fiora and went 2/10 and literally everyone on my team besides our Samira and Nautilus were doing about the same but it just did not matter because she was 17/1 and was basically killing everyone in like 3 seconds and ended the game in 17 minutes. I don't know what to do at this point because I really want to keep playing and ranking up but I don't want to invest the time in to learn how to play as an ADC because I'm exclusively a solo lane player or occasionally jungle.

I've seen a few people complain about this matchup that I usually have A LOT of fun in, due to how fed you can get, and how much agency you can have over the game's outcome.
Runes:Grasp, shield bash, second wind, revitalize, cheap shot, ulti hunter, double adaptive, and armor. Optional secondary rune tree Inspiration for cosmic insight to reduce tp cooldown even further and anything but magical footwear because we want to rush lucidity boots.
Start: Ruby crystal 2 pots. Maximize your Q damage and you should be doing well. Rush lucidity boots to lower cdr and tp cooldown. First buy: Lucidity boots and prioritize health towards your mythic, upgrading ruby crystal to kindle gem is great because even more cdr, more empowered q's Laning strategy: Priority is defending tower. If Sion is laning normally, the Cdr will give you so many empowered Q's (Make sure to get the drag through for max bonkage) that Sion can't fight you. Or if he starts to proxy, use your passive shield and W to absorb some of the damage the tower would be taking without taking too much damage yourself, and last hitting perfectly. If he proxies its fine but ideally you don't let him get past your first tower. Save your taunt if he goes for a demolish stack, remember to get a Q dragthrough at the end of taunt duration so he's slowed the maximum amount while he tries to leave turret aggro. Build path: Boots, Mythic (Enemy team comp dependent), Sunfire Aegis, Demonic Embrace, Abyssal Mask. Second Item: Sunfire because Titanic grants bonus AD and we're trying to turn our double adaptive into AP with our third item. We want to be on the same side of the map as Sion reacting to his push. We need waveclear in our second item and this lets us counter push lanes Sion pushes and leaves letting us follow him. At this point we still have lots of CDR and Sion has probably been building mostly health and armor so he still loses hard in fights to us.
Mid-Late game strategy: Go to where Sion is and make sure the minions don't even get to go under tower. Champions do much less damage to towers without minions under them. This is why I run TP with summoner spell haste. We want to prevent Sion from winning the game, while using our ulti to prevent our team from losing. Third Item: Demonic Embrace. You can buy the blasting wand for more damage first if they have multiple tanks, otherwise build only the giant's belt to hide the technology until it is ready to be completed. Once built, Sion can't 1v1 you, ever. Also makes your ulti shield pretty big. Now we have the all the tools we need to prevent Sion from winning the game, and our team from losing. 4th Item: Typically we need at least 1 MR item. This does that and give us more damage by reducing our opponents' MR by up to 25. Almost all our damage is magical at this point so this is usually the best option for this build.

Lately I’ve been not liking maining shen as much,
Shen feels like he has way more champs that counter him then he actually counters, and his win condition feels too dependant on other teammates to use leads etc.
A big thing that really bugs me is a match ups like Sion, Garen and malphite. No matter how much I get my team ahead or how well I abuse them early, they just powerfarm and become unkillable, I feel like I can’t stop them late.
I feel like ignite is a must but ults while running it make you end up losing 2 plates quick and if you don’t convert on an ult your lead is gonzo
Lastly the thing that is really starting to get to me is how hard you have to work to get bare minimum CS with Shen and how if you want to ouch a turret it feels like you do less than a cannon minion.
I really enjoy Shens kit and love everything about him but man is he feeling out classed atm (Fell from high G2- mid G4 today so I had to drop this rant), it feels like you have to put in double the work for half the production of some of the other champs in the meta

Idk about you guys but a big part of sion being my OTP was beating the counter matchups (fiora, sett, morde, gwen)
But these days it feels like it doesn't matter how much you make these guys suffer in the first 12 minutes of the game just for them to get bork/divine run you down
I feel like the bramble buff back to 40% made it possible but after the most recent item changes I feel obsolete no matter the gold advantage.
I'm an old sion soul, maybe you youngins can teach me a thing or two so I can enjoy this champ again.

One of the goals that change had was to prevent Vertical Jungling, which used to be the meta for the majority of the last season, and it completely succeeded in accomplishing that goal. Now with the removal of those changes we saw a new strat where red side Sion invades the enemy jg and clears the camps, forcing the enemy jungler out of botside, and usually diving bot for a 4v2. Would reintroducing counter-jungle nerfs, but only to the first appearance of each individual camp fix that problem?

Recently I have played against a few tankier top laners that take demolish like sion and mundo, and what they consistently seem to do is push the wave into me and then just walk past me and proc demolish on the tower which leads to me getting heavily outscaled in the mid game through plate gold and them pressuring the rest of the team while I just split and try to get back into the game.
I can consistently get back into it if my other lanes are also not behind but I feel like their should be some kind of counter play to this strategy as I do not want to coinflip games based on the quality of my teammates. Against Sion if I try to contest the wave before it reaches tower he saves his abilities and proceeds to smack tf outta me with ewq. If I try to deal whatever measly damage nasus can deal under the tower I might happen to loose minions which just feels like a terrible gamble.
What are some tips for countering this strategy?
https://u.gg/lol/profile/na1/yashu/overview
My op.gg^^
Thanks.

They should be situational picks for when you want to dominate a lane early (eg you don't want to let a hyper scaling mid scale) or if the enemy team has 2+ priority squishies (like jinx bot tristana mid) that you have to blow up fast before they reset a passive/skill, lethality should be mutually exclusive with % armor pen, you shouldn't be allowed to buy Lethality + Seryldas for example (haven't looked at the reworked items so if Seryldas changed I'm sorry, just an example), assassins should be HARD countered by tanks even with leads, a 3 item zed should not be able to solo kill a 2 item ornn/sion unless the ornn/sion plays like a monke.
Same logic roughly applies to burst mages, they should be horrible vs tanks and situational picks vs lot's of squishies or for lane dominance.
Also both assassins and burst mages shouldn't be able to get 5 rotations in a team fight, they should blow up one maaaaybe two targets(and that's a stretch if they have a big lead) and be completely oom.

Laning Phase I usually don't die, even vs Counters (Sion has many ways to avoid deaths early on), but when it comes to mid I struggle REALLY hard to do anything in the game. It seems like Gwen was made to counter the Titan, and I'm not talking about true damage, that's the least. Her dash is obscene, her Q hits easily while I'm charging Q, she can avoid my CCs thru that blue cloud. I can't simply do anything to stop her from ripping my teammates.

So I started playing Sion recently because I though he is an easy champ but either im doing something wrong or he is bad.
I though I can afk and towrr smash but he is really bad vs some champs.
Got beaten by renek, by a teemo and most painfully recently by Atrox
I went branble first item to counter him and he still beat me 4 times in lane then took my tower and went herald on second tower.
We lost and I went 1/11...was humiliating.
What should I do vs atrox? What is supposed to do if you lose lane like I did? What would you do if you were me?
Also, not important but my team was having no adc, yuumi support and two jungkers in enemy team lol.
It really sucked tho, I could not help take obj cause I was dead....

With teams opting to play and draft their comps around hyper carries, specially Aphelios/Jinx/Zeri/Xayah. I'd like to ask what happens if these champs are banned. So far we didn't have many chances to see teams play different comps except during Play Ins.
Arguably you'd have hypercarry alternatives in the form of Kog'maw, Caitlyn and maybe even Kai'sa to fit into the current meta, and while Lucian and Tristana are also open I wonder what the big teams would do if the current big three of ADCs are banned.
My assumption is that, pro teams will still heavily prioritize bot lane as their winning condition and draft around it. Therefore, nothing major will change, mids will still pick utility roaming champs like Lissandra or Nautilus, and toplane/jungler will still be heavily contested with divers/peelers in K'sante, Sion, Vi or Wu Kong. Perhaps we would see some different picks like a Sivir comp or perhaps even maybe AP varus to counter all the tanks that are the meta front line picks in MSI.
This question is mostly speculative and comes from a noob wanting to learn about the metagame.

1. Saying 'oops, I missed' does NOT excuse missing a shot by that much.

1a. Nor does claiming 'I hit exactly what I aimed at'.
1ai. Even if it hits an X-Ray.
1aii. Even if it hits an EXALT Operative.
1aiii. Even if it ricochets and starts a catastrophic chain reaction of events which clears the entire X-Ray landing site.

1. Snorting or otherwise ingesting powdered Sectoid DOES NOT grant psychic powers.

2a. The case with Major [REDACTED] was a coincidence.
2b. Neither do Sectoid Commander or Ethereal materials.
2c. Ingesting Thin Man biological materials will be its own punishment.
2d. None of the X-Rays tastes like chicken, no matter the sauce or cooking method.
2di. Please forward any AIRs (After Ingestion Reports) to Dr. Vahlen.
2e. With the recent discovery of Elerium; no. Just… no.

1. Mixing an Alien Grenade with the potatoes was not funny the first time, even if the elerium cores have been removed. Kitchen staff DO NOT appreciate when their sacks suddenly start beeping.

3a. The noodles here are not made from Sectoid fingers.
3ai. Even if one was found in last night’s Spaghetti Surprise. (Yes, I am aware of the irony).
3b. The reverse is even worse.

1. Stop referring to the base security personnel and rookies as ‘cannon fodder’, ‘D-Class’ and/or ‘redshirts’. This is negatively affecting morale.

4a. Personnel caught in violation of this order will be issued one red shirt one size too small, and be required to wear it for the next 24 hours. They are also considered off the combat roster.
4b. Rookies are not to be called ‘Tactical Ablative Armor’. Calling them ‘Taa-taas’ is also frowned upon, whether they know the meaning of the acronym or not.

1. Shaving the head is NOT required for psionic operatives.

5a. Neither is the mohawk.
5b. Just a general reminder that psi troops have PSYCHIC POWERS. Annoy them at your own risk.
5c. The previous statement is not taken to be permission to prank the psi operatives, despite the new peaks in power output we were able to record.
5d. Gaining psionic powers does not result in the loss of all hair. Stop telling this to potential Psi recruits.

1. Personnel are no longer allowed to play the game colloquially known as ‘ARC Roulette’.

6a. No, the Armory will not issue revolvers to compensate for this.
6ai. Even if Titan Armor helmets could stop the bullets anyway.
6b. How is ‘super hot wasabi’ even connected to… you know what, I don’t want to know.

1. ‘It was mind control’ is no longer an excuse for walking into the wrong bathroom, barracks or bedroom.

7a. In response to continued walk-in incidents, bathrooms and barracks have now been issued easy access ARC Throwers.
7b. Psionic operatives are to stop mind controlling friendly operatives and forcing them to punch themselves in the face or walking into the wrong bathroom/barracks.
7bi. Especially if you are repeating the phrase ‘Stop hitting yourself!’ while doing the former.
7bii. This now includes kicking, walking/running/sprinting into other things, making them black out and wake up on Vahlen’s operating table (especially in only her stolen underwear) or inside the Interrogation Chamber.

1. Stop requesting Dr. Shen to fabricate ‘something that will get Dr. Vahlen to loosen up’.

Addendum: The next person to do so will be placed in the Interrogation Chamber. - Dr. M.V. MD
8a. This does not suggest that Dr. Vahlen is a sadist.
8ai. Nor does this confirm that she is a sadist.
8b. Stop requesting Dr. Vahlen to ‘break out the leather and the whip already’.

1. It should be reminded that rank insignia is indicative of an operative’s rank, rather than being an actual rank, nor does rank insignia bestow special powers.
   
2. Outsider crystals are not to be used for recreational purposes.
   

10a. Even if they make great disco lights.
10b. Powdering it and inhaling for narcotic purposes will be its own punishment.

1. No playing inappropriate music when senior staff walks in. This includes (but is not limited to):
2. The Imperial March with Bradford

• The 24 Chimes
  
• Hell March
  
• Anything related to X-Files, Doctor Who, Torchwood
  

11a. Playing ‘Danger Zone’ while X-COM Interceptors are intercepting a UFO was only funny the first time.
11b. ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is relatively unknown in Vietnam. Nobody there will get the joke.
11c. Playing ‘Shoot to Thrill’ over the speakers moments before pushing a red and yellow MECT out of the back is ill advised.
11ci. Even if bystanders stopped to applaud.

1. Engineering Staff: S.H.I.V. units are not to be programmed to shout “YOLO!” when given ‘double time’ commands.

12a. S.H.I.V. units are not ‘one shot minesweepers’.
12b. There is one pink afro wig in Lost and Found, retrieved from the top of a S.H.I.V. unit. Could the owner come and retrieve it?

1. Laser Aiming Modules do not ‘double the Laser Rifle’s firepower’.

13a. Glow sticks are not plasma power cells.
13b. Plasma power cells are not to be used as glowsticks.
13c. Rookies in a flak vest and armed with Laser Rifles are not to be referred to as ‘Imperial Guardsmen’.

1. No replacing combat stims with recreational drugs.

14a. No augmenting smoke grenade payloads with recreational drugs.
14b. As funny as it was, no replacing Berserker combat drugs with recreational drugs.
14bi. Bootleg footage of the ‘High Berserker’ incident will be returned immediately.
14bii. No, you cannot keep a copy.

1. Misuse of Ghost Armor will result in being issued one standard issue flak vest painted bright pink, to be used for the duration of the next mission.

15a. Given the last incident involving Ghost Armor, Vahlen has been issued an ARC Thrower. She has advised me that it is malfunctioning, and may take a few more shots than normal to completely subdue a target.
15b. Archangel armor is not to be used for bypassing elevator wait times.

1. Shouting ‘Don’t tase me, bro!’ will not make you immune to ARC Thrower discharge, nor is it a passphrase to shut down an active ARC Thrower.

16a. The ARC Thrower IS able to bypass Titan Armor defenses. Operatives are forbidden from hazing recruits by taking advantage of this.

1. While inventive, it is discouraged to use grappling hooks to drag hostile forces closer.

17a. Even if you shout ‘GET OVER HERE’ while doing so.
17b. Dr. Vahlen is very happy with the recent upshot of live captures, yes, but so are the number of broken arms we’re getting from overenthusiastic ‘fisher pros.’

1. Operatives are to stop cooking bacon on the heat sinks of plasma weapons.

18a. Even if it is perfectly cooked. All samples will be confiscated and disposed of.
18b. This applies to all other surfaces not intended for cooking.

1. Agents are advised not to wear black suits into combat, as it will most definitely be the last suit they will ever wear.
   
2. No, the science team will not use MELD to make it/them bigger.
   

20a. Even if you have two hearts, yes that is still cheating.
20b. Vahlen does not need a ‘Primary Heart installed’.
20c. The next person to suggest that Vahlen “graft a [REDACTED] on her hand so that she can go [REDACTED] herself.” will be presumed to be volunteering theirs.
20d. Having the ‘Hyper Reactive Pupils’ Gene Mod is not an excuse to go staring at people.
20e. Operatives with Neural Feedback Gene Mods are advised not to go taunting Psi Operatives; they are still perfectly capable of punching you in the face.
20f. Operatives enhanced with Bioelectric skin should not ask people to pull their finger.
20g. Rookies are advised that X-COM Operatives jumping to superhuman heights are benefitting from Muscle Fiber Density Gene Mods, rather than it being a requirement for Sergeant rank.
20h. Operatives enhanced with Mimetic Skin are advised that it still works with their armor on. Your clothes have been deposited at Lost and Found.

1. 384 is the number of helium filled floaties required to make a Floater float. As this is now known thanks to experimental data, nobody else needs to try.
   
2. Stop asking the Japanese rookies if they enjoy the Seekers.
   

22a. For that matter, stop using Rookies as Seeker bait.
22b. Stop using Rookies as any kind of bait. This includes pushing them out the back of a Skyranger when infiltrating an AO to check for ambushes.

1. MEC Troopers have made an incredible sacrifice for the defense of humanity. It is ill advised to demand that they perform ‘The Robot’.

23a. Operatives are advised not to make Robocop, Terminator or Deus Ex jokes around MEC Troopers.
23b. Operatives are advised to stop calling the Restorative Mist ability as ‘the Feelgood Fart’.
23c. Yes, they do still have ‘the important bits’. Please stop asking them.

1. MEC Troopers are advised to stop throwing other Operatives and S.H.I.V. units, regardless of the tactic’s effectiveness.

24a. Other MEC Troopers are still operatives.
24b. Even if the Operatives volunteer for ‘Fastball duty’.
24c. MEC Troopers claiming that S.H.I.V. units are able to volunteer or communicate are to report to Medical immediately.

1. Painting your MEC pale green does not make you the Hulk, restrict your ability to communicate to two word sentences or exclude your ability to use ranged weaponry.

25a. Nor does painting a MEC (or armor) red make you go faster. Purple does not make you sneakier. Blue does not make you more lucky.
25b. While Operatives will not be punished for collateral damage caused for the sake of completing the mission, dropping your high powered railgun to pick up and throw vending machines, motorcycles or automobiles at an X-ray is considered excessive.
25bi. Even groups of X-Rays.
25bii. Even if it was more accurate than the last five shots from the railgun.

1. Unauthorized modification of MECs are NOT ALLOWED. This includes (but is not restricted to):

• Grills, spinning rims, and other modifications derived from automobiles.
  
• External speaker systems outside of standard issue.
  
• Stereo, DJ, or other audio systems
  
• Strobe lights, laser projectors, smoke machines and other ‘party gear’.
  
• Video projection or nonstandard/civilian issue networking equipment.
  

26a. Projecting porn onto the wall and playing 80s music worked on EXALT Operatives ONCE. Do not attempt it again.
26b. Playing ‘Smooth Criminal’ around EXALT operatives does not lower their morale.
26bi. Even if they scream at you to stop it. Please take firefights seriously.

1. Stop telling the rookies that EXALT operatives keep ‘Fun Time Syringes’ on them.

27a. Even with the justification ‘if they’re dumb enough to believe it they deserve what they get’.

