Korea started off like any trip arriving and getting scammed. Unaware young and not knowing we eventually made it to the hotel after a 70,000 Won taxi, and the hotel was awesome. If only the beds weren't made from cement it would've been amazing. The showers had[b] body massages[/b], the toilets [b]clean your asses[/b] (not ours unfortunately) and the atmosphere was set from the moment we arrived, this tournament was mega.


We had the first day to ourselves and being true nerds we found ourselves a decent pc cafe to relax at and announce we made it in 1 piece. From the first moment we arrived there was the rush of every guest arriving trying to make it on time, with freak accidents occurring such as the cs 1.6's flight being cancelled. But eventually, all of Australia made it in 1 piece.


We had the honour of meeting the top players from almost every well recognized team in LoL right now. Most were friendly, some were not, but we got to have a chat say hi and eventually, compete. As the second day had started we got to witness an amazing opening ceremony featuring dancing with swords and the works. The video's were awesome, performances were awesome, and it was overall a real psych up for our matches! Unfortunately we had no matches til day 2 and went and practiced for majority of the second day. Headed out for dinner had a nice chat with all the Aussie boys minus CS 1.6, who were probably still asleep due to those flight issues arriving the day of competing.



Our competing day started off relatively smooth, no kinks, no issues. Just the coin toss and straight into it.
Game 1: Aus v Italy.

After winning the coin toss we were a bunch of nervous kids awaiting our first ever match in international waters, first ever time with 15 ping, first ever time on a tournament server. We made our full rune pages, mastery pages, and skin choices ;D and we were ready to compete, winning the coin toss gave us first pick and we got graves with the said pick.
(I don't remember bans)
The team comps were: [b]Graves, Sona, Udyr, Irelia, Leblanc vs. Karthus, Janna, Trynd, Tristana, Gangplank

Relatively basic starts with no invade, led to bottom raping their lane, top raping their lane, and mid raping their lane taking control from the get go. Bot taking first blood from an udyr gank followed up shortly by leblanc killing karthus in lane. We pushed onto the first dragon, they attempted to stop us and then a quadra kill from leblanc scored us a solid lead securing the dragon and an ace. From there the Italy game went like clockwork, kills pushes, assets, everything in our favour and we pushed to victory within 26 minutes of the first games start.


Next we pushed off this game into versing CDE. This was our match of the day as CDE had just beatem CLG and went straight into us. After winning the toss again and getting first pick, we picked up Kassadin in the mid lane and [u]the team comps went as follows[/u]: [b]Kass, Ren, Corki, Janna, Rammus[/b] vs. [b]Karthus, Yorick, Lee Sin, Alistar Tristana[/b]

CDE invaded early in this game with the power of lee sin and alistar pushed us out of blue buff, some silly errors and mistakes led to an unnoticed 3 man gank top lane for the first blood on renekton, missing the first blood on Alistar by the skin of his teeth. CDE put yorick in mid lane to handle the kassadin whilst karthus remained top to verse Renekton, already a first blood ahead. Bot lane took to the advantage putting corki at 4-1 against xspecial and Chauster dominating the lane, all the while dales frustration got the better of him in top lane, pushing into lee sin ganks consistently and winding up 0-3.

Mid was very stale as yorick and kass were both farming with no resolve or ganking opportunity, as we took to blue, they took to drag, karthus forced kassadins hand unto killing him as the distraction while they freely took the dragon. And by this point the karthus being 5-1, an entire item ahead of the Kassadin, they pushed the game out securing all assets and winning the game. An unfortunate end to such a promising start shows we still have what it takes to beat top teams. and unfortunately fell short in doing so. Final score 8-16.


Game 3 took place after a large wait and we unfortunately and in all honesty played terrible, and should not have played at the level we did. It felt like a lack of caring for this particular game which was indeed do or die. Either way and under any circumstances we got beaten very very heavily by CLG. Outpicked for the most part, outplayed for majority of it. We came into game 3 with the necessity to win, and the teams were:

Galio, Udyr, Janna, Corki, Fizz vs.Skarner, Ryze, Maokai, Soraka, Vayne

Very strong team switched lanes repeatedly ensuring that skarner versed galio and ryze had the fizz. shutting down fizz hard, and preventing the galio from assisting other lanes. Jiji carried this game to another level nailing everything he did. Sure we had technical issues, but it was done with very high class and execution that should be commended. The noise levels were unbearably high for our headsets/microphones, (not our best pair for sponsor reasons) and forced some teamwork errors every now and then, but for the most part out played, final score: lots to not much.


The Phillipines had visa issues and didn't show. Placing us at 2-2 overall for the event, a ratio i find to be acceptable. People may bitch we were placed in the group of death and it was unfair for us. I see it as the group where the most can be learned. And I feel as though that's what we did. After some analysis of the games it will make our game play much smoother with some new and improved tactics. I look forward to showing these Americans just who Australia is and why they should be worried to verse us in tournaments.

From there it was relaxation time, took in the sights, the women, the bars, the K-Pop was everywhere and it's safe to say we all fell in love with it, especially live. Korea was fun, exciting and worthwhile going to.

We gave it our all in every match and would hope to not disappoint the community we work so hard for to grow and improve every day.

Cheers, SQL TtRusty.