Welcome to Dawnbringer, your daily recap of the 2021 League of Legends World Championship from the bleary eyes and chilled fingers of a ever-more-rapidly-approaching-middle-aged man in the Godforsaken Pacific time zone. Yes, my alarm was set for 3:35 AM today. Thank you for asking.

Every day of Worlds competition, I’ll post a brief rundown of each game, along with some larger takeaways about the team and player performances we’re seeing and what it might mean for the rest of the tournament.

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Game Recaps

PCE vs HLE: HLE win
PCE Renekton Lillia Irelia Tristana Rakan
HLE Aatrox Taliyah Azir Miss Fortune Amumu

Deft and Vsta destroy their lane with lots of help from Willer. Chovy solo kills Tally early. Straightforward domination from HLE.

RED vs LNG: LNG win
RED Kennen Xin Zhao Irelia Miss Fortune Lulu
LNG Jayce Gragas Zed Lucian Rakan

Aegis camps top and TitaN Jojo roam kills Tarzan, but Ale solo Ks Guigo. LNG over-forcing some, RED punish, take objectives, but LNG skill eventually takes over.

INF vs PCE: PCE win
INF Gnar Lee Sin Sylas Aphelios Rakan
PCE Jayce Lillia Irelia Xayah Leona

Babip gets fed off early ganks. INF side prio gets Buggax even fedder. PCE dragon-stacking and Tally Irelia scaling kick in. Key pick on SolidSnake earns Baron and game.

RED vs HLE: HLE win
RED Jax Xin Zhao Twisted Fate Miss Fortune Amumu
HLE Camille Taliyah Sylas Kai’sa Leona

RED nice map activity early, kill lead, but HLE more efficient. Morgan solo Ks Guigo. Deft gets 2 solo Ks in a bot skirmish. RED force bad engage mid, HLE Baron, that’s enough.

BYG vs C9: C9 win
BYG Lillia Graves Yone MF Amumu
C9 Malphite Lee Sin Sylas Ezreal Leona

C9 small kill lead. BYG better early macro. Fudge solo Ks Doggo, some good TPs/ults. Brawly mid-game, C9 not clean but lead+comp+pressure win out.

GS vs DFM: DFM win
GS Jayce Lee Sin Azir Lucian Nami
DFM Urgot Xin Zhao Zoe Aphelios Thresh

Evi TP to bot helps Yutapon get fed early and deny Lucian/Nami laning, then he solo Ks Crazy later. DFM in full control and play it out well.

BYG vs UOL: BYG win
BYG Jayce Xin Zhao Syndra Ezreal Rakan
UOL Wukong Lee Sin Sylas Miss Fortune Nautilus

BYG dive bot quite awkwardly early but it works out. UOL mismanage Herald rotation and BYG punish for kills and steal H1. Game basically over at 9:00.

C9 vs GS: C9 win
C9 Jarvan IV Taliyah Tryndamere Ezreal Leona
GS Jayce Xin Zhao Sylas Miss Fortune Thresh

Blaber pounces on GS like they’re a crab, but in a good way: gank Ks every lane. C9 take some bad fights but work side lanes hard.

Takeaways

I’m Happy For Babip and Tally

Babip‘s North American sojourn with TSM Academy was kind of a sad story, as was Tally‘s time with Golden Guardians Academy, so it was great to see both them have a big showing in Peace‘s victory over Infinity Esports.

I don’t know why the combination of Babip and TSMA worked out so poorly. Maybe he struggled to adapt to moving to a new continent. Maybe he had a hard time clicking with his teammates. Maybe he and the coaching staff didn’t see eye-to-eye. For whatever combination of reasons, TSMA struggled and Babip struggled along with them. For a player whose potential looked so high coming out of Worlds 2020, that was disappointing to see.

But here he is, back at Worlds in 2021 alongside Tally, another Oceanic Worlds rep who returned from North America after one split, and the two of them carried PCE to a huge victory that might end up being enough to give them a berth in the best-of-fives. That’s a feels-good, for sure.

DetonatioN FocusMe Want the Second Seed

One of the big topics yesterday on the broadcast was how good Galatasaray was looking, with speculation that maybe they could even top group B. I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t want to rush to conclusions. I was leaning hard enough towards DetonatioN FocusMe to predict them to win today, and to make them a core part of my fantasy lineup (which you would’ve known if you were a Patreon subscriber!).

DFM’s win over GS was one of the cleanest games we’ve seen in the Play-Ins so far. Such a small sample size of games means there will be issues with extrapolating too much about the teams’ relative quality, but we can see some stratification emerging in group B where C9 > DFM > GS > BYG > UOL. We’ll have to see how tomorrow’s games play out to finalize that, of course.

Cloud9 Watch: Encouraging Signs

One clean game on the first day wasn’t enough to make North American fans comfortable, but two more relatively dominant wins on the second day are starting to make us feel a whole lot more excited.

Beyond Gaming and Galatasaray both feel in short order. There were fumbles and misplays, but on a fundamental level, in their laning and map usage, Cloud9 were clearly superior. Blaber, in particular, really stepped up on Lee Sin and Taliyah to take over the day.

The main thing C9 need to tighten up is their decision-making around early objectives when they are the second team on the scene. They’ve hunted for unnecessary fights a few times, instead of recognizing that they were behind on the play and looking for compensation gains elsewhere, by creating tempo or crossmap plays. The other macro choices they made, though, were better and less noticeable, so there’s more reason for hope than concern in C9’s macro right now, in my opinion.