1. Satellites launched by X-COM are used for UFO surveillance and tracking, NOT as a part of X-COM’s Mind Control Relay Network.

28a. To clarify: X-COM does not have a Mind Control Relay Network in deployment or development, nor does it plan to have one.

1. Operatives are reminded that Shen is perfectly capable of speaking fluent English, as well as knocking all your teeth out with a wrench.
   
2. Any operative caught playing “Chilong Tingtong” will have their punishment administered by Major Zhang himself.
   
3. Do not ask Annette Durand if she’s ‘good at French kissing’.
   

31a. Even if she takes it as a challenge.
31ai. Especially if she takes it as a challenge.
31b. Nor do you need ‘a large sample pool for statistical analysis’.
31c. Nor does she need her own sample pool.

1. Chryssalids are not from Australia. Please stop asking the Australian Operatives this.

32a. We do not know where Sgt. [REDACTED] got the tarantula from, but consider it due punishment for those Chryssalid jokes.

1. If an idea involving an X-Ray makes you giggle for more than 5 seconds, don’t.

33a. This goes double for anyone of Lieutenant rank or higher. You should know better.
34: Calling in an artillery strike on a populated residential area infested with Chryssalids is regrettable, but acceptable. Calling in an artillery strike on your ex-wife’s car is a waste of resources.
34a. MEC Troopers reporting ‘Kinetic Strike Module Malfunctions’ around property belonging to ex-spouses are to report to the MEC bay immediately. We have therapists for this sort of thing.

1. Just because two MECTs walked into the motor pool and then walked out with a S.H.I.V. following them means that they checked a S.H.I.V. out of the armory. It is prohibited to imply that anything untoward happened.
   
2. Firestorm pilots are advised to AVOID Area 51, Tunguska, Roswell and other well known UFO sighting locations.
   

36a. Stop it with the crop circles. Seriously.
36b. The Firestorm pilot responsible for the ‘Hello Kitty’ crop circle is to be congratulated. Please report to Hangar 1 for immediate arrest.

1. Whoopie Cushions and other ‘noisemaker devices’ such as cherry bombs, party poppers and cap guns are now considered contraband.

37a. Unveiling an entire box of tamagochi as they are dying is not the best of morale boosters.

1. While fedoras are acceptable for casual attire, all X-COM operatives (MEC Troopers included) are reminded that it is off duty attire. Standard issue helmets can be found in the armory.

38a. The rule of thumb is; if you’re getting shot at, now is not the time for casual attire.
38b. This order is now rescinded following the success of OPERATION: Nice Hat.
38c. I can’t believe that worked. - Dr. Shen
38d. Take that hat off.
38e. Please refrain from putting hats on top of your hats, claiming extra protection. It’s giving the rookies the wrong idea.

1. “Shoot it in the face.” Is valid advice on the subject of engaging a Muton. “Nipple cripple it for massive damage.” Is not. Stupidity does not come under ‘acceptable losses’ of our recruits.

39a. It works, I swear!
39b. Doctor Vahlen has a Berserker live capture. She’s looking forward to the demonstration. Captain [REDACTED], please report to the Interrogation Chamber.

1. We have not issued a melee primary weapon for non-MEC Troopers for a reason.

40a. S.H.I.V.s are mechanized fire support platforms, not cavalry. Under no circumstances should an X-COM Operator jump on a S.H.I.V. with a sword and charge the enemy screaming ‘DRIVE ME CLOSER I WANT TO HIT THEM WITH MY SWORD.’
40b. This should not be taken as a challenge.
40bi. Even if it’s your sword.
Written by RogueVector

1. Honor duelling is expressly prohibited under any circumstance.

41a. So is ‘Dishonor’ duelling.
41b. Even if the Titan armor is immune to pistol rounds.
41c. If your idea involves the words ‘Fusion Lance’ and ‘Chryssalid Jousting’ in the same paragraph, STOP.
41ci. Sectoid, Thin Man, Muton and Ethereal Jousting are similarly prohibited.
41cii Whoever was caught on camera riding a Sectopod like a bull, report to the Commander’s office. Immediately. You left a tooth by the D6 doorway.

1. The alien entertainment system recovered during the Alien Base Raid is still an alien artifact and should be treated as such, rather than a video game system.

42a. Even if it is fun.
42b. Beating the Commander’s high score (Tag CMDR) is prohibited.

1. MEC Troopers are strongly advised not to binge their own body mass’ worth of candy, sweets and pastries simply because ‘they lost some weight over the last three days’.

43a. Even if ‘it can’t go to my thighs’.
43b. You still need to be able to fit into the MEC.
43c. Proposals for a ‘Superheavy MEC’ have been rejected.

1. MEC Troopers are not punishable by having their ‘limb privileges’ revoked.

44a. Similarly, Psi Operatives are not punishable by having anything waxed or shaved off.
44b. MELD is not an addictive narcotic, and therefore threatening to withhold it from augmented troopers will end in you getting laughed at.

1. No taking chainsaws on Terror Missions. Zombies die to gunfire just as easily.

45a. Rocket propelled chainsaws are right out.
45b. Shotguns will be issued on a case-by-case basis.

1. Attention, MELD-enhanced X-COM Operatives: doors are still a thing. Please use them.

46a. This means stop using the ventilation shafts as a shortcut, and don’t dive through every window you can find.
46b. Ventilation shafts will be cleaned for their monthly maintenance. If there’s anything you don’t want the maintenance team to find, move it away now.
46bi. If there’s anything there that you know the maintenance team doesn’t want to find, move it away NOW.

1. The need to complete an ‘activation ritual’ is completely optional for MECTs and Psi Operatives. Stop insisting that it’s necessary.

47a. Saying ‘assuming direct control’ is not required for Mind Control.
47ai. Even if it helps. The detrimental effects are much worse than any positives.
47b. MECTs should never act like a 10 year old magical girl. No matter what you’ve named your MEC.
47bi. Yes, even if you can do the voice. Especially if you can do the voice.

1. Stop harassing Psi Operatives for mind sex.

48a. Psi Operatives are to stop offering mind sex. You can’t do it.
48b. Just because Vahlen says you can’t, doesn’t mean that she’s tried.

1. MEC Troopers are hereby exempt from morning PT. We’re getting earthquake warnings whenever you guys pass by the sensor stations.
   
2. Jellied Elerium is a fuel for flamethrowers. It’s not ‘A REAL MECT’S DRINK!’.
   
3. MECs cannot combine. Do not attempt this maneuver.
   

51a. It won’t work. Even if you shout ‘Gattai’ or ‘Combine’ or involve the words ‘super duper’.
51b. Similarly, Psi Operatives cannot meld into an ultimate form by simultaneously using mind fray on each other... Please stop.

1. Cyberdisks are not to be used for recreational activities, be they inactive or active.

52a. S.H.I.V.s do not have a ‘fetch’ protocol.
52b. Using MECs to play frisbee is frowned upon.
52bi. This means you’re not allowed to do it. Not that you’re allowed to do it if you’re frowning.
52bii. Even if you’ve drawn a frowny face on your helmets.

1. The ability of the ARC Thrower to capture drones is well known. Using captured drones on panty raids is grossly inappropriate. Even if you try and blame it on the aliens when caught.
   
2. Tea bagging, happy dances and other celebrations are to be done on flat surfaces, not on an Ethereal’s chest.
   

54a. Blowing a hole in a Muton and dancing in the resulting hole does not count as a flat surface. Save it for the rec room, people.
54ai. This includes having a MEC stomp it flat enough to mail.
54b. Related to the above incidents, remember that all X-COM base security footage is to be publicly released following the end of the war. Several high-ranking X-COM Operators doing ‘victory strip dances’ will certainly not be appreciated.

1. Removing a MEC Trooper’s arms and declaring them ‘armless’ will be punishable by a severe summary kicking.

55a. Similarly, ending an argument by removing a MEC Trooper’s legs and declaring that they have no argument to stand on is prohibited.

1. MEC Troopers are reminded that any ‘therapeutic rolling’ should be done in rooms or in the gym, not down main access ramps.

56a. Even if the slope makes it more fun. We don’t want you getting run over or stepped on.

1. MEC Troopers are reminded to attach limbs in the appropriate socket, and to match ‘L’ Type limbs with ‘L’ Type sockets. You should not literally have two left feet as it will result in you walking in circles.

57a. This also includes putting on two right feet or two right hands. Operatives are reminded that they are professionals fighting a war, and should be ready for combat at the drop of a hat.
57b. This does not mean that the new ‘standby’ alarm is a dropping hat.

1. Operatives are reminded to minimize contact with journalists, reporters and other civilian media unless lives are on the line. While we have yet to have an incident involving the mention of X-COM, Operatives are reminded that they are to avoid answering that you are part of any organization, group or unit, be it real or fictional. This includes (but is not restricted to):
   the Ghostbusters U.N.I.T. Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division the Men In Black the Beatles comeback tour aliens Space Marines Space Nazis Space Soviets Space Hippies Martians Uranusians EXALT (Really?) Planeswalkers X-Men Torchwood Scooby Doo's Gang the SCP Foundation the Brady Bunch the Power Rangers Kamen Rider Magical Girls Justice League Injustice League the League of Legends The Horde The Alliance the Illuminati the Priory of Sion Team America World Police Thunderbirds International Rescue 3rd Street Saints King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table Pan Pacific Defense Corps Cerberus Raczak Roughnecks / Rico's Roughnecks the UNSC ONI Section III the 105th Orbital Drop Shock Trooper Division Stargate Command the Parahuman Response Team Blackwatch CADMUS the Adeptus Mechanicus Megacity One Department of Justice Raynor's Raiders the Colonial Marines the Grand Army of the Republic the Rebel Alliance the Galactic Empire the Royal Manticoran Navy/Marine Corps Wolf's Dragoons Section 9 Xenonauts Hellsing the Mane 6 Mobile Infantry FOXHOUND Diamond Dogs Ghost Recon Voltron Force the Planeteers Jedi Knights Black Knights Boy Scouts Girl Scouts (even if you bring back cookies) Zombie Emergency Response Operations I.R.S. back-taxes retrieval committee Society for Creative Anachronism Iscariot the plumbers Jehovah's Witnesses The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) The Church of Scientology Robin Hood’s Band of Merry Men PETA Team Dai-Gurren MOC-X House Lannister House Stark House Baratheon House Targaryen The Night Watch Team Four Star Krusty Krab Crew Team Rocket, Aqua, Magma, Plasma or Galactic The Aristocrats Hydra Santa’s Elves Brotherhood of Nod Global Defense Initiative Overwatch Blackwatch Talon Professional Heroes
   
2. Operatives are to remember that some behavior deemed common and tolerated in a more military setting is also known as ‘sexual harassment’ in civilian workplaces, such as the science labs and engineering bays. X-COM Operatives are reminded that fraternization regulations are in place for the duration of this war.
   

59a. In short; keep it in your [REDACTED] pants.
59b. Or as Major [REDACTED] put it, 'this is not XXX.COM, boyo'.
Written by RogueVector

1. While it is generally accepted that rocket launchers and other explosives are capable of being a universal problem solving device, Security (and by extension, Maintenance) would like to remind them that locked doors can be unlocked remotely, and are just a comm call away.

60a. Using an ARC Thrower on a door will do one of three things: 1) Fry all the circuitry, locking the door permanently until a team could be dispatched to replace it. 2) Electrocute anyone on the other side of the door or 3) Nothing.
60ai. Yes, the fluke with Sergeant [REDACTED] was just that; a fluke.

1. X-COM Operatives, when you rescue a civilian that has almost been killed by an invader, the suggested leading question should be 'what is your name?' to ensure that the civilian is not in shock. Asking them 'am I still in the year 3050?' is only going to exacerbate an already bad situation.

61a. This also includes ‘I look human, right?’, ‘I need a refill, can I drink your blood?’ and ‘kneel before Zod, take me to your leader’ are all equally counterproductive.
61ai. Billing them for Alien Extermination and Life Saving is prohibited.
61b. Offering them bits of Muton to eat is right out. Even if you pronounce it mutton.

1. Questioning EXALT insurgents should involve relevant subjects only. Asking them when they last got laid or for the orbital velocity of the moon is discouraged.

62a. Inquiring after random relatives, however, has proven to be somewhat effective. X-COM Operatives are now encouraged to shout ‘THINK OF YOUR MOTHER!’ in an attempt to make EXALT insurgents hesitate on using their Happy Fun Syringes.

1. X-COM Operatives are to cease referring to Psi Operative’s ‘mindfray’ abilities as ‘magic missile’ and throwing d4s at enemy forces when they are assaulting enemy positions.

63a. The Commander is willing to admit that OPERATION: PIERCED EYE’s last kill was impressive. Now stop doing it.

1. X-COM's armory is stocked with a wide variety of helmets built for almost any situation. Homemade Imperial Stormtrooper helmets should not be worn into the AO.

64a. This also applies to any other helmet not issued by X-COM armories.

1. MEC Troopers, please stop requesting Dr. Shen for additional chainsaws to be placed on a MEC's primary weapon, elbows, fingers, knees, feet, knuckles, head, crotch or in single/multi shot rocket tubes.

65a. Skyrangers do not need chainsaws anywhere.
65b. Hover S.H.I.V. Chainsaw variants? No.
65c. Operatives are to stop asking Dr. Shen to develop a chainsword.
65d. Operatives are expressly forbidden from trying to develop a chainsword on their own. Sergeant [REDACTED] is still recovering in medical.

1. While creative and useful use of duct tape is encouraged among staff and operatives, cruel and immoral use of duct tape is forbidden.

66a. Put it this way: even Vahlen was disgusted. Stop it.
66ai. Once again: This does not confirm that she is a sadist.
66b. Stop duct taping lawn gnomes to MECs, S.H.I.V.s and on top of your helmets.
66c. MEC Troopers are encouraged not to exclusively use duct tape for repairs on their MEC suits.

1. No mind controlling Mutons to beat them at a game of Rock Paper Scissors in the middle of a firefight.

67a. Similarly, chess with Ethereals.
67b. Colonel [REDACTED] is to leave his Monopoly set in the Rec room when on mission.
67c. We have the eyes of the world upon us, ladies and gentlemen. Psi Operatives are forbidden to use mind control to play Russian Roulette by Muton proxy with an alloy cannon.
67c. Especially if you're gambling on the results.

1. MEC Troopers are discouraged from shouting "Go go gadget..." just before using MEC equipment.

68a. Stop calling your attacks. Intel is unsure if the invaders understand our language or not.

1. We understand that X-COM Operatives recently discovering that they are Gifted or granted MELD enhancements will be eager to test their limits and break through. We have a gym and testing ranges for that. 'Flashbang hot potato' is not one of those ways.

69a. Even if you're in Titan armor.
69ai. MEC Troopers doubly so.
69b. Other grenade variants of the game are similarly prohibited. Including remote detonation grenades.
69c. If requested, the kitchens have been allowed to issue one regulation hot potato per squad for training purposes. Do not consume.

1. The performance of 'X-COM: The Musical' will be postponed until AFTER the Invasion.

70a. Return all samples of Invader cadavers, armor and vehicles to Intel.
70b. Due to protest, the order for the dismantling of the Invasion set has been rescinded. It has now been designated 'training zone 506' and is freely accessible to all staff.

1. Replacing all the command staff in the Geoscape with sectoid corpses propped up in the seats was not funny. Bradford is still recovering in the medical bay.
   
2. Major and Colonel ranked Operatives are to be reminded that X-COM does not operate on a traditional chain of command and so they do not outrank the Commander nor Central Officer Bradford and cannot countermand their orders.
   
3. The Skyranger is a top secret, cutting edge, incredibly agile, supersonic troop transport capable of getting X-COM Operatives anywhere within the globe in a matter of hours. Stop requesting its deployment for the sake of ‘real’ Chinese food.
   

73a. This also applies to Indian, European and other ‘local’ foods.
73b. Even if there is an operation there at the time.

1. Science Staff: live captures are immediately processed in the Interrogation chamber. While your astuteness is appreciated, we do not require you to submit Security Containment Protocols.
   
2. Yes, sectoid heads fit almost exactly into toilet bowls. No, the toilets were not designed for that purpose. No, the reactions of the base staff and other operatives are not funny. Now stop it.
   
3. Celebrating an Operative’s birthday is well within the bounds of acceptable recreational activity. Celebrating it with an actual Floater as a pinata is not, no matter how much candy you’ve stuffed it with.
   

76a. Using Thin Men, Sectoids, Mutons, Ethereals or Chryssalids as pinata is also prohibited.
76b. Doubly so if they’re still alive.

1. The proposal for an Annual X-COM Taco Fiesta has been rejected.

77a. The proposal for a Bi-monthly Burrito Bash is similarly rejected.
77b. The much more reasonable proposal for an occasional themed food night at the cafeteria has been accepted. The cafeteria has had a tablet installed where suggestions can be submitted.

1. Our motto here at X-COM is 'vigilo confido', not 'rookies first'.

78a. Neither is it 'kill it with plasma'.
78b. Nor is it ‘if it bleeds, we can kill it’. There’s no need to restrict ourselves.

1. Chewing gum during Psi screening interferes with the test results. Stop it.

79a. So does listening to music while in the chamber.

1. Stop feeding the rookies caviar and then 'accidentally' dropping an empty sample canister marked 'Chryssalid Eggs'.

80a. An elite JSDF commando is now afraid of salmon roe and sushi. This ends now.

1. Operatives joining a rookie at a table just as they're finishing and asking them 'would you like to know what you just ate?' are expected to clean up the mess.

81a. Even if the answer is 'perfectly normal food'.

1. On completion of a mission it is paramount that the Skyranger is returned to X-COM HQ immediately. No stopping by a nearby country just because you heard their chocolate was good.

82a. If it really is that good, put forward a requisition request.

1. When volunteering for covert ops, don't show up to training in a black tuxedo with martini in hand. It's not that kind of espionage.

83a. Even if you look ‘smashing’ in one.
83b. Covert Operatives are to be advised that Dr. Shen does not make gadgets that small.

