Welcome to Dawnbringer, your daily recap of the 2021 League of Legends World Championship.

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

BEYOND GAMING vs. HANWHA LIFE ESPORTS

Game 1: HLE win
BYG Tryndamere Lee Sin Gwen Doggo Kino
HLE Irelia Nidalee Fiora Miss Fortune Leona

Willer camps bot, mixed results. HLE lead grows very slowly, kill/obj trades, few clean gains but getting there. Deft carries hard. Baron bait into catch on Doggo to end.

Game 2: HLE win
HLE Jarvan IV Lee Sin Azir MF Amumu
BYG Kled Viego Kennen Vayne Leona

Kino Doggo outplay 2v2 for FB. Willer ganks sides, snowballs. BYG scrap but HLE overwhelm with Chovy-pushes, another Deft MF carry, and a Willer should’ve-been-a-penta.

Game 3: HLE win
HLE Irelia Lee Sin Orianna Kai’sa Gragas
BYG Fiora Talon Ornn Miss Fortune Alistar

Chovy dominates mid 1v1. Willer plays through top/mid with H1. Big HLE gold lead. HLE apply heavy pressure, trade up on everything, end when they’re ready.

CLOUD9 vs. PEACE

Game 1: C9 win
PCE Gnar Xin Zhao Ryze Miss Fortune Rakan
C9 Wukong Lee Sin Syndra Lucian Nami

Aladoric good bot 2v2 and mid gank. Fudge wins lane, Blaber ganks well. Skirmishes back/forth. C9 engages take over mid/late, Blaber primary playmaker.

Game 2: C9 win
PCE Shen Lee Sin Akali Miss Fortune Amumu
C9 Gangplank Olaf Ryze Aphelios Thresh

Blaber power farms while Babip is ganking bot for FB. Blaber counterganks mid, gets 2K1A. Blaber snowballs from there to a monster game. Fudge a fun dive outplay.

Game 3: C9 win
C9 Gwen Lee Sin Tryndamere Lucian Nami
PCE Sett Nidalee Irelia Miss Fortune Rakan

Zven and Vulcan dominate on Lucian/Nami this time around. Fudge solo Ks Vizicsacsi. C9 stomp in classic fashion.

Takeaways

Show Blaber Some Respect

A very vocal crowd has continually ragged on Blaber throughout this year. Maybe I see more/worse of that because of my somewhat over-enthusiastic tweets this spring about Blaber’s LCS legacy, but the number of fans I see criticizing Blaber or calling for his replacement at C9 is frankly ridiculous, especially after the viral mistakes he made at MSI.

You can’t flame Blaber for his worst games and refuse to acknowledge his high points. His Olaf game today was absolutely enormous, and he had a great series overall. He’s arguably the best North American player in the LCS right now, and he’s been on that shortlist for a couple of years now.

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND – OCTOBER 9: Team Cloud9 walks on stage to compete at the League of Legends World Championship Play-Ins Stage on October 9, 2021 in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Photo by Michal Konkol/Riot Games)

I know my targeted audience for this message will downplay Blaber’s showing by denigrating his opposition or finding some other excuse, but I’d rather celebrate a good player’s good play instead of searching for reasons to hate on someone.

If you didn’t already respect Blaber’s skill, today probably won’t change that. But it probably should.

Cloud8, Maybe Cloud8.5

Don’t mistake my positivity-push around Blaber as me saying that Cloud9 are in great shape or that they have a legit shot at getting out of Group A. (Anything’s possible, but…) C9 definitely do have issues, and Vulcan’s rough showing on Nami in game 1 highlighted a new one.

Vulcan played the Nami as if he was a Nautilus in a lot of ways, with the timings and positionings of his roams and engages. Doesn't seem like he's got that squishy mage rhythm down. But I guess if you really want to add it, better to try now than against FPX. #Worlds2021

— Tim Sevenhuysen (@TimSevenhuysen) October 9, 2021

With only one day off to prepare for the group stage and their first game against Rogue, C9 don’t have time to polish their rough edges or add another look to their available team comps or game plans. This is the C9 we’re going to see the rest of the way, and it’s hard to be confident that they’ll have enough in the tank to reach the Quarterfinals.

We All Fall Down

I’ve previously highlighted Liang for some of his performances, and Doggo has received plenty of well-deserved praise for what he showed at this tournament (and who he has been as a player for a while now).

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND – OCTOBER 8: (L-R) Beyond Gaming’s Huang “HuSha” Zi-Wei, Chiu “Doggo” Tzu-Chuan and Wu “Liang” Liang-Te walk back stage at the League of Legends World Championship Play-Ins Stage on October 8, 2021 in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Photo by Michal Konkol/Riot Games)

But I want to shout out Husha, as well, who was one of BYG’s best performers and did a lot to get them as far as they could. He was put in a terrible spot today, competitively speaking — obviously the entire org was put in a bad spot by Maoan’s actions — since he had to try to jungle without a “real” presence in the mid lane. Under different circumstances, I think Husha could have helped his team put up a real fight against HLE, but sadly it wasn’t to be.

Hanwha Life Esports Still Don’t Look Very Good

I’m not going to harp on it, but I found HLE very unconvincing today. I don’t want to read too much into the series given the strange circumstances but combined with my earlier impressions, I can’t see HLE advancing to the Knockout Stage at this point.