1. All Operatives must indicate that they are indeed present in Stealth Tech familiarization sessions, not that 'you didn't see me there'.
   
2. When the Council was asking for volunteers for a covert operation, 6 MECTs kitted out with hypersonic railguns, jet packs and Kinetic Strike Modules was probably not what they had in mind.
   

85a. Neither were they looking for 6 Heavies in Titan Armor carrying as much Blaster Launcher ammunition as they could carry.
85b. No, dropping one Heavy in favor of a Sniper in Titan Armor does not help.

1. Stealthy means 'to remain undetected' not 'see how many grenades you can duct tape to a Muton before they notice'.
   
2. The Council is simply the Council. It is not short for the Council of Poorly Lit Bald People.
   
3. Crowbars are indeed issued to X-COM operatives, but for the purposes of breaching doors and prying out obstacles, not as melee weapons.
   

88a. Tactical hatchets and combat knives may be requisitioned as melee weapons, but keep in mind they are to be used only as weapons of last resort.
88b. The fact that you've killed three times as many Mutons with your knife as you have with your rifle means that you're a bad shot, not that you're a good knife fighter.

1. All green food coloring is to be confiscated 24 hours prior to any drug screening. Medical has had it with the sudden upshot of rookie psych evaluations needed to be done.

89a. This has now expanded to ALL types of food coloring and dyes.

1. Yes, Dr. Vahlen was laughing last night. This was because of an anecdotal joke told to her, and not because she was practicing ‘her super villainess thing’.
   
2. Rumors of a relationship between the Commander and Dr. Vahlen should stay as that: rumors. Both are professional enough to tolerate such scuttlebutt amongst the staff and are maintaining a perfectly professional relationship. The inappropriate text files found on the X-COM network, however, have been deleted and the author left unnamed but with a warning. This is your last chance.
   

91a. X-COM stands for eXtraterrestrial COMbat unit. In no way does this imply that we’re the set of a soap opera. Stop making up baseless accusations that would violate fraternization regulations.
92.The Commander does not fistfight with Berserkers for his morning exercise routine.
92a. The Commander is not the ultimate goal of the alien invasion.
92b. The Commander’s real name does not include the word 'Badass'.
92c. The X-COM Alpha Site was designed to keep invaders out, and was not made to keep the Commander in.
92d. The Commander isn’t the only man to ever make Dr Vahlen beg.
92e. The Commander cannot predict the future, and neither is he a clairvoyant psychic.
92f. The ‘instant karma’ incident with Squaddie [REDACTED] in the rec room involving a pingpong ball, two pool cues, a glass of water and three sheets of standard A4 paper was not an example of the Commander’s wrath.
92g. The Titan Armor program was a success, not ‘a failed attempt at making a suit capable of surviving an arm wrestling competition with the Commander’.
92h. The Commander has so far proven to be incapable of mind control. Stop insisting that he controls your every action.
92i. The ‘Commander Badass’ jokes stop now.

1. Stop asking Dr. Vahlen if she’s been using anal probes. What use are they for when we have interrogation chambers?

93a. Stop asking Dr. Shen to make them.

1. MEC Flamethrowers will turn all meat to ash. Stop trying to cook with them.
   
2. ‘The Commander made me do it’ is not a valid excuse for inappropriate actions.
   
3. ‘We’re testing it for Shen’ is an outright lie if the mission recorder on your armor starts with ‘I hope Shen doesn’t catch us’.
   
4. The petition to give S.H.I.V.s sapient AI and childish voices is refused, no matter the number of signatures on it.
   

97a. Even if Dr. Shen’s name is on that list.
97b. The idea to add grappling hooks for extra mobility, however, is under consideration.

1. Yes, the Alloy Cannon does have a significant amount of recoil. However, using that recoil to maneuver mid-flight is ill advised.

98a. As does using the recoil to attempt double-jumping. We have Archangel packs for those needing to reach high ground on a regular basis.
98b. Despite MELD being able to regrow toes and feet, please cease attempting to ‘double jump’.
98c. Attempting rocket jumping is also prohibited.

1. Please ensure that the floor is sturdy enough to support a MEC jump-stomping Mutons before attempting the maneuver.

99a. This maneuver will not be renamed ‘Death From Above’, MECTREKT, ‘Highlander burial’ or ‘goomba stomping’ in official AARs.
99b. Archangel armor is not capable of this maneuver. For proof, please refer OPERATION: EAGLE CLAW file S13 at 14:48:02.

1. Psi Operatives are advised to stop mind controlling rookies, noncombat staff, Mutons and Ethereals into acting like puppies.

100a. Even if they can make the sounds.
100b. Not allowed to act sad once we’ve been forced to shoot the Berserker-puppy. You know it was going to happen.
100c. Not allowed to bring in actual puppies to replace the Berserker-puppy.
100d. Cats and kittens are also out.
100e. Even if it was your wish since you were little, no ponies on base.

1. Operatives that have secured a UFO landing site are forbidden from attempting to fly it back, even if it is only a few hundred kilometers from the nearest X-COM base. Recovery teams have been instituted for a reason.

101a. Even if you know how to hot wire the thing. You’re not doing Jersey stereotypes any favors, Cpl. [REDACTED].
101b. Neither UFO Flight Simulator nor Kerbal Space Program are a valid ‘training background’, nor an excuse to try.
101c. Flying low to the ground over the road to ‘watch for traffic signs’ or ‘get directions’ will only cause a panic. Don’t.
101ci. Even if you obey all traffic laws, we don’t want a line of police cars leading from [REDACTED] to X-COM’s Alpha Site.
101d. This goes double for battleship class UFOs captured.
101di. Even if you found enough spray paint to write ‘HUMANITY FUCK YEAH’ on the side.
101e. Even if you leave cash on the counter, stopping by a fuel station for snacks, drinks, maps and/or souvenirs. This goes double if you’re leaving behind Zimbabwe Dollars.
101ei. No, it doesn’t matter that you bought them for the Commander, Dr. Vahlen and Central Officer Bradford.
101eii. Even if you also brought enough for Dr. Shen and the rest of the base staff.

1. Rookies are advised that MEC Troopers do not have pain receptors on their hands. Therefore, if they offer you a glowing piece of metal, refuse.

102a. MEC Troopers are reminded that we need all hands on deck. This requires unburned, intact and non-mechanical hands if possible.

1. Yes, the operation was on the beach. As to why you chose to deploy in swimwear, nobody knows.

103a. “She would if I would.” is not a valid reason.
103b. While Dr. Vahlen and the Commander appreciate the fact that the Operatives thought to give them gifts, matching swimwear is probably the last thing they want to see right now.

1. X-COM Personnel with a background in animatronics and taxidermy are greatly discouraged to putting their past skills to use with alien corpses and janitorial closets.

104a. Especially bathroom stalls. Some people would like their personal emergencies to run smoothly, not suddenly.

I can't take it anymore so I just have to spill the beans before it is too late. TLDR at the end with key points.
This MSI "meta" seems defined by LPL/LCK teams and our draft masterminds are obviously trapped in a draft loop where Jinx and Aphelios seem inevitable.
Truth is, neither Jinx nor Aphelios are the reason of T1, GenG, JDG (or BLG) domination. ADCs are just slight variations around a same concept : kiting with Lethal Tempo then chasing with it once it is stacked. Few exceptions exist but have yet to be picked or find success and I believe them to be suboptimal. I don't think Berserker or Hans Sama get "hand diffed" this much by their counterparts. Almost everything is about draft and game plan.
However the statement that you win through botlane is definitely true.
I will thus briefly give my takes on the keys for the West to defy odds.
​
Eastern botlanes have a slight edge because 1) they know when they have lethal over an opponent mistake in the pure 2v2 while most LEC/LCS teams are kinda flipping all-ins without questionning their efficiency on the macro-game timing 2) very effective training at QSS/Cleanse/Mikael rotation
1) Gets obviously fixed by scrimming a lot, and not disrupting botlane duos every offseason
2) Communications and establishing a clear pattern of cleanse rank does not seem unreasonable to ask from a professionnal player.
My most important take is that the game right now revolves around few key picks : Annie, Vi, Ksante, Sion, Kennen, Rakan and Lulu.
In the particular case of Bin the problem is that he is really good at Kennen, Ksante and Gwenn and creates by himself a draft lead since he is willing to blind pick, thus forcing opposing team to either pick or ban Kennen first rotation if you don't want to get Smebbed again. You cannot pick Ksante against him either since his elite Gwenn will counter it. Target banning him is useless anyway since he will go back to Gnar and be useful anyway in the end.
Zeus Jayce needs to be respected too.
In the case of G2, I think BB does just fine with Kennen anyway so it is not too problematic. A phase rush Liandry cassio would be great too against tanks.
​
It is important to note that IMO the actual "unfair" "G tier" and game warping champions with very little counterplay in the actual meta shape is a thinned list. I would narrow it to Kennen, Rakan and Lulu. These 3 are actually really problematic. Except when Zven plays Rakan for obvious reasons we will not discuss further.
Draft phase will more or less lead to inevitable presence of at least one of the aforementionned champions unless a team is really going all-out on a first game fiesta drafting in the setup of a BO5, which is likely to happen with G2.
I believe a great team is able to track and prevent Kennen from wrecking a drake or elder fight with proper timings, good TP awareness and counterpicks ; this is mostly the support role, but Kennen has a few weaknesses against duelists, is particularly sensitive to Exhaust (please supports stop going ignite against Kennen top), and hates a galeforce Caitlyn to name a few.
I have to recognize Rakan and Lulu are some unstoppable forces as of now. They have elite laning, incredible scaling, give either high durability to tanks/adcs or unmatched engage in late game. I always joke about Lulu giving Aphelios/Jinx free 10k gold at 25. In the current setup where Yuumi is disabled, eastern times have defaulted to Lulu and the West watches the damn witch wrecking them doing nothing proactive against her.
To be fair it would indeed be trolling to ban Lulu and Rakan and give free mid priority by giving up Ahri/Vi combo for example.
The fact remains current eastern typical draft is either Jinx or Aphelios AD with 2 tanks + Rakan/Lulu ; the occasional Thresh/Blitz matchup may occur. If JDG, T1, GenG or BLG are cornered and have supp deprived of Lulu/Thresh with a first pick Aphelios, they will default to Tahm Kench.
I am quite unsure about many things in the universe but I have two things I am 100% sure about : (1) Nautilus support is trash in the current meta (2) Lulu should not be a free pass to victory.
As of now Lulu support has 90% winrate when she is drafted appropriately by competent teams. I think Lulu is the monster no one dares to point out really. The reason Ruler, Guma, seem to unbelievably better is that they secure the Lulu so often on red side, they just happen to walk on water. At this level of play, being permanently shielded + movespeed buff just give them the edge enough to literally exploit lethal tempo range extension and seemingly "1v5" fights. This is the power of the Lulu.
Every teamfight "miracle" from JDG happens because of Lulu. It is always lulu gaming.
Here is the thing. Lulu has horrible weaknesses pro players can't make up for. This is where Mikyx should sneak to break the mold of the meta and make them doubt heavily.
So here is the tip :
Lulu + Tanks comps are terribly weak to Brand supp (username+flair checks out) building Liandry/Rylai/Void staff. You just melt them because Lulu needs to stand in the Pyroclasm range to buff the adc. Lane is also free win against Lulu in general, and you may ensure 7K+ gold lead pairing brand with a strong adc (Draven, Cait, Ezreal) and an early diver jungler. This is the perfect angle for Yikes Nidalee/Poppy/BelVeth.
Lulu is also better responded through Seraphine support (better scaling, slowing/rooting to counter whimsy'd ADC) and offers a Senna+Tank angle.
In the name of all that is holy Mikyx, use the Brand dark technology to counter Lulu/Aphelios or Lulu/Jinx lanes. You are the chosen one. You can't loose games with it.
Pick the tuxedo skin for the great occasion tommorow. I know you will.
TLDR :
- Slight coordination diff among LCK/LPL botlanes duos but nothing unachievable for Hans/Mikyx
- The real G tier picks currently are Lulu and Rakan, and not Jinx/Aphelios who are just a consequence of Lulu goddess status
- ZAC against Ksante please please please
- Lulu cannot reasonably be banned but has counters
- BRAND support destroys 2tanks+lulu comps even in very high ELO and is the key to disrupt Eastern drafts. Mikyx as the Chosen One should play it with a Tux skin.
- Seraphine disrupts Lulu strength in teamfights
- SENNA BOTLANES good

​
https://youtu.be/HKbdzdTAxDs
The following is a selection of CloudTemplar’s (LCK commentator) discussion of GenG vs T1 match. I was originally going to skip this, but CT quite literally streamed and made this video just before he left for London, so to respect that spirit of professionalism I felt I should do this as well.
Likewise, all credits to CloudTemplar (https://www.youtube.com/@CloudTemplar_official) and the production crew of CloudTemplar's channel. All emphases are added by the translator.
​
​
The first series had a lot to talk about and was super fun, since it went all the way to game 5. But also, I was packing my bags while watching the G2 and MAD, and in a somewhat different sense that match was fun too.
T1 prepared for the draft in this series very well. If we go into details, there were points where GenG had good things going for them, above all Game 4. Nocturne was chosen by T1 as the centerpiece of T1’s playmaking, and given that there was also Ahri in it, T1 had to make plays and snowball. But they had nowhere to go. It was hard to go through GenG’s defense, and their comp was not better in terms of late game value as well. Nocturne is a champ that expires as the game goes on. Eventually, it just ends up becoming a light switch, nothing more. I think GenG did their draft quite well in Game 4.
But, if we look at the whole series, I got the impression that T1 had prepared quite well.
​
Game 1
What was the question that we had going into this match for T1? Their most recent face-off ended with GenG’s victory, right? Why was that? Let’s review that a bit. T1 in spring achieved great success and fun with a playstyle that was the pinnacle of snowballing. But Riot suppressed that snowballing through meta changes, suppressed the use of enchanters in bot lane, and made all ranged support champs more difficult to use. So there was a greater emphasis in the meta for melee supporters, playmaking picks, and prioritizing compositional balance and value over snowballing. T1 did seem to be having difficulties in finding that direction, while GenG absorbed that quickly to the extent that people were questioning why they were playing like that early on. GenG had a head start in practicing that comp, and that shone through brilliantly in the finals.
Because of that, I said this while reviewing the finals: When we talk about T1, since the flow of the game is more toward compositional balance and value, mid-to-late-game, the question was how they would play around Gumayusi. If we look at T1’s recent history, they did show that style in the past. But in spring, they didn’t play around Gumayusi. On the contrary, Keria often took the spotlight. The turn didn’t go to Gumayusi, so to speak. It is difficult to say that T1 preferred comps where they would play around and protect Gumayusi. But right now, the trend requires that play. How, then, would they go about that?
Well, to be upfront about the conclusion, it seems that T1 had made that play their own quite successfully, and that the direction they had set for their practices was also proper. Okay, that’s that. We then go to see the individual components of that conclusion. Let’s start with the top lane. As you know, it is very difficult these days to penetrate the opposition in top lane¹. Just as it became more difficult for the support player to choose enchanters and plink away at the opposing players, it is also more difficult for top laners to just brute-force through the opposition. On the contrary, the focus is more on compositional balance and stability, like having a warm bowl of soup².
Of course, some situations call for brute force, and the next game (MAD vs G2) showed different set-up in the top lane. However, I want to speak to what I see as a more general trend. Zeus was a player who preferred to play aggressively, if we have to characterize him as a player. But today? He overtly played toward tank champs, preparing early game strats with Sion. These I think are really praise-worthy.
Jungle draft was also super important. There are some good picks there, first of all in my opinion the hecking OP champ Maokai, which you should not give to the opposing side in any circumstance in my opinion. T1 recognized that as well. Secondly, Vi. If you’re not going to play a comp like Xayah-Rakan where you can set up the teamfight for the opposing team to be drawn into your formation, Vi does sit at a pretty high tier for this patch version. T1 was also cognizant of that, and prepared good alternatives to be played.
Above all, mid is important, right? I think different teams might have slightly different read on the meta when it comes to mid lane. For instance, I watched the BLG and found myself wondering why they were insisting on Taliyah and Syndra, when these picks are much more difficult to play in the present version. Orthodox mage champs³ or champs that are slow on their feet, carry champs, etc., make it difficult for the team to play to the tempo that they should be playing. I think the meta for mid lane right now is that we are seeing mid lane champs play the role of a facilitator, establishing early to mid game prio, making plays, applying pressure when appropriate, and leaving the carrying to the jungle. So I was quite curious as to how T1 and GenG would be playing around this trend.
Annie is, in LCK from mid-to-late split onward, a must-ban pick. But she was getting through the bans pretty frequently in other regions. In MSI as well, you see teams letting her through more than you might think. I think GenG prepared a draft where they would let Annie through and counter, and in the end the Sion and Annie picks were eventually stopped in the third game. But, if you look at game 3, T1 almost had the game and tripped over their own feet because they were rushing. What I want to say is, Faker is so so good at playing Annie. Faker’s Annie was so good, in fact, that it suppressed Chovy’s monstrous late game presence from manifesting. On the contrary, Annie was making all the plays, and furthermore, playmaking isn’t the only thing important in this situation: Laning is also important in order for you to make plays. But Faker was doing quite well in laning and transferred that smoothly to playmaking. Not to mention all the plays coming in clutch.
So from the first game, which is like a warm-up and a means to gauge the opponent’s strength, GenG first picked Ahri in blue side. You know that Chovy’s Ahri often leads to victory. In Chovy’s hands, Ahri scales, makes plays, and even carries. She is a scary pick that goes very well with the present meta. But here? The feeling I got was that Chovy’s Ahri was shut down by Faker’s Annie.
Okay, this is a bit off-topic, so apologies in advance. So after the first game, there were a lot of people in the venue, right? The guys who were going in for the next game were waiting, filming teams, et cetera, in LoL Park. So we had a lot of opportunities to chat in breaks and other periods. What I found it to be so funny was that Sion dive brute forcing through GenG bot lane. Pardon my language, but GenG side must have been so tilted from that. Like, how funny was that? Doran was already there, got T1 bot lane spells, but T1 just bulldozed through with Sion. So we were just thinking about this ourselves: Would it have been better for Doran to get the waves then TP at level 2?
But anyway, T1 prepared well, and above all, Poppy pick was also a god’s play. GenG didn’t collapse completely today, right? They were fighting back, even achieving some scenes where they could have flipped the game, but Oner’s play, man… I have to come clean about this, just for you guys. When Oner hit that three-point home run over left field, I was really itching to make an Ohtani⁴ reference, but since Ohtani’s a Japanese player, it felt somewhat inappropriate. “Aah! Oner sends it home, like Ohtani!” (laughs) I had to stop myself from that. You know, because they are both O’s, Oh-ner and Oh-tani. Wait, that showed up in the chat too? I guess I wasn’t the only one then. (laughs) My mouth was just itching to go Oh. But anyway, Oner really played like Ohtani. Clean hit.
I also remember another scene. Do you remember that skirmish at drake? When GenG really could have contested the game? If Wukong could have gotten even a single spin in, the results would have been completely different. But Poppy was there to stop anything from happening. These scenes. Poppy played a huge role. That was very impressive. The comp was countered, Wukong had a difficult time because of Poppy, et cetera.
So in conclusion, T1 prepared very well, countered GenG’s strategy, and above all T1’s strategy was just very good. Sion’s use, Annie’s use in mid lane and good plays from that, and in respect to the flow of the game, sending the turn to Gumayusi. That’s the strategy that is dominating the scene right now, right? Passing the ball to the ADC, and Gumayusi taking that ball and shutting out the opponent.
For GenG, the players might have thought, “well, these plays are all good, but we can’t go through with them.” Every play they tried ended up being blocked somehow.
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1 Original 뚫는. I guess more aggressive, carry-oriented picks like Fiora, as opposed to tanks?
2 Original 국밥, or rice served in hot soup. The origin of this meme is quite a long story: Sometime in the recent memory, people in online spaces began comparing prices of certain things with the price of rice soup. Rice soup is an epitome of people’s food, being (arguably) cheap and filling, so statements like “look at the price of that tagliatelle with wild garlic pesto and sous-vide flank steak! You could have like 5 rice soup with that kind of money” began to appear. Over time, “rice soup” in lol scene took on the meaning of obvious, perhaps boring, but effective champs. I think Sion and Ornn is the best example of that?
3 Original 스탠딩 메이지, ap champs without significant mobility options, I think?
4 Yes, it’s that Ohtani, Ohtani Shohei playing for Angels.
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Game 2
T1 went for repeat Sion-Annie and added Nocturne and Blitzcrank. No matter how you interpret that, it’s a time attack¹ comp. But that time attack requirement wasn’t super stringent. It was a comp that allowed you to keep the pressure once you get it going. There’s a lot of playmakers in the comp, capable of initiating the teamfight sharply, and Blitzcrank is a champ that is optimized for solidifying your lead. The question was how to get the snowball rolling.
For GenG, the question was what pick they should be playing in mid. There’s not a lot of picks that you can use in mid right now, especially as the pick/ban phase goes on. In the end, GenG went for ASol, and I thought to myself, “wow, that’s one heck of a high-value comp.” You could have just picked anyone playing LoL and ask, “what side do you think has advantages late game?” and 10/10 would choose GenG. It is certain that GenG’s comp is stronger in late game. It is clear. The question is how well GenG can hold onto the game.
Interestingly, GenG was doing quite well in the game. They were holding on well, defending things quite well. What is important here is, however, the idea of a snowballing comp. We often talk about snowball comps as having a single coin². If that snowball is blocked, there’s nothing to do. But what I want to say here is, snowball comps, playmaking comps, comps that require initiative, all these from a different perspective mean that you can continue throwing punches. Jab, jab, jab, jab, hook, straight, jab, jab, straight, uppercut. You just continue to pile on the opponent. Even if GenG can block nine out of ten punches, one can go through and do some real damage, because T1 is just pummeling GenG. GenG had a lot of scenes where they made good defense, even had counter-attacks, but in the end, like how Blitzcrank grab gave huge returns to T1 just before the drake fight, or most decisively in my opinion, Faker’s side-stepping Viego’s thrust at top lane? That was huge. That was decisive. If Viego had gotten that first hit in and managed to blow up Annie there? That teamfight would have started on a completely different foot. GenG could have swept the floor with T1. But Faker side-stepped, delayed GenG’s action, and Gumayusi got there earlier than Peyz. GenG lost big in the end. That set the snowball in movement and Blitzcrank just pulling a MadLife there. GenG was holding their ground well, but they open their eyes and found themselves downed. GenG had to hold on until ASol could mature to become an ancient dragon, but the game ended when ASol was still a hatchling.
Peanut was getting turns for GenG, but in that top lane skirmish, his fed Viego couldn’t perform due to all the variance in that fight. That resulted in the game collapsing. That game was decided on that razor’s edge, so in some ways one can make the interpretation that GenG could have taken things slower. But if you ask me, I think GenG was put on a back foot from drakes. T1 had good control over drakes, and you saw how T1 got a free dragon with Blitz grabbing TK. I think these could have contributed to GenG being in a rush. Holding onto the game until late game means that you still have to put up a fight to bring the game to late game, so you feel this need to seize a good angle and stop the opponent in their tracks, so that you can bring the flow of the game back to you. Yes, it is the case of T1 doing vision control very well in object fights. This could also be foreshadowing, in some sense: I think, throughout the series, GenG was generally speaking playing too laid back in object fights. They should have had a tighter focus on the fight itself, but what they did was get all the vision, get all the waves. When that happens, they are late. T1 got advantages from that frequently.
So game 2 is in T1’s hands as well. Honestly speaking, this is paving the way for a 3-0 angle. T1 performing so well, Sion-Annie putting up an ironclad defense line, it’s hard to break through. One can think here, “well that’s easy, just ban Sion and Annie.” But that also means that you will be opening the picks to some others. You have a limited number of bans. You can’t stop them all. GenG switched things around for the third game.
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1 As referenced in an earlier translation, time attack comps are snowball comps that require you to get the snowball running early on.
2 Just as one can retry arcade games by inserting coins, CT is referring to the number of attempts that you can make before the game is over.
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Game 3
GenG went for red side. What is funny is, T1 got Sion and Annie again. Of course, T1 being on the blue side meant that they couldn’t get the benefits of flex pick, and I don’t really know if they were thinking of flexing anyway. But at any rate, what should GenG play in jungle and mid? Maokai is not getting through bans, Vi is also most likely banned, and you have to go for AD jungle. Wukong was the option left, but Wukong’s turns are way too slow. Mid got Rumble, and so the picture was quite interesting.
In the end, this was a chaotic game. There’s a lot of important scenes that one can choose for this match, but if we had to choose one… T1 had the game blown open. Kha’zix was super fed. The flow of the game was all towards T1. They got the initiative, Gumayusi was a monster, T1 was pushing and pushing, just about to solidify their lead. But because of that, T1 I think had points where they were becoming greedy, and I saw that they were in some sense wanting to end the game quickly. Was this the game with that baron fight? T1 was just leaving it open for a steal. I was wondering why they were doing it. Honestly? I was surprised at that. You have such a lead: Why leave it open for steal? Of course, Kha’zix can burst down the baron, but if you get it stolen, the game spins out of control. I couldn’t help but think that T1 was just wanting to end the game early. “Let’s just end the game right now, we’ve got momentum. Come on, quick.”
Because of that, fights happening throughout the map in a chaotic manner, going over the hill to hit the opponent, it was a mess. Sion and Kha’zix going in to get Rumble, and Chovy buying stopwatch in that split second, so many scenes. But until the very end, T1 still had the opportunity to close the game. Even until the end, at baron. It felt as if T1 had been bewitched. Kha’zix shouldn’t have gone in for the steal. T1 should have focused on setting up the teamfight, or give up baron and move to drake, slow down the turns. Their judgment should have been different, and it would have been different if T1 was in their usual headspace. But it felt as if T1 was just struggling to catch up, and GenG didn’t miss that. GenG was hyper-focused, making plays, isolating players, accumulating wins, culminating in Peyz ending the game with excitement.
Bluntly speaking, T1 almost had this game. I thought that it could very well be 3-0. But the result ended up being interesting. But in this moment, it wouldn’t be so strange to think that that was just T1 slipping, that T1 would wrap up the match 3-1.
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Game 4
As I said earlier, game 4’s draft ended up with GenG getting a great comp. The comp is weighty, plenty of late game value, hard to isolate. But T1 had to force through that comp. GenG banning Annie and Sion was also great. It’s not fair to say that banning the two ruined the draft for T1, but in the end, that decision to ban the two was great. After all, Zeus’ Sion and Faker Annie were performing so well. I think it is positive for GenG to pick that up.
So GenG fans are getting their hopes up, and T1 fans are feeling the trauma. Indeed, T1 had nothing to do for game 4. Because of that, T1 had to overextend, and overextending just naturally played to GenG paving the road to their win.
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Game 5
I was quite curious about how the side selection and draft would go here. T1 chose blue, and got K’Sante right away. There’s a lot that you can discuss after this, but for me, strictly speaking, GenG had things going for them if we only look at picks and bans. GenG had plenty of things that they could contest, strengths that they could capitalize on, but anyway, T1’s use of K’Sante requires AP jungle, and T1 choosing to use Rumble was quite significant. T1 taking Gragas away from GenG was also significant. Xayah-Rakan specializing in drawing the opponent in is also significant. All these things come together in the end and created a good situation for T1.
On the other hand, do you remember the last teamfight for this game? GenG in the last moment was drawn in, annihilated, and the game ended. For me, rather than talking about how rushed that initiation was, or how the team members didn’t respond well to that initiation, I think of something different in this situation. For me, LoL is a question of whether you go in, draw enemy in, or get drawn in¹. This is a very important question in setting up the teamfight. This is also something that you can adapt for your own LoL experiences. SoloQ, pro level, everything. The most important thing here is, if you get drawn in, that’s bad. Nine out of ten. What does it mean to get drawn in? You get drawn into a position that the enemy has set up for you to be in. You are being rushed. It makes it difficult for you to link up with your teammates. On the other hand, the team that draws in the opponent has less things to worry about. The opposing team is just rushing in, arms flailing, and you can just funnel them in to where you please and shut them down.
(Chat: Bro, we’re not at that high level, man…)
It’s not about the level of the play. It’s the core of what LoL as a game is.
In some meta, it can be better for you to go in first. If you go for a dive comp and set it up well, you can smash the opponent aside. But right now, in this meta, it’s a meta that favors balanced comps, hyper-carry ADC, and teamfights where you protect your ADC. Generally speaking, in this kind of arrangement, you shouldn’t be drawn in. Let’s say that you are standing there with a gun. Is it better for you to get your sights aligned and wait for the opponent to move in to your range, or is it better for you to run forward and spray the bullets? It is better for you to stand, wait for them to move in, and shoot². It’s not like Equilibrium, where you can pull those fancy moves. You’re not John Wick. It’s better for you to be patient and aim, and the same goes for LoL. It is important to set up the formation and the teamfight to your advantage. So right now, that’s why I say that you will most likely lose if you get drawn in.
So the question is, then, when can you draw the opponent in? What mental state must they be in to get sucked in? In my mind, if you find yourself being drawn in, in simplified terms, you find yourself in either of the two categories: Firstly, when there is range disparity. If the opponent has longer range than you, you gotta get in, even if you don’t want to. Secondly, when you are in a rush. If you stand around? You get poked to death. If you are losing in side lanes? Your turrets get destroyed. If you don’t have the objects under control? You let the opponent have baron or elder. There’s many reasons why, but if you find yourself in a rush, you can’t help but be forced to move in. Get that? In some ways, when you find yourself with your back against the wall.
In the end, I think GenG had points where they could contested this game, but first and foremost, GenG was also in a position where they were being rushed, because of object control. The drake was such a pressure for them. I actually think that GenG had points where they could bring the fight to T1 before they are subjected to such pressure from drake. But that, connected to the idea of that foreshadowing earlier, didn’t happen because GenG was too slow in object management. T1 on the other hand had a tight grip on vision and object from get-go, and that delayed GenG’s timing. I think that must have contributed to the psychological pressure that GenG was placed in.
Let’s go back to the last teamfight. Delight goes in, GenG is drawn in. One can do some simulations on different outcomes. For instance, when Alistair goes in, the rest of the team coordinates in a single breath to take Gumayusi out. There could have been more positive scenarios. But in my opinion, I think the situation in which GenG had to start the fight by going after Xayah was bad to begin with. Why? Xayah is a specialist in drawing in. GenG didn’t have to start the fight. It’s a fight of patience. But GenG was under pressure from neutral objects.
If I imagine the best strategy that GenG could have employed, I would say poking, centered around T1. One can say that Rumble was a great pick for shutting that down, because of Rumble’s exceptional range and ult, but Ahri was still in the game. She was strong. If Ahri had thrown charms as poke, moving around in flanks to pressure T1, then GenG can prolong this face-off of patience. But the pressure was too great from drake control. So I thought that GenG must have wanted to win quickly. The teamfight just ended the game in a blink of an eye. T1 set that up really well and drew GenG in very well. GenG in the end was being out-macroed, which made them impatient. The same goes for turret and drake management.
Furthermore, in some sense, you look at that situation and look back to the draft, and realize how Faker’s K’Sante escaping from the opponent, Zeus shutting down Doran’s Gwen with Gragas, Poppy not being super good at situations where she has to go in… All these things overlap and build upon each other.
GenG committed a lot of plays in mid lane in early to mid game, and Faker just absorbed the pressure very well. K’Sante is already hard to isolate, but GenG made a real effort to do so. Faker just kept getting away with it, and took a lot of turns away from GenG. These have an effect on the game in the end.
Analysis of drafts are by nature result-based. You can ignore this if you want. But I found myself wondering, would it have been good for GenG to just play Jinx, just as he had done? I don’t know if this would change things a lot, but the reason why I bring up Jinx is her strength in range. Having Ahri and Jinx could have helped GenG put the pressure on T1 to make the move, perhaps. You know, just by poking. Of course, Aphelios is a good pick and all, but it’s hard to say, I guess.
But in the end, in the question of whether you go in, draw enemy in, or get drawn in, GenG got drawn in. GenG got drawn in real deep. T1 drew GenG in, and their buildup until they could draw GenG in was top notch. I guess that’s the summary of the game 5.
It’s not easy to initiate fights with Alistair these days. Strictly speaking, it is difficult to see Alistair moving in deep and starting the fight as very threatening. Alistair, Ahri, Poppy, et cetera, can create a comp where you can make sharp dives, but that isn’t optimal.
(Chat: Wasn’t the game over at game 3, though?)
Well, it didn’t, so we are talking about it now. Look, I said that T1 almost got game 3, but LCS and LEC teams also had games where they were on the cusp of winning. But did they succeed in breaking the Nexus? No. The question is how you do feedback and analysis on these things.
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1 The chat at this moment begins to recoil at the potential use of double entendre: “Whether you smash, get smashed, suck, or get sucked off”
2 The original references Woong’s winning ceremony (https://youtu.be/83pjAmgKx_s)
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Conclusion
I think this series showed that when it comes to matches between teams at top level, draft is important, and the question of whether they can do their macro without being rushed is also important. The second part of that question comes from object and drake control. When the game draws out, losing one or two drakes doesn’t feel too terrible, but once the snowball gets going, it really gets going and puts you under a lot of pressure. I think this is an opportunity for the teams to think back on this as well.
T1 achieved victory. They prepared well, and were also playing very well. As I said earlier, the game centered around Gumayusi and laners playing their roles well, pick preparations, these were all very good. I think GenG learned a lot from the match too. If the two teams ever face each other again, though it is difficult to say that they will, it would be quite interesting to see how the flow would be different.
In my mind, the reason why the red side got good results in this series, although T1 won in blue side for the last game (and this result not being generalizable), was because the red side could create confusion on the opposing side with flex picks. We as watchers can just say, “Sion top, Annie mid, ezpz”, but it’s not really obvious as to where these picks will be going. The red side also can give one good pick away to blue and get two in return. That can be good as well, depending on the situation.
Why is Nautilus high in priority? The mid right now is centered around playmaking, and Nautilus is S-tier in that regard. Nautilus also has decent line push, can respond well to gank, can perform in skirmishes and dives. Bluntly put, Nautilus can do its part just by using the ult. It is also a flex pick as a cherry on top. Naut support is also quite decent, you know. How nice is that? It has a lot going for it. Naut support is also high in priority.
Look, do you remember what I have said for LCK teams? LCK is a region that is obsessed with priority. Flex picks. There are things that LCK can just not go without. Initiative. Flex picks. Those are great tools to make the opponent dance to your tune. You start ahead in the battle of wits.
(Chat: Peanut said that game 5 was difficult for GenG because the game turned out to be different from their expectations in set-up. What is this set-up that he is referencing?)
Hmm. I am not the one who was playing, so I can only offer my own interpretation. What I think is, GenG probably wanted a game that they could play at their own pace. But as they played the game, they felt rushed. This is my interpretation. They probably didn’t want to go in for that play. Who wants to start a fight by going after Xayah? Xayah is the best in drawing you in.
Support pick? Milio and Yuumi are banned, so there aren’t a lot of enchanters that you can use. Lulu has the highest tier in that. That is also the reason why you see grab supports or joker picks. Why no Ezreal? Ezreal, simply put, is early to mid-game champ. Generally speaking, we don’t consider him a late game value champ. Ezreal is about seeing the item spike early on and using that to snowball. Karma goes well with Ezreal, and that power in laning is the strength that you want to capitalize on. But this doesn’t go so well with the present meta. The only way you can use is Ez-Karma busting open the lane, but if you trip once, you lose. If you run the full marathon, though, that could be good.
(continues to talk about meta)
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Postscript: CT was really not happy with MAD’s performance.

22nd Century: Context
Earth, deeply overpopulated, polluted and prey to continuous massacres, has long been plagued by a series of wars for the control of the last resources. The planet is almost a “slave” of a group of powerful corporations and industrial groups being an empty shell of its former might and seeing the decadence more and more closely. Up to date, only the Moon, with a few small mining and industrial installations, and Mars, on which wars raged even worse than those on Earth, with the various powerful industrial organizations contending the exploitation rights and mineral resources, have been colonized. The 21st Century lifestyle is now just a memory, millions of people live in the slums and degraded suburbs of huge metropolises such as Delhi, Beijing, Los Angeles, Moscow, and Paris, struggling against devastating unemployment and increasingly powerful crime syndicates. The civilian administrative bodies no longer have any real power while the military apparatus and the entire system of terran governments are directly controlled by the large industrial and financial groups, directing the states’ policies according to their interests. World population has been fluctuating for about fifty years between 9 and 10 billion, depending on wars, famine and epidemics that are becoming, together with starvation and malnutrition, increasingly virulent. Moreover, the religious message has largely lost its appeal to the masses after the Great Jihad of the mid-21st century, oppressed also by a continuous campaign of secularization and anti-clericalism carried out by the terran polities.
The largest power-centres are the shades of their former strength, flawed by corruption and driven by desperation in trying to control the last natural resources on Earth. The major recognized powers on Earth are:

• Atlantic Alliance: based on the former United States of America, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Ireland and Iceland has a light grasp on all the Americas, northwestern Europe and footholds across the whole world. Moreover, the AA (short for Atlantic Alliance) has several bases on the Moon and five big colonies on Mars.
• China Republic: heir to the Chinese powerhouse of the 21st Century, controls mainland China, Taiwan, Mongolia and has a larvate protectorate of the various Indochina states and solid alliance with the United States of Indonesia and various African allies. China controls two large, heavily populated, Martian colonies, and smaller Lunar colonies.
• Indian Union: born after the final victory of India on Pakistan during the 2040-2050 wars, spans its control on the whole Indian subcontinent and can rely on the Philippines and minor allies in Africa and central Asia. Despite being the latest power to arrive on Mars, it has established big colonies and exploitation areas.
• Eurasian Alliance: based on the geopolitical Eurasian heartland premises, is a large collection of confederated states spanning from Belarus and Ukraine to the west, to Georgia to the south and to Siberia to the East. Eurasian Alliance has also minor colonies on the Moon developed by the Russian states and on Mars by the Amur state.

2159:

Escalation of the quarrel on Hellas Planitia. the start of the 3rd Martian War: Free communities of Atlantic Alliance settlers on Mars had expanded well beyond the official boundaries between the two spheres of influence, Atlantic and Chinese, settled in the Nairobi Treaty of the 2144 after the Second Martian War. Already in 2156 and 2158, clashes were recorded among regular Chinese troopers and Atlantic settlers, resulting in casualties among both parties.
The important region of Hellas Planitia was thought to be indispensable by the Chinese, and they couldn't tolerate any infringement of their mining and water drilling rights to support the rest of their own colonies. On July 4th, 2159, the umpteenth Atlantic attempt in expanding their range of settlement in the contested area resulted in a military action led by the 3rd Chinese Martian Brigade, that pushed deep into the area and then rounding up the settlers and destroying all the Atlantic structures in the region.
The answer of the Atlantic Alliance President, John Marshall Bradley, was dire: the Atlantic Alliance, fed up with the confrontation on Mars and confident in its own military capabilities, declared the state of war to the Chinese Republic on July 7th, 2159. Following this, the Chinese establishment retaliates with heavy shelling of Atlantic Alliance positions on Mars already the very day after.
Heating & escalation, the Martian Theatre: Despite the meagre military forces present on Mars for both the Atlantic Alliance and the Chinese Republic, the conflict escalates quickly, with reported gun-fighting across the whole planet throughout July and August. A significant Chinese success is attained on September 12th, 2159: the 2nd Chinese Martian Brigade managed to seize the control of the of the Ius Chasma, a significant gateway towards the core Atlantic colonies of the Valles Marineris.
The reduced level of manpower on Mars, linked also to the combat being carried out in extra-terrestrial conditions, was also worsened by the immediate escalation of the drilling preparations on Earth, stopping any shipping of resources and troops to Mars. Another major power decided to take advantage of the war between Atlantic Alliance and Chinese Republic on Mars: The Indian Union unilaterally started another front on Bosporos Planum on September 23rd, attacking Chinese backward stations successfully.
Arm wrestling on the Rhine: The rising power of the German Confederacy was again worrying the French Republic like in the previous three centuries: the Germans were very close to attaining the status of prime power on continental Europe after their successful annexation of Switzerland in 2145 and the joining of Denmark and Sweden in their confederation in 2154
Moreover, the tightening of the relationships between the Netherlands under Chancellor Dietmar Proch, opening the chance of the German Confederacy enlarging further west, was met by deep worry by the French, who deployed all their land armies on the border on March 2159, under the executive order of President Philippe Godard. Following this upsurge of mobilization, the Germans proceeded in starting mobilization two days after.
Songda typhoon: An extensive typhoon, reached the Ryukyu archipelago with enormous force, killing over 2,000 and causing damage for over $ 12.5 billion.
Sahel famine: Failure of crops due to extensive drought struck heavily the Sahel area, with starvation-related casualties peaking over a million in Sudan, Mali and Chad.
Eurasian Federation elections & calls for change: Ekaterina Rozanova of the Eurasian Reform Party is elected president, defeating the incumbent Pyotr Prokopenko, leading the Eurasian Patriot Front. The elections are referred to be very violent and partially rigged in favour of Rozanova, especially in peripheric republics.
Astana Conference and diplomatic attempts to solve the Martian question: Under the peacekeeping attempt of the only major power still out of the conflict, the diplomats from Atlantic Alliance, Chinese Republic and Indian Union met to try to sort out a peaceful end of the surging war. The broker of this conference was Eurasian President Ekaterina Rozanova and the city hosting was Astana, between October 14th and October 18th.
Despite the drafting of a joint declaration of intent to sort out the differences in a peaceful way, the distrust and the will to achieve a dominance position on Mars was just fuelling the fire of war. Moreover, despite the official sharing of a memorandum aimed to not involve Earth in the war, the build-up of military forces and mobilization was already undergoing.
Indian-Atlantic sea war: Just a few weeks after the Astana Conference, on November 2nd, 2159, Indian and Atlantic navies clash in the Battle of Diego Garcia, with the Indian attempt to neutralize the Atlantic foothold in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The local Atlantic Alliance Indian Fleet was forced to flee, in the aftermath of the heavy engagements, towards South African and Israeli bases due to the Indian pressure carried out by joint aerial strike forces.
Additional clashes were reported off the Omani coast, with the sinking of the HMS King William V super-carrier in the ensuing battle of Salalah on November 8th, when the 2nd Division of the Atlantic Alliance Indian Fleet was mauled by the overwhelming force of the joint Indian and Omani air forces. Moreover, another confrontation, this time between Indian submarines and the 1st Naval Division led by Admiral James Chapman occurred off the eastern shores of Madagascar (Battle of Cape Masoala) on December 2nd, when the fleet managed to avoid severe casualties thanks to the support of air forces stationed in South Africa.
Invasion of Burma and Chinese-Indian land war: After extensive preparations, a Chinese army composed of armoured and specialized infantry divisions, passed the border between Chinese Republic and Kingdom of Burma (a neutral state, leaning more towards Eurasian politics) on December 5th, 2159. In the same day, large airstrikes dissolved at soil the small Burmese air force and jeopardized most of the communication between military depots and supply centres, promoting a lower degree of responsiveness of the Burmese Army. The latter was already routed during the Battle of Lashio on December 6th and with the Chinese putting Mandalay under siege on December 10th.
Another push into Arunachal Pradesh was started on December 11th, in glacial and high-altitude battles, the Chinese prong managed to rout the Indian forces garrisoning the Brahmaputra/Siang upper valley, getting to Dibrugarh and managing to cross the river towards Bengal Bay on December 18th, disorganizing coordinated resistance in the area. In the meanwhile, the Chinese attained additional successes against the Burmese, occupying Naypyitaw on December 17th and forcing King Soe Wi to surrender and opening Burma for Chinese occupation on December 22nd.

2160:

Fiscal strike in Catalonia: Following the increased tax pressure on Catalonia, the local populace started to avoid paying due taxes towards central Spanish authority. On the eve of February 2160, several protesters attacked local tax agencies raising the Senyera flag. In the aftermath, Spanish police intervened in force, killing several protesters and arresting thousands of Catalonian separatists/nationalists.
Netherlands signs the Aachen Concordate: King Willem VII of the Netherlands signed the official document that promoted the progressive integration of the Netherlands within the German Confederacy as an associate state with immediate effects and as a Bundesland within 2170. The day after the Aachen Concordate signing (March 6th, 2160), French Republic forces crossed the border in Wallonia and Dunkerque.
Fusion power attempts go bad: An Indian attempt to turn on an experimental fusion power reactor in the outskirts of Indore turned out to be very dreadful: the uncontrolled reaction, due to inefficient magnetic fields, broke out in a firebomb that engulfed over 10 square kilometres, killing over 50,000 people on March 22nd.
The Martian theatre: Despite the fact that this massive war was named in books as the Third Martian War very few actions involved the Red Planet in 2160. Minor Chinese incursions were repelled by the prompt response of Atlantic Rapid Deployment Units while the Indian were bogged down by a trailing and failing logistical train.
Burma and Bengal Campaign: Chinese forces, coming from Burma, passed the border on January 5th, advancing in Mizoram and Manipur states of the Indian Union. The local Indian resistance was quickly overwhelmed by the mass usage of aerial support and close-by cruise missiles. Not even an Indian retaliatory bombing of Chengdu that exacted dozens of thousands of casualties stopped the Chinese advance.
In the north, the Chinese overcame the last organized Indian forces in Assam and Meghalaya in the battle of Shillong between January 15th and February 2nd, effectively opening the road towards Bengal Bay. Advancing Chinese troops met themselves on February 10th in Silchar: the Chinese were quickly encroaching the Bengal area.
An extensive Indian counter-offensive in April made the Chinese stop in their fast push towards Chittagong (Chittagong Campaign, Battle of Cox's Bazar). In the north instead, an effective assault led to the fall of Sylhet on June 23rd. The Chinese then halted their advance due to the tropical rain season and the difficulties in upkeeping the logistics of the invasion.
Cyberwarfare on electronic appliances: The three major powers involved in the Third Martian War unleashed their cyberwarfare capabilities in the Spring of 2160, disabling billions of devices and compromising energy grids, logistic chains and everyday life. These operations began to affect also other countries, with several breaking off diplomatic relations as a result.
Spill of war: the Philippines on flames: President Agapito Libunao, leading a cabinet leaning on the Indian Union's politics, was faced by extensive riots and dissent stirred up by Atlantic agents in the spring of 2160, with sudden shortages of food and power across the entire Philippines. The harsh reaction of Libunao's government included the institution of curfews and the arrest and execution of the rebellion leaders.
India-Iran conflict: Imperial Iran, a solid Chinese ally, decided to throw its weight, declaring war on Indian Union on April 24th, 2160. Iranian troops, backed by a Chinese Army start to advance into Kashmir from Aksai Chin. Attacking from the Pashto areas in Afghanistan, the Iranians captured Peshawar on May 5th. In the meantime, the Chinese offensive bottled up itself in a trench war in Baltistan and Ladakh at high altitudes.
The southern Baluchistan front was opened only in late May, with Indian attempts to push west of Karachi, aiming to attain more solid defensive positions to avoid a quick assault that would have delivered the city itself to the Iranians.
Reprise of Basque insurgency: Taking advantage of the movement of troops towards Catalonia, local Basque nationalists attacked police stations, barracks and, post offices between May and June 2160, achieving some successes in more remote municipalities. The leader of the Basque nationalists, Aitor Uriburu, declared the rebirth of the Second Basque Republic on June 11th, 2160. This declaration is met by extensive rounding-ups in Bilbao and San Sebastian by the Spanish military police, with the first official casualties of the insurgency.
African turmoil: Sudden bush wars started in Africa, with Atlantic-supported “freedom movements” disrupting the Chinese supply chain and resource stockpiles in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Congo.
Change in Japan government: The Empire of Japan saw a change in the cabinet in September 2160, with the resignation of Prime Minister Akio Yamashita and the appointment of Prime Minister Takashi Ichikawa. Ichikawa, an expression of the aggressive military and economic establishment, immediately began to evaluate the options on the table: the concurring war between Atlantic Alliance, the Chinese Republic and, Indian Union opened interesting opportunities to reassert Japanese dominance in the upper Pacific area.
Heating of Caribbeans: Mass revolts and discontent shook the Caribbean countries: local dissent against Atlantic Alliance's protectorate grew more vocal. Behind the rebellion, the Chinese Republic was seeding confusion, deception, and bribing plenty of political officers, while more and more citizens were going for the jungle, secretly armed by Bolivarian proxies, aligned to the Chinese's aims.
Krakow negotiations and Transylvanian crisis: The nationalist states of Romania and Hungary have had a grudge about Transylvania and Banat since the early 20th Century. Hungarian Republic regent Janòs Molnar and Romanian strongman Anton Mirescu were invited by the Polish president, Szymon Wieczorek, to attend a conference in Krakow on October 10th to square out their respective claims.
While the two stubborn leaders were heatedly debating among themselves, their troops started shooting themselves on border patrols. Once the news arrived in Krakow, both Molnar and Mirescu left the meeting to take command of their respective military.

2161:

Resolution of Moscow: under the goodwill of Eurasian president Ekaterina Rozanova, all the major powers ambassadors sign a binding resolution that enforces the denial of the use of nuclear, biological, and hypersonic missiles on Earth, leaving the war to conventional methods only.
Transylvanian War outbreak: Despite the efforts made in the Krakow Conference, Hungarians and Romanians were fighting on the border since the very same day of the meeting. Due to the reduced military strength of both countries, the build-up of forces required more time than expected on both sides: unfortunately for the Romanians, they were trailing in military preparations, and the Hungarians managed to strike first. In their first offensive, the Hungarians overwhelmed Romanian static defences with artillery and aerial strikes, advancing deep in the Romanian territory.
Arad fell in a few days: opening the route towards Timisoara in March, while in the north Oradea was stormed quicker, with the troops of General Laszlo Seres advancing for more than one hundred kilometres in the direction of Cluj. Despite the attempts of Anton Mirescu's generals, the Romanians were in bad shape and desperate to stop enemy attacks. The Hungarians, after a month of re-grouping, pushed again during summer. Cluj was surrounded and put under siege while the entire Banat was occupied following the fall of Timisoara in July.
The Romanian focused on a massive counter-attack in the surroundings of Cluj in September. After three weeks of heavy fighting, the attempt was thwarted by the Hungarians, who finally entered the city after four months of siege. Both the contenders were too much worn out to perform any major action in the Winter of 2161 after eight months of the intensive war, with a dramatically increasing body count on both sides.
Fusion Power Breakthrough: Close to Detroit, an old, polluted, and sullen metropolis, the brilliant designers of General Ford Motors, assisted by Japanese, European and Australian engineers and physicists, developed a new type of nuclear fusion reactor able to allow net energy gains compared to the amount required to stabilize and control the reaction. It is the start of the 22nd Century breakthrough.
Basque insurgency continues: The self-proclaimed president of the Basque Republic, Aitor Uriburu, announced that the insurgency would have gone on the mountains and deep into the cities, followed by three weeks of continuous harassment, ambushes and make-shift bombs on the Spanish forces that had occupied the rebellious region. Spanish local military command instituted curfew and martial law, with hundreds of summary executions, thousands of arrests and extensive property damage, and looting.
Franco-German War, the Flanders, Lorraine & Wallonia campaigns: The aftermath of the Aachen Concordate heated the front between the German Confederacy and the French Republic: following the French advance in Flanders, the German Army managed to stop the enemy's tide towards Brussels and Antwerp in several minor clashes during late 2160 (Battle of Waregem, Siege of Ostend) and to regain the initiative in the war.
A strong German force had been gathered in Limburg during the Winter of 2160 at the command of Feldmarschall Hans-Friedrich Dürer, beginning its offensive in February 2161, after a feint attack on the Lorraine Theatre (Storming of Thionville, Battle of Forbach). Preceded by a massive artillery barrage and surgical airstrikes on the rear of the bulk of the French forces, the Germans managed to rout three French armies in the following two months, conquering major cities like Liege and Namur. Feldmarschall Dürer's Army Group pushed deep into Wallonia, being stopped only by the commitment and self-sacrifice of French troops in the summer eve of 2161, with the front on the Haine river (Battle of Mons).
The emergency urged the French leadership to an immediate change in military command: the former Maréchal François Guillou was substituted by Maréchal Thierry Renard, who promoted an immediate re-organization of the Army and logistics to avoid another defeat at the hands of the Germans. On the other side of the front, an additional push, promoted by German General Staff, was launched in October 2161, with the assault occurring in the French's centre at Charleroi. The very mobile and heavy German armoured columns are stopped by the deliberate use of scorched earth and the self-sacrifice of the French infantry in urban warfare, de facto interrupting the German initiative in November.
Italian entanglement in the Franco-German war: In the need to re-assert Italian importance in the European balance of power, Prime Minister Giorgio Acciaroli ordered Italian General Staff to take advantage of the context in any possibility while trying to avoid a full-blown war with the quarrelsome neighbours in the North. Only after six months of extensive preparations, in early October, small Italian Alpine troops detachments breached the German-Italian border at San Bernardino pass. Saint Gotthard pass and Simplon pass, occupying the first layer of small villages on the other side.
Dhaka siege: Chinese finally manage to conquer Chittagong and in a rush, blitzkrieg campaign, supported by heavy aerial superiority, reach the Meghna river, east of Dhaka. Moreover, starting from Sylhet in the north, they reach the shores of Brahmaputra River northwest of Dhaka. In the south, some very mobile units reach the line of the Padma (Ganges) river.
Dhaka is completely encircled and suffers tremendous pressure until it is partially relieved by a desperate, last resort force mustered west of the Brahmaputra, launched in frontal assaults that achieve the conquest of several bridges on the river and pushing deep for 50 kilometres, creating a weak link between the sieged Dhaka and the Indian rear positions.
Martian Theatre, the Valles Marineris campaign: Chinese troops finally manage to push through the thin, defensive line put up by the Atlantic Alliance in Ius Chasma, penetrating in deep within the Coprates Chasma region. There, a massive counter-attack by the Atlantic Alliance Marine Corps allowed them to regain some breath for the Atlantic. Notwithstanding, now reinforced by the 4th Martian Brigade, the Chinese relaunch a tactic offensive to re-assert defendable lines that indeed results in a strategic breakthrough: the Marine Corps is overwhelmed and forced to abandon the passes leading directly to Valles Marineris.
Manoeuvres in the Pacific, the battle of Nauru: Chinese Navy had already started its deployment in the Micronesia region, taking advantage of the losses in naval assets of the Atlantic Alliance throughout the Indian Ocean campaign of 2159-2160. Nevertheless, the Atlantic managed to rally a Task Force from Australian and Hawaiian bases led by Admiral John Brooke, moving forward to reinforce the Atlantic Pacific Fleet in New Guinea and Micronesia. During their course, the Atlantic ships are involved in an ambush by the mighty High Sea Chinese fleet around Nauru, who manages to rout the Task Force and sink around a third of its force.
Philippines civil war: President Libunao’s loyalist troops clash with militia across several islands, armed by Atlantic Alliance agents in the bid to overthrow the Indian puppet. Suspect Chinese agents are also arrested by both sides.
India-Iran conflict, the new Chinese initiative: The Persians manage to seize the important port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean, allowing their Chinese allies to have an outlet on the strategic sea. Moreover, in the North, Chinese troops try to connect themselves with Persian troops in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa but are repelled with heavy losses.

2162:

Mackievič reforms: the Deputy President of the Eurasian Federation, Stanislav Mackievič, presents the new federalization reforms, which allows each republic of the Eurasian Federation a higher degree of autonomy, leading to the growing unrest of Russian elites and to the entrenchment of a disenchanted attitude from the outer republics (especially Amuria and the Central Asian ones) towards the Eurasian Federation, deeming the Mackievič reforms as insufficient.
3rd Martian War (Mars theatre): The Chinese, having finally entered the Valles Marineris region, start to siege the major Atlantic centres of population and industry, with minimal resistance. In any case, the Atlantic launch an immediate insurgency campaign, aimed to cripple Chinese logistic in the area.
Indians, suffering deeply in terms of manpower, define a pincer movement to overwhelm the nearby Atlantic colony of Hesperia Planum. In doing so, they are thwarted by the resistance of the small German Colony, partially invaded in the movement of the northern pincer.
At the end of the year, the Atlantic have managed to reinforce their crucial Valles Marineris structures with new manpower retrieved from abandoned, smaller installations and outposts, the Chinese are spilling litres of blood to try to win the confrontation in the very same area, while the Indians have de facto exhausted their supplies and manpower in the Hesperia Planum offensive. The Martian War on the very Red Planet will go stalemate for the three following years.
Signing of Kodiak memorandum: the Japanese Empire envoy, Kenzo Toshida, signs a memorandum of military assistance with the Atlantic Alliance at the presence of the High Representative for Foreign Diplomacy Dana Cartwright. The Japanese pledge their military support in anti-Chinese fashion, obtaining in exchange the right to seize the control of Korea and install a protectorate over Taiwan. In the clauses, the Atlantic are recognized with the right to gain Philippines and to arrange the new Chinese government once the victory has been achieved. The Kodiak memorandum is secret, and the Japanese aim to enter war in 2164, starting immediate drill and rearm activities. In any case, Chinese intelligence is well aware of the threat and top brass begin to act accordingly.
Caribbean problems for the Atlantic Alliance: the continuous rebellions, backed by Chinese and Indian agents, of the different polities of the Caribbeans achieved a first success; the Dominican Republic dictator, José Fernández De la Torre, is overthrown. Atlantic Alliance immediately dispatch aerial fleets to flat Santo Domingo with high-yield warheads and begin to mount an aeronaval invasion to be carried out within the following year.
Africa bush wars soar to direct confrontations: Ethiopia, solidly Chinese-aligned, expand its quarrel with Sudan (Atlantic-oriented military dictatorship) in a hot war, with the conquest of Kassala, just a shot from the border. South Africa, a major component of Atlantic Alliance, launch some “police operations” in nearby Mozambique and seizes the control of major Madagascar airbases and harbours, partially opposed by Indian commandos and local military.
Shutdown of global networks: the War, already involving three of the four major powers and plenty of their satellite states, leads to the shutdown of the global network, with information and news becoming more and more scarce and directly provided by a more and more hardcore propaganda.
Invasion of Papua: despite the defeat of the Atlantic Task Force in the sea battle of Nauru, the Atlantic Alliance launches an expedition to Papua, from New Guinea and Australian bases, against the Indonesian troops, propped up by Chinese aerial and naval assets. The Australian troops obtain some success in their initial thrust, stopped only by the heavy involvement of Chinese aerial and missile assets.
Battle of Marshall Islands: a more serious attempt of the Atlantic Pacific Fleet, led by Admiral Grace Billingsley, to connect Australia and New Guinea to Hawaiian bases is performed: the result is the direct confrontation with the High Sea Chinese Fleet led by Admiral Zhang Yong in the Marshall Islands. There, thanks to the direct intervention of gunships and missiles launched from Hawaii, the Atlantic manage, at high cost, to have the upper hand in the battle.
Dramatic famine in Korea: Korea, solidly under the Chinese heel for around a century, suffers a widespread famine, involuntarily engineered by the Chinese: the flow of agricultural products from Korea to China is increased as the mobilization has created a significant drop in food production. The Chinese officials and their local allies, led by President Myeong Ki-Woo, seize the large part of the annual production, with the starvation of around 2.5 million Koreans between 2162 and 2163.
Indian theatre of war: Dhaka stills resists the Chinese attempts to conquer it, even if the provision link across the Brahmaputra is several times broken by Chinese coup-de-main. In the west of the country, the war straggles in a high-altitude confrontation in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and in continuous advances and retreats in Baluchistan by very mobile columns of Persian and Indian armies.
The dramatic change of momentum in the Franco-German War: the energic re-organization of the French Army by Maréchal Renard allowed the French to gather four strong armies in the sector of Dunkerque-Tourcoing-Valenciennes. After a feint towards Mons, met by the amassing of German strategic reserves in the area, the 7th and 8th Army push through the Flanders region. It’s a strong success: the French steamroll second line German and Dutch troops, leading to an endless rout to Antwerp, despite the opening of the dams on the Scheldt.
In the south of the theatre, the Germans are forced to abandon Mons, Charleroi and the Wallonia, retreating to the Meuse in Liege and establishing a precarious line between Antwerp and Maastricht, leveraging on the Albert Canal.
In Switzerland, the Italians cautiously advance in Valais and Graubünden, occupying Sion and Chur, meeting minimal resistance by the Swiss German militia in Thusis.
Fusion-powered warships: the Atlantic Alliance has immediately understood that the Fusion power may allow a massive military advantage and funnels strong funds to the development and commissioning of the supercarriers named “Trump Class”, a project stopped more than 60 years before that involved the appliance of a fusion drive to the ship. General Ford Motors was urged to provide 30 engines within the end of 2164 to equip ten new supercarriers, already under construction in the American west coast shipyards.
Minor European wars: the Basque insurgency is still alive despite the thousands of arrests and executions, with additional terrorist bombings in Madrid and Sevilla. In the Transylvanian War, the Hungarians have still the upper hand in the war, despite having less available manpower than the Romanians. Mirescu’s plans for the year, with the finally completed mobilization, are thwarted by the lack of fuel and weaponry, leading to massive human waves attacks, easily repulsed by the well-entrenched Hungarians.
The Holding: in a secret location on the American East Coast, over 150 executives of the largest AA corporations agree on the incorporation of an overseeing structure aimed to reinforce their profits and their grasp on AA government and, in their vision, of the entire Earth. As a first decision, the Holding decides to prop up AA effort in the 3rd Martian War and use the Alliance as a proxy for their desired world domination.

2163:

Indonesia campaign: The Australian troops, now supported by the entire Southern Pacific Fleet led by Admiral Grace Billingsley, sweep the Chinese and Indonesian resistance in Papua (naval engagements of Maluku Islands, Battle of Palau), allowing the forces at the command of General Joseph Cowan to capture the whole island.
Atlantic Alliance forces executed several minor landings on Timor and Maluku islands, with the Australians, now supported by American and Canadian troops, facing severe resistance from Indonesians. Throughout their “island-hopping” strategy, both sides suffer horrible casualties.
Aerial terror campaign on major Indonesian cities is also a significant cause of the crumbling Indonesian morale, with Jakarta, Medan, Makassar, and Surabaya almost incinerated by Atlantic air assets, now not countered by the Chinese air force, too absorbed in the Indian and Micronesian campaign.
Chinese intervention in the Philippines: Libunao’s government, already facing a significant rebellion stirred up by the Atlantic-oriented opposition, is now invested by a massive aeronaval Chinese lift to Luzon, aimed to secure the south-eastern flank of the Chinese front against the Atlantic Alliance. The invasion includes three weeks of terrific bombing with stealth bombers and a rain of cruise missiles, killing around two million Filipinos. Chinese forces, led by General Hong Min, composed of the 11th and 12th armies land unopposed, starting the Luzon Campaign.
Chinese overstretch and relief of Dhaka siege: due to a massive eruption of rebellion and sabotage actions in Burma and Vietnam, performed by Indian agents and their minions, the Chinese deal with a shortage in supplies in the Bengal campaign, also because of the extended engagements in the Philippines and the need to reinforce the Indonesian war effort. Therefore, a new push led by the Indian Field Marshal of Army Irin Paruchuri manages to break the southern Chinese positions at the Padma River banks, connecting Dhaka from the south, beyond the weak links on the Brahmaputra River north.
Japanese fleet patrol in force: at the command of Admiral Hiroshi Ono, the Okinawa Fleet exits the bases on the Ryukyu islands to patrol the East China Sea, immediately being engaged by Chinese aerial fleets on Taiwan and gunships and destroyers departing from Ningbo and Taizhou bases. The Chinese Republic officially declared war on the Empire of Japan a few days later.
The bloodbath in Switzerland: the Germans, severely engaged in Flanders, can nothing against the Italians, which are penetrating more and more into the Swiss plateau, occupying Interlaken, Luzern, and Vaduz. The French, looking south to re-assert their dominance on the Romandie, advance to Bern and Basel from Geneve and Mulhouse. The French and the Italians meet in the outskirts of Aarau with reinforced probing forces, resulting in a battle that saw the French winners. In the meanwhile, the Germans launched minor border skirmishes in Tirol and Friuli to keep the Italians under pressure, while amassing manpower in the Saar region, to break in half the massive French armies.
Transylvanian war: with the help of German equipment, sourced through the booty of the razed Romanian cities, the Hungarians push again, entering Sibiu. The attempt of Mirescu to secure the alliance of the Serbian President, Mihajlo Nedić, are unsuccessful: neither the promise of Banat and Vojvodina are sufficient to convince the Serbian leader, that is fearing the immediate involvement of the Bulgarians (towards Northern Macedonia) or, worst, of the Italians, advancing from their strongholds in Kvarner and Dalmatia to depose him.
Rise of authoritarianism: the formerly “democratic” governments of Atlantic Alliance are more and more open about the compression of personal and social rights in the name of the “greater good” in the war. The Holding, through its own companies and fronts support the agenda of the politicians, seeking to extract the maximum profit from the war and to extend even more its grasp on the society.

https://youtu.be/9Z9UNpJnJD8
The following is a selection of CloudTemplar and Helios' (LCK commentator and analyst) discussion of GenG vs G2 and MAD vs T1 series. It is the remaining portion of the video referenced in my previous post (https://www.reddit.com/leagueoflegends/comments/13ejz54/translation_cloudtemplar_and_helios_reviews_geng/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), and as such has some continuity with its contents.
Likewise, all credits to CloudTemplar (https://www.youtube.com/@CloudTemplar_official), Helios, and the production crew of CloudTemplar's channel. All emphases are added by the translator.
​
Set 1
H: MAD Lions also prepared their first set quite well.
CT: Their play really surprised me.
H: Picks and bans with clear steps, clearly-defined plan of action. I personally have a spot marked in this MSI. It’s like a graveyard.
CT: Graveyard?
H: Yeah. For red side, it’s that brush toward the blue side. That’s where there’s a lot of casualties.
CT: Hmm.
H: I had this standard for myself that good teams make a lot of accidents there.
CT: It’s like accidents happening at raptors in the past.
H: Yeah, like that. In fact, MAD played around that area quite proactively, creating accidents left and right for T1. I felt that they had really sharpened their fangs for the match. This is the lions of Madrid. Pyke moving around and applying pressure across the map, Lee Sin going to mid and getting a double, I thought to myself: “Today’s not going to be so easy, is it?”
CT: It’s not only about the game. It was the first set. They were playing so well in the first set! Today’s series isn’t going to be so easy as well. One cannot help but think that. I personally thought that T1 was most probably going to lose the first set.Look at the gold diff. At its greatest it was nearly 7000 gold to MAD, especially that early on. It’s unthinkable to have that much gold difference in the early game. How the heck did they lose the game? (laughs)
H: I thought that if MAD was to lose this game, they had only one way to do it – Pyke gets too excited, plays like soloQ Pyke, die once or twice, give the shutdown gold to AP-Helios, then just like soloQ, you have team members saying “okay, let’s take things seriously from now on. Let’s not throw anymore.”Then MAD got pushed back and lost a crucial teamfight at drake.
CT: What’s funny is, it was such a soloQ-style game. You see these games happen in soloQ very often, when Pyke is in the match. Pyke is said to be a champion who gets a lot of empty gold. You can ask the question, “hey, gold is gold. What do you mean by empty gold?” Pyke is good at ballooning¹ the gold, but that’s all hot air. Pyke doesn’t give good returns for that gold. Furthermore, no matter how much Pyke gets, Pyke just dies to a single combo. (laughs) You get excited and lead the way, die, and the game is lost. This is a soloQ experience. If it was indeed a soloQ game, Elyoya would have suppressed the anger until he couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Hey, now that the game’s over, Mr. Mid? Your performance left a lot to be desired. The same goes for you to, Mr. Support.²” Then the team exchanges kind words with each other. A heartwarming end.
H: But that’s so accurate. Indeed, Pyke made a lot of mistakes. Itemization wasn’t directed toward strengthening the champion, not hitting the E, and so on. You see the two first movers here, the ones with a lot of deaths.
CT: (Laughs)
H: Kha’zix gets some kills, Aphelios gets some kills, and I still remember this. At the drake fight, Aphelios had good guns for teamfight. But if you’re MAD, you’re having a lot of fun, right? You feel invincible, you can just fight anywhere and win. So they go in, head first, but see Aphelios shooting without a break, pew-pew! Damages keep piling, and I think to myself, “hey, this is pretty good for T1”. Oner had excellent positioning there as well.
CT: You’re right. There’s plenty of reasons that Elyoya can give to excuse himself of blame in that situation. “Hey Mr. Top, you said that you will win any matchup if you get Kennen.” Top gets solokilled. In retrospect, these things become super significant. Top got a solokill in the game. At that time, it wasn’t such a big deal, but flip the players around. The game would have been completely over for T1. Even if we imagine Kennen not dying there, the same goes. Things accumulate into a huge snowball. “Mr. Mid? I didn’t expect you to do anything anyway.” “Mr. ADC? You got fed Xayah, why are you throwing so hard?” (Laughs)
H: At the end, he didn’t use the ult and got boomed.
CT: “How can you just die with Xayah like that?” This is a frustrating game for Elyoya. The teammates also lash out to him. “Hey Mr. Jungle, maybe you shouldn’t have lost the smite fight at baron.” (Laughs) That trips the alarm for junglers and sends him to full tilt. “Honestly? You weren’t so good in this game, too. You lost the baron and that flipped the game.” But that baron too, man…
H: I thought to myself, Elyoya must have been so tilted to make that call. The game’s almost over, they are going to lose if things continue, they all know it. Pyke has expired³.
CT: You look at other players and can tell right away.
(Laughs)
H: It’s not going to work. In fact, though MAD’s comp isn’t too bad, it’s good when one can initiate the fight well.
CT: Annie, Pyke, champs that create opportunities. Kennen’s entry angle, all these things are opportunities that must be exploited. When that goes well, the comp is great.
H: But that didn’t work out so great. They went in with the worst approach they could have taken. They get drawn into T1’s control, and I realize that I’m projecting myself in that situation, they must have known as well themselves, as they were hitting the baron.
CT: When junglers don’t see a way out, they start going for objectives.
H: Let’s set up a play here. We’ve got this gold we’ve earned earlier, so let’s make a play. But they didn’t check the vision,
CT: Absolutely open.
H: Oner just walks in and steals.
CT: That’s just a coinflip, really. It’s a gamble going into baron like this. In fact, the ones who are attempting to steal may have a bigger advantage there. Psychologically, or in terms of the setup.
H: Furthermore, Lee Sin was not able to use smite. I think that really shows what the situation was. This guy's mental’s gone. If you play well then lose, that damages your mental even further. I think that must have messed up his judgment.
CT: So in fact, one can even say that MAD lost the game when they lost the fight at drake. They had gold advantage, but the comp and performance… A lot happened after that. On the other hand, T1 was on back foot, but they rallied around Gumayusi and dealt good damage. Faker landed a lot of hooks. K’Sante and Kennen performed very differently in teamfights. So many things come together. Oner stole baron at a critical juncture. MAD had no answer.
CT: Hylissang’s, the Professor’s rapid pace in lecture can also be understood through that. If they all walk away alive, we have no future. We have to win big when we are winning. That scene when Pyke joined the fight once again at raptors. Honestly, there was absolutely no reason to do that. He ended up killing his whole team. (Laughs) I was wondering if this was okay as I was watching. Of course, T1 played well, but you have to think about your distance to the team.
H: I did see signs of this happening. I don’t remember clearly, but when the bot gank worked, Hylissang failed to land the stun. These scenes, together with him going for Draktharr’s? I thought something was going to happen, and indeed, that came to a bad end. Like you said, there’s that problem of empty gold as well. T1 had a lot of high-value picks, and they tried to funnel the kills to Kha’zix and Aphelios.
CT: You know what’s even funnier? In fact, Hylissang wasn’t the protagonist of this story. We’ve talked about the Professor a lot, but the true protagonist? The true protagonist is silent. (zooms in to 1/8/12, then to Annie’s splash art) You know, the small one.
H: Look, I get that champ’s small, but the presence is dominating.
CT: I think the true protagonist of this show was Annie. Hylissang’s case was that he was playing well until he wasn’t. But Annie? Consistently at low point⁴. Just how many scenes did we see of Annie going to the fountain in a single burst? Like come on.
H: I was wondering if Annie was playing as a suicide bomber, just starting the fight and dying right away. Is that what the player was going for?
CT: Look, if he opens the fight very well and die after that, that’s great. But…
H: Like the positioning, getting piled on continuously… I felt as if that was not a mid Annie, but Annie support.
CT: To put it bluntly, a good support Annie would have given so much more to the team. It was a mid Annie so it had good growth, and the start of the game went excellently as well. I even might say, if Annie had just gotten tank items, MAD would have won the game. No joke. When Annie was in a good position, I thought MAD could have won the match if Annie got tank items. Hermes, RoA, et cetera… Build for survivability⁵. You don’t need to deal any damage.
H: Just go for tank items, block hits from Kha’zix with your body, get dragged by Nautilus…
CT: She should have at least gone for Merc Treads. Like, how many times are you going to get caught out and die? You should at least have Merc Treads. I don’t know, man. It was such a low point in performance. It was so much that I actually felt sorry. I guess Gragas ban was really effective.
H: I honestly thought that T1 would release Gragas and show a different pick, but seeing them ban Gragas from the first set, I thought that there would be no chance. The chance, however, was created by Elyoya’s Lee Sin.
(Talks about Nisqy’s performance in LEC with Gragas, and the potential Faker vs Nisqy Gragas angle)
CT: To sum up, the first set was just one conga line of disasters that piled up to Elyoya. (laughs)
CT: MAD got first pick Kennen and couldn’t do anything with it, and you can interpret that result in different ways, but just as MAD performed poorly, T1 performed well. It’s super obvious, but comebacks don’t happen with only one team playing well or badly, especially with these kinds of massive comebacks. One side must perform really well, the other must perform really badly. It’s an interactive process.For that, T1 played super well. The game was almost over, to the point that T1 did not have any answers. This was really the case of T1 performing very, very well. It was a game that you could have ff15’d. The difference was so great.
(Chat brings up tanks being better than damage dealers in important games)
CT: When we look at the history of the game as well, we find that high-value picks get good results. Comps with “time attack⁶” requirements can’t perform as well, partly because of psychological pressure, partly because the opponent also has good defense. You end up tripping over your own foot.
CT: As many people in the chat say, all of T1 played very well. Gumayusi in particular dealt a lot of damage with good positioning in difficult situations, particularly with Lulu, which created a lot of synergy. Pyke didn’t do anything later on, but Lulu next to an ADC is like the Red Hare⁷. When I re-watched the game a bit, I saw that MAD Lions had a lot of options. Like for instance, MAD’s game got blown open at drake, right? To put it bluntly, MAD could have simply not contested the drake.
H: They could have just let it slide.
CT: Drake wasn’t important at that timeframe of the game.
H: Right.
CT: MAD was even pushing mid and top. Just give drake and continue pushing. They could have won so much more. Give the drake, it’s just 1:1. Of course, all this is result-based analysis. To MAD, they were the heavyweights and these punks come wandering in to get the drake? There’s no way they can lose in that fight. T1’s all bunched up in drake pit. Let’s bring the fight to them. It’s not a wrong call to make, but the reason why I am saying this is, you might have seen this happen sometimes in LCK – when a team is far ahead, and the opposing team makes a desperation play for objects, burning the bridges behind them⁸, the team that is ahead just coolly lets them have it. You see it actually quite frequently in LCK. “You’re going to go to drake? Look, even though we’re ahead, we’ll give you this one for this display of will. We just gotta earn more gold than you do.” That takes the wind out of the opposing team’s sail. They came together to make this huge play, this game-winning play, right? They didn’t get anything big to show for it.
H: If gold difference wasn’t so great, MAD would have avoided that fight ten times out of ten. But they thought that they could go in and fight, thinking that they could win the fight even if they use the keyboard with their feet. So they went in, no vision, only to get Kha’zix drop and behead Nisqy instantly.
CT: Pyke squirming around in the front then dying.
H: Channeling the harpoon, then getting hit with so many different things…
CT: So many scenes. T1 also didn’t give them any angle for Kennen’s ult. Not at all. T1 didn’t have exhaust, so a single well-placed Kennen ult could have changed things. But that didn’t happen.
H: And if you are going against Aphelios, you gotta look at the guns. Aphelios is hard because there’s a lot of variance in the strength of guns in teamfights. You shouldn’t go in if the right guns are there. Gumayusi was controlling the guns very well, having the right guns every time.
CT: Yeah, good Aphelios players have the right tools for the job. That means that they know how to set that up. The management and calculation are perfect.
H: Thanks to that management, Pyke got hit with a lot and was gunned down while escaping. That death sealed the deal.
CT: Anyway, first set was really fun for us, but if I was an LEC commentator, I wouldn’t even know how to commentate on the game. I want to see the translation of the comments, those with good English skills. I think it would be really difficult for the members of the broadcast team to say anything in these situations. I honestly think I would have been angry. I do lash out if the plays are really bad.
H: Who would you have flamed, then?
CT: I would just be angry at the team, since it would be bad to start a hunt for the culprit. I would try to point out all the things that they have done wrong and try to get them with splash damage.
Set 2
CT: MAD then took Kennen for this comp. I chastised MAD a lot today, but I have to say this again. Their draft is inscrutable. It’s hard to understand and execute. For us analysts, it’s like answering a question – We interpret the decisions and spell out what they mean. The questions are way too difficult. I can’t even imagine the intent behind the question. The draft looks like a snowballing draft, but laning is weak. The value is also lacking, and teamfighting is not better than the opponent’s comp. How should we interpret this?
H: I think it’s akin to throwing a tantrum.
CT: (Laughs) Tantrum?
H: Firstly, you don‘t want to give Kennen to the other team. But if Elyoya doesn’t play Lee Sin, you think you are going to lose. That’s what the two picks topside feel like to me.
CT: Yes.
H: So you have to fix them two. Now let’s think about Nisqy’s playstyle, and the fact that he seems to be underperforming today. Then, the Professor isn’t also doing so hot today as well. That just created this chimaera⁹ of a draft,
CT: And Carzzy goes, “I’ll play alone.”
H: Yeah. “You can leave me alone.” That created this mix that MAD insisted on having, despite it not working. Also, did they really have to ban Annie? I think they were scared beyond reason.
CT: Yes, and honestly, they could also have just not banned NIdalee.
H: Why ban these two? I found myself asking that question.
CT: T1 can play a scary Nidalee, but maybe it could have been better for MAD if T1 went for an aggressive comp with Nidalee and all. They ended up playing Maokai. That made the situation worse. Maybe it would have been better to leave Nidalee open and exploit that.
CT: Lucian ban also appeared frequently, so MAD was at a back foot when drafting. In the end, laning didn’t work, scaling didn’t work, the comp didn’t work from start to finish. It wasn’t even countering T1’s draft.
CT: This connects to the earlier G2 vs GenG series. MAD had to pick Kennen, but they were put into a situation where they were forced to pick it. T1 responded with top Karma, and I think that was super good as well. In some sense, it’s the same principle from top Tristana. Support the damage dealers, good laning and push, avoiding ganks, it’s just a good pick, and you can flex it as well. I honestly think that T1 could have very well used mid Karma and top K’Sante. K’Sante can hold his own against Kennen.
H: For me, if MAD was going to do that, I even thought that it would be better for them to play Ezreal-Karma. Bot is difficult anyway, and they are going to wait for Elyoya to make plays, so hold onto the lane with that. But despite all that, I thought it was more prudent to hold off any judgment at this point. Do Kennen and Lee Sin, “our Kennen and Lee Sin weren’t too bad in the first set, right?”
CT: The players who are here have conquered their own leagues to get to this point. They are at least 2nd place, right? But because international competition is weighed in the level of its competitors, that creates different assessments on players’ performances. Professor Hylissang was always a master of playmaking and creativity, but he’s not a type of a player who can do by-the-book, fundamentals, starting with laning. It’s such a dilemma. You have to pass the laning phase to make plays.
H: But you can’t just not lane if you are not good at it. Many players pick champs at MSI that they didn’t play in their league.
CT: That’s natural. That’s just adjusting to the meta.
H: Just play Annie support, then, if you are going to keep dying while entering the fight. Stand off from the fight and throw skills. I can’t help but think that. In the end, Annie and Ezreal weren’t too bad. Just go for comfort picks.
CT: That’s what created the draft at third set.
H: Yeah, that’s why I’m bringing this up! If you were going to go for that comp later on, just do that in the second set!
CT: You got one more chance after that.
H: Yes! If that doesn’t work, go for some crazy gamble in the third set, rather than going for something that doesn’t function as well like Rell.
CT: This is the reason why we don’t have a lot of things to praise for MAD. Things are just bad. Both draft and plays. I felt so sorry. I’m not trying to be sarcastic nor to flame the team. I really wish LEC and LCS to perform better than they are doing right now. It’s not like I want them to completely smash Korean teams, no, but I want them to do better than right now, because they are performing so poorly right now. It’s sad. What kind of a comp is this? Like, what are you trying to achieve with this? It’s a time attack comp⁶, and they try to break through K’Sante? You think that will work? You can’t. It’s Aftershock K’Sante. How are you going to do that?
H: I really think that they were throwing a tantrum when going mid. “Give us a death! Please give us one death!” That doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, I’m not sure if I can say this, but I genuinely don’t understand why LEC support players try to win the lane after spending their turn.
CT: They are playing too greedy?
H: They go on a roam, then go back to bot and try to win the lane. That doesn’t make sense. You are behind in experience, gold, whatever, but you go in head first. It’s a play that you shouldn’t be making as a pro.
CT: I think we should understand it like this – They are playing like that because they could get away with it. In the end, if you develop a habit, you are doing what you have been doing in your own league, and that had worked for you in the past. That’s the only explanation that we can think of. But to put it negatively, that becomes a bad habit.
CT: We’ve talked about this before. If you are in a team that loses continuously, you get a bad spread of stats. This “stat theory”. You evolve in an improper direction. These bad habits just get fixed. You play the way you have won the league with, but if the league’s competition is found to be a bit lacking, you won’t get the same return when you play like that against strong teams. But that’s difficult to break out.
H: So the Professor just focused on speed? His syllabus is way too fast-paced.
CT: Playmaking, audacity, he’s got a lot of points in these stats, but these are stats that should be built up from a solid foundation. Right now, that foundation itself is being shaken.
H: This is a mean way to say it, but it’s like cheesing.
CT: It’s a gamble. You get great returns if done right, but that doesn’t mean that you are grounding your plays on clear and sound bases.
H: What’s funny is that he ended up killing his teammates. He killed Elyoya with that play. (Laughs) Stop killing your team, man.
…
CT: The one who makes these audacious plays can say, “we’re already at a disadvantageous position so I have to go for these plays.” It’s like the top laner going for risky trades when the bot lane is destroyed. All MAD players can say things like these regarding their performance. Top? “The bot side cannot be relied upon. I gotta do something.” Jungle? “I gotta do something.” Mid? (laughs) If everyone’s saying this, who’s the actual good one here? The game’s already over before they started. So even though we can understand Hylissang’s plays as being driven by this thought, the situation is still not such that he should be making these plays.I also don’t really understand why he is playing Rell here. Look. There’s a situation where Xayah and Rell are wonderful. They’re masters at drawing people in, so they function quite well in that situation. But look at the draft right now. This is a comp that MAD has to go in first, but I guess even that is debatable as well. The only thing that is clear is that they will lose in late game, but it’s not like they have early game advantages. That means that T1 had drafted very well.
H: I think the Maokai pick was really good. Putting Maokai in Kha’zix’s spot makes the foundation that much stronger, and Maokai’s utility is great too.
(Helios and CloudTemplar praise Maokai)
H: If Maokai’s there, you can’t use Poppy as well. It’s like that question about herbivore junglers¹⁰. If you start getting herbivores, the better thing to do is to go full herbivore. I think we are seeing this “going full herbivore” stage right now.
CT: I personally think that it is good to not give Maokai over.
…
CT: Countering Maokai with Olaf? Olaf was indeed used to counter herbivores in the past, especially those with strong CC, by following them around and doing 1v1. But that’s not so easy for Olaf as well. Simply put, Olaf wins 1v1, yes, but the game is not about 1v1. Maokai avoids Olaf and does farms and ganks, and come teamfight, let’s do a simulation. Olaf becomes red and goes in, but Maokai presses R. That blocks everyone else from entering the fight, and Olaf goes from being red with anger to being red with blood. The difficulty in teamfight is so different.
H: It’s like saying that Maokai R is cheese material¹¹.
CT: Yeah, it is like that in that sense.
H: (Starts talking about how difficult it is to set up a good R)
CT: No, what I mean by cheese here is a champ that has a very high floor, no matter who is piloting. A champ that is just good, and is not difficult. Of course, there’s skill difference. Better players at better teams will make use of the champ better. But Maokai has that high floor. Honestly? K’Sante is also like that. K’Sante is more difficult than Maokai, but it is a pick that even bad teams can make good use of. It’s the reason why people talk about K’Sante a lot. Weaker teams have to get K’Sante to get a fighting chance. If they get K’Sante, the lane won’t be busted open. Look, are cheese champs being prohibited by others? That’s the reason why I think Maokai is at a very high tier right now.
CT: Particularly, it’s a must-ban for GenG. T1 isn’t a team that makes use of Maokai a lot, compared to GenG.
H: Yes. In Bengi’s interview, he said that he prepared a lot of by-the-book picks. I think T1 has clearly prepared a lot of high-value picks, and they go for variations at the top lane. I also was saying for the last six months that Abyssal Mask was OP…
CT: Last six months?
H: (Laughs) Yeah. It was just that you didn’t have any champs that you could use that on. But looking at the T1 side using Abyssal Mask for Karma, I thought that T1 really had a good grasp of the game.
CT: Mask is such a good item for bruiser AP champs. I also go for that item when I play top Maokai. The Catalyst itself gives such good sustain.
H: Also good for teamfights.
…
CT: In the end, I couldn’t understand what MAD was going for in the second set. If we can’t speak with words, we gotta speak with our fists, right? They got clobbered. The end.
Set 3
H: Like you mentioned earlier, I also thought that if MAD was going to change their play, they should have done that in the second set. But now that their backs are turned against the wall, and now that the mid laner isn’t performing so hot, the team gave Nisqy TF. Hylissang isn’t performing as well, too, so give Annie to him. Carzzy? You’re good at Ezreal, right? Take Ezreal. Let’s go for comfort picks for this last game. But look at the draft, man. What is TF going to do in this comp?
CT: To begin with, there’s no champ you can funnel resource to with TF, and all picks don’t work in laning as well.
H: Ezreal isn’t the star of the show, at least compared to Jinx and Aphelios. K’Sante? He’s also not a star. The entire draft is made up of supporting actors. It’s just sad. They should have gone for this draft way sooner.
CT: Just as Helios said, and just as I said during the broadcast, I couldn’t talk badly about Elyoya’s Lee Sin. Three straight Lee Sin in a game that was lost? That could be a problem. Lee Sin isn’t even a high-value pick. It’s a pick that has a bomb collar attached to it. It is a problem, yes, but Elyoya is playing the best, and I can’t help but understand how he is feeling. Elyoya looks around and finds that he can’t trust any of these guys. The game will be lost if it drags on too long.
H: “If I don’t play Lee Sin, the game is lost.” It’s the same thing with Yike on Poppy. But Yike got a lot of praise, because the team played around him well. MAD on the other hand was just swept along with Elyoya, so of course people are going to talk about three Lee Sin in a row. I honestly think that Elyoya would feel that it is unfair to take the blame. He did well in the first set.
CT: Why did the team go for TF? Why did the team go for others? These questions are unending because honestly, the entire draft must be changed. What is strange outweighs what makes sense. It was, in some way, a stream-of-the-conscious draft. Ezreal-Annie in bot lane? What are you going to do with that? Win lane? Get kills? The same goes for K’Sante. What are you going to do? You just took it from the opponent because you know you shouldn’t, nothing more. What can K’Sante do if Sion is there?
CT: But for this set, you have to praise T1 a lot. T1’s level 1 plan was nothing short of fantastic. The draft was great, but T1 made a great plan that just blew open the game right after it started. I think it is more proper to praise that than to focus on others.
H: In the last match, I think T1 adjusted their strategy and made feedbacks at a very quick pace. T1 showed how you can dive properly with Sion, and simply suffocated the opponent with their plan. It was a plan that you could see was coming but could not evade. I couldn’t help but think from the perspective of MAD, on what one could have done to stop that.
CT: If I was a player at MAD, I think I would have thought about the draft against G2 in the upcoming match. It was such a hopeless situation. If you’re playing an RPG, just skip this quest. Go and grind in lower bracket, sharpen the tools, then face G2 properly once again. I think that MAD was also hoping to see Chasy the final MVP’s performance, but what happens is, the LEC, or really the West, traditionally have weak talent in top lane. I think Chasy performed excellently in his league, but now that he is facing the crème de la crème, I think it is inevitable that he will be at a disadvantage. I think it can’t be helped. LCK just has strong top laners.
H: LCK top laners are good at laning, teamfight, setting up plays…
CT: LCK also has players who have very solid fundamentals, from laning to beyond.
H: In order to grow, you have to have good partners for sparring. You have to play 1v1, study the matchup, and work with your competitors to really grow. I think the lack of such partners is also a big factor.
CT: LEC in some way has a lot of players who use strange picks topside.
H: Yes, the dude with an axe, and so on.
CT: (Laughs) That could also interfere with players practicing the fundamentals in laning, strictly speaking. Firstly, when they play champs without TP at top lane, that in itself is not a by-the-book matchup. (Laughs) There’s so many variables. It is also the case that Adam and other players can’t be said to have strong laning skills. In some ways, Chasy beat them all by playing by-the-book. Chasy already won against all others. Unfortunately, the pinnacle of that playstyle is LCK. When the match is against that pinnacle, top can’t perform at the same level as back in Europe.
CT: That is to say, MAD has no opportunities to create. To create variables, Nisqy should be playing well, but mid lane, the root and the core of the League, was performing at the lowest point almost throughout the series. The buck then passes to the bot lane. Carzzy-Hylissang duo isn’t a stable one, nor a duo that can be said to have strong laning.
H: Fundamentals are super important, but the league…
CT: Because LEC teams were winning by tricky maneuvers rather than fundamentals… This is a matter that must be improved by the league as a whole, and I think this created a certain large difference as well. Though I realize that we are coming back to G2 here, I personally think that in this vein, G2 played really well.
H: I think that is also the reason why we continue to make comparisons. I think G2 is actually pretty good at playing by-the-book.
CT: Yes.
H: I think there were slight shortcomings, but G2 performed way above my expectations, so I was surprised and I wanted to praise that. That also means, if G2 could polish their fundamentals to a more positive direction, I think they will be worthy of greater expectations. You can’t just ignore the fundamentals. You’re at pro level. No fundamentals, champion pool issues? That can’t be good.
CT: In the end, T1 became ever stronger as the series went on, and they ended the game very quickly, like 16 minutes. They broke GenG’s record the previous day in a historic showing.
H: The first level play where they pushed TF and Lee Sin away and took summoners? I think that was super good. In fact, from MAD’s perspective, it is probably a correct call for them to cut their losses and try to keep in pace with T1, but right now, the meta is such that the bot lane is super important. Lee Sin gets level 2 and goes to bot to block the dive, and for Chasy, I think he must have thought a lot about what he is supposed to do there. Does he use TP or not? Since Ezreal and Annie are getting pushed, should he just soak up the attacks and lock the lane, or push? I can’t see what the players are thinking, so it’s quite difficult. What about you, bro?
CT: Well, what can I say? It’s difficult. I found the series to be just too difficult throughout. How should I word my comments? It was just difficult to choose the words to begin with.
H: But let’s say that Chasy TPs to bot. Sion dies and becomes a zombie that massacres everyone. We didn’t see that exactly, but it’s still quite a predicament, right?
CT: I personally thought that MAD was fated to lose just from the draft. Look, everyone. Do you know what is so shitty about this game? For the team who is at a disadvantage, the team that is relatively weaker, the way they can create upsets is to make opportunities, and these opportunities are created with draft. But the fact of the matter is, a relatively weaker team just can’t win at draft. That’s what is so shitty about this game.
CT: For a relatively weaker team to win against a stronger team at draft, the stronger team must flush their draft down the toilet. I personally think so.
H: That’s really the only way.
CT: So, it is much more difficult to create these opportunities within the game than one thinks.
H: But if the relatively weaker team messes up their draft? Then… 0%. The chance becomes 0%.
CT: In my mind, all teams share this task – They must build their weight class¹² until they can make meaningful difference from draft. If the difference is small, if the two teams are somewhat at parity, draft can generate variance. That can change the outcome. But to reach that point? Let’s put it in terms of scores. Let’s say that you get an average of 90 and above out of 100. From that point onward, you can hope to use draft to fill the gap. If the opponent is at 95 and you are at 93, that’s doable. Even if you are like 91 against 95, as long as the average is above 90, you can have a chance. But let’s say that your average is 80. That guy over there? 95 on average. How on earth are you going to overcome that difference with draft? How the heck are you going to overcome that difference with plays? You can’t win. (Laughs) You’ve already lost. It’s so very unfortunate.
CT: For instance, let’s look at Starcraft. Starcraft has builds that counter each other. Even if there are differences in skill, and admittedly Starcraft is a 1v1 game, sometimes you get builds that completely counter the opponent’s. It’s in a way a rock-paper-scissor match, with both players not being able to see each other. That can create more variance. But in LoL? That doesn’t work as well. There’s scarcely any situation where you get a rock on one side, and paper on the other. That only happens when the opponent throws the draft completely. Generally speaking, you instead get rock versus rock. What happens then? A stronger rock smashes against the weaker one and shatters it. (Laughs) LoL is not like rock-paper-scissors. It does not have that stark contrast between counters.
H: If we bring that rock-paper-scissors analogy to LoL, you often find that stronger teams have already shown that they are playing paper, and weaker teams are led to play rock to that. It feels as if the weaker teams only have one move, tackle, and when that happens your skull just fractures¹³. You can’t win.
CT: From the perspective of the broadcasting crew, if you ask “why is this team throwing a rock when the opponent is waiting with paper?”, the answer is, “they don’t know how to throw scissors. They can’t throw scissors.” That’s why they can only throw rock, even though the opponent is waiting with their palm open.
CT: In other cases, you throw scissors, but that is broken against the opponent’s paper. (Laughs) Your scissors are broken because the paper’s reinforced.
…
H: MAD Lions’ strength, for me, lies not within the game but outside. Namely, their strong mental.
CT: Europe’s own unbreakable will.
H: They even won the finals with a reverse sweep. But because they were playing well in the first game until it got flipped, I think their mental was damaged. Perhaps that also contributed to their underperformance, because they just collapsed.
Wrap-up
CT: As we watched the two games, I think at the very least LEC’s junglers shone through.
H: Hmm.
CT: Yike, Elyoya, these guys put up a fight in difficult situations.
H: I did feel the same. I think both players were playing difficult picks like Nidalee, Lee Sin, Poppy, oh wait, maybe not Poppy. Kha’zix, these picks that are seen as difficult to play in jungle, and proved that they are the core of their respective teams. I thought that if LEC had a stronger weight class, these two junglers could have created great opportunities to be exploited, but the fundamentals were found to be lacking.
CT: Connected to that, top laners using their own pocket picks or Kennen and the like, only to get that blocked by the opponent. Mid didn’t get things through either. Bot as well. LEC has this history of support players like Hylissang creating creative plays and all, but they also didn’t work so well in the end. It is also true, however, that T1 did a remarkable job nipping these possibilities in the bud. In the end, Pyke performed badly towards the end of the game. But T1 banned that right away, just like Blitzcrank. No possibility for variance. So the Professor couldn’t get back to his department. He’s a physics professor. What is he doing at a completely different department? Even though he’s a professor, he didn’t earn his PhD in all the subjects, right?
H: But let’s say that the Professor gets into a heavier weight class. That would be so scary, right?
CT: The best is to be strong at laning and be capable of playmaking at the same time.
H: What’s unfortunate is that there are plenty of players with talent in both LEC and LCS. They just can’t rise above the culture.
CT: We have to wait until we can say anything more about LCS. LCS after all is the league of true talent¹⁴.
(Talks about Helios’ career in LCS)
H: I actually have this analogy. G2 is like Azubu Frost, MAD is like Azubu Blaze. (CT snickers) G2 can win against any team but can lose against any team, like Frost, but MAD can only win against teams that they can, like Blaze.
CT: But the listeners won’t be able to keep up with what we’re talking about, though…
(Fade to grey, sad piano music plays)

Draft starts with
B1 Ahri
Most definitely going mid of course Eastern teams aint known for flexin
So C9 follows up with an R1 Aphelios
Finally, we get Berserkers Aph, a staple in the meta right now, very good late game hyper which he's known to pilot well, could almost consider this a Comfort Pick
Then R2 Sion, ok, kinda weird, since B1 already shown Mid, it makes no sense to not just pick a Mid champion to counterpick or at least answer the Ahri, but Sion is a solid pick for a frontline especially with Aph, and Fudge (although performing suboptimally rn) is a good pilot of the champ.
Next is B2 Jinx, the typical answer to the Aphelios hyper potential, standard.
We follow up with the B3 Gwen, figures, since Sion was blinded, that they pick a tank shredder, and what better than Bin on a carry champion.
And now C9 has the burden, what are they cookin up? Are they gonna pick a very powerful enchanter comp that threatens the Hyper potential on BLG?
They R3 Leblanc
What the f*ck?
This makes 0 sense, if the plan was to pick Leblanc, then why didn't they just pick her R2 in response to the Ahri pick? It's the most "i just feel like it" moment i have ever seen in a draft, it almost felt like Emenes just couldnt decide what to pick versus ahri so he told Fudge to pick his champion first.
Ok we move on to r4, maybe we cook more here with a bizarre jg pick
Lee sin
If only Van Gogh could see the creative genius here
Followed up with the response of Wukong Alistar from BLG and finally the expected Thresh from C9
Ok so the matchups are kinda weird, you have ultra engage from BLG versus whatever the hell c9 is supposed to be.
But then the most INSANE thing happened
Leblanc went top and sion went mid
HOLLLYYYYYYYYYYY
It did absolutely nothing
The idea according to Veigars twitter is that
LB counters Gwen Sion Counters Ahri Thresh Counters Alistar
Even going by this logic, it still doesn't make any sense for them to R2 the Sion when Ahri was already picked, like what?
And really is this the most creative we can get? You picked the most standard champs for your team and swapped the 2 solo laners, woah?!
Part of Leblancs identity stems from her ability to roam and create advantages for her or for her team through ganks, how exactly is she gonna do that at top lane?
I still don't understand how exactly Sion counters Ahri either, he cant push her out of lane, he doesnt necesarilly punish her in any way, she essentially has a free lane because there will be 0 interactivity at mid, and if anything, this opens up opportunities for her to find roams. And once laning phase is over, both of these champions will effectively function the exact same regardless of their lanes.
I just fail to see how exactly Veigar views this draft as creative, when it just seems like they were given pocket pick privilliges and thought to swap solo lanes for semi favorable matchups.
Call it malding, call it salt, but I'm just confused.

Reserve your "I told you so" predictions here on the meta.
1- Seraphine either "bot" or midlane - she has % max hp healing to go with the mega tanks, place her into the hypercarry comp with Sion/sej and we have seen her in the past make these comps unkillable.
2 - karthus bot, strong enough early to punish the jinx aphel comps, paired with a trist mid for the lategame.
3 - counters to the mega protect the adc tank comps, something like ap varus or kogmaw. Or assassins that can actually reach the backline like blue kayn

Akali literally unplayable: shit pickrate in High Elo, zero pro play presence shit pickrate in mid Elo shit winrate in any Elo (that actually lowers the higher you go, as a supposedly high skill cap champ)
Irelia same: bad stats, no pro play presence, still better then Akali
Gwen kinda ok, but should be a tank counter and is rarely played in tank meta
Fiora is ok
Kinda sad tha I have to resort to picking Rammus, Sion, Zac and Maokai toplane if I actually want to win the game effortlessly, game is tank meta right now because fighter and AP bruiser items are horrible

This is what I pulled from all the packs I’ve been buying & saving over the last few months. I got the overwhelming feeling to finally open them up. I haven’t opened, really even held any Pokémon cards since I was about 12 years old. I’m 32 now so so the math. I wanted to post these to get a feel on how I did so far. I still have a few packs to open but I will save them for another day. I’m very out of touch with the market and rarity of any of these. I’m gonna reorganize all of them when I get some more time too

I'm a solo lane player in Diamond and main Sion, however I don't play him when up against Aatrox cause I get steamrolled but someone once told me Jax is a good counter for him and I'm pretty good with him but I get destroyed by even a half competent aatrox player and I genuinely have no idea what to build against him and what champions I should actually pick

To find out what the biggest counter picks per role are, i tried to normalize the winrate for each matchup by factoring in the overall winrate of the champions involved, so it can roughly be compared against each other. To have a better sample size, this includes data from multiple patchs, but generally speaking this shouldnt be a big factor for most matchups. Only matchups with at least 10000 games are included. Data was taken from u.gg (Ranked, Plat+, all regions).
So what are the worst possible matchups you could play? The tables below show the champion and its counterpick (with their overall winrate in brackets) and how often the matchup was played and what the actual winrate (for the first named champion) was in the end. Since most of the matchups are from Top Lane, i added separate tables for other roles

Top 25

Rank	Champion	Counter	Lane	Games	Winrate
1	malphite (51.58%)	sylas (49.62%)	top	45754	44.79%
2	yorick (48.78%)	irelia (49.83%)	top	17589	41.90%
3	drmundo (50.84%)	gwen (49.66%)	top	18137	44.85%
4	rammus (51.28%)	lillia (49.54%)	jungle	12647	45.68%
5	illaoi (50.32%)	yorick (48.78%)	top	20062	45.60%
6	tryndamere (49.76%)	malphite (51.58%)	top	22455	42.80%
7	vladimir (50.41%)	malzahar (50.22%)	mid	29493	44.78%
8	irelia (49.83%)	warwick (51.02%)	top	11522	43.61%
9	malphite (51.58%)	sion (50.21%)	top	61487	45.96%
10	renekton (48.09%)	illaoi (50.32%)	top	20679	42.83%
11	malzahar (50.22%)	aurelionsol (50.52%)	mid	19684	44.58%
12	drmundo (50.84%)	irelia (49.83%)	top	16448	45.80%
13	irelia (49.83%)	jax (50.25%)	top	55827	44.56%
14	chogath (50.40%)	gwen (49.66%)	top	12983	45.66%
15	malphite (51.58%)	drmundo (50.84%)	top	23916	45.63%
16	kayle (50.17%)	irelia (49.83%)	top	16276	45.36%
17	garen (49.72%)	kayle (50.17%)	top	16546	44.70%
18	kayle (50.17%)	nasus (50.21%)	top	16965	45.08%
19	malphite (51.58%)	chogath (50.40%)	top	34465	46.19%
20	sion (50.21%)	gwen (49.66%)	top	35056	45.68%
21	alistar (49.68%)	swain (48.98%)	support	11331	45.84%
22	quinn (51.89%)	malphite (51.58%)	top	10645	45.45%
23	volibear (47.77%)	jax (50.25%)	top	13562	43.00%
24	tristana (51.63%)	yasuo (48.96%)	mid	10376	47.74%
25	jayce (49.39%)	rengar (52.16%)	top	17575	42.85%

Other Roles:

Jungle

Rank	Champion	Counter	Games	Winrate
1	rammus (51.28%)	lillia (49.54%)	12647	45.68%
2	lillia (49.54%)	kindred (50.45%)	16365	44.81%
3	sejuani (49.34%)	lillia (49.54%)	15175	45.57%
4	masteryi (50.53%)	elise (51.31%)	30643	45.38%
5	elise (51.31%)	amumu (51.33%)	24847	46.20%
6	masteryi (50.53%)	shaco (49.92%)	29205	46.85%
7	sylas (48.50%)	poppy (49.66%)	13067	45.51%
8	lillia (49.54%)	rengar (50.45%)	11353	45.87%
9	zac (51.25%)	lillia (49.54%)	21678	48.46%
10	diana (49.12%)	masteryi (50.53%)	34248	45.55%

Mid

Rank	Champion	Counter	Games	Winrate
1	vladimir (50.41%)	malzahar (50.22%)	29493	44.78%
2	malzahar (50.22%)	aurelionsol (50.52%)	19684	44.58%
3	tristana (51.63%)	yasuo (48.96%)	10376	47.74%
4	zoe (50.57%)	malzahar (50.22%)	11003	45.70%
5	aurelionsol (50.52%)	fizz (50.42%)	41072	45.67%
6	akshan (52.29%)	yasuo (48.96%)	22063	48.83%
7	leblanc (47.74%)	malzahar (50.22%)	19778	43.56%
8	syndra (48.96%)	katarina (49.62%)	47232	45.25%
9	kassadin (51.12%)	tristana (51.63%)	23827	45.51%
10	zed (49.48%)	malphite (51.99%)	37993	43.74%

Bot

Rank	Champion	Counter	Games	Winrate
1	nilah (51.92%)	xayah (51.04%)	26554	46.43%
2	twitch (51.60%)	nilah (51.92%)	15433	46.01%
3	sivir (49.97%)	twitch (51.60%)	28359	45.28%
4	tristana (50.76%)	nilah (51.92%)	15146	45.83%
5	samira (50.57%)	nilah (51.92%)	37054	45.81%
6	samira (50.57%)	veigar (52.39%)	12485	45.46%
7	samira (50.57%)	xayah (51.04%)	159794	47.00%
8	jinx (51.10%)	yasuo (50.48%)	10716	48.35%
9	jinx (51.10%)	ziggs (51.74%)	12026	47.13%
10	ziggs (51.74%)	kaisa (50.07%)	13810	49.54%

Support

Rank	Champion	Counter	Games	Winrate
1	alistar (49.68%)	swain (48.98%)	11331	45.84%
2	morgana (49.13%)	twitch (48.45%)	10959	46.66%
3	nautilus (49.98%)	taric (52.48%)	21088	43.85%
4	nautilus (49.98%)	rell (52.29%)	16466	44.12%
5	leona (49.46%)	morgana (49.13%)	29719	46.97%
6	velkoz (50.75%)	yuumi (47.79%)	13706	49.50%
7	xerath (50.51%)	yuumi (47.79%)	33376	49.34%
8	yuumi (47.79%)	nautilus (49.98%)	81641	44.73%
9	amumu (51.68%)	braum (49.59%)	10653	48.76%
10	velkoz (50.75%)	pyke (50.28%)	12623	47.32%