The one-vs-one portion of League’s All-Star Event got off to a bang on Thursday night with some of the game’s biggest names.
Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok and Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg were set to play in the first two matches. Win, and they could set up a potential dream matchup with each other. But one-vs-one matches are never predictable. Last year, Faker lost in the first round to Cho “Mata” Se-hyeong—who plays support.
Perhaps with that in mind, Faker took a conservative pick into his match against Alvaro “VVert” Martins. Faker grabbed Nasus to play against VVert’s Varus. At first, that seems like a mismatch—Nasus is a melee champ while Varus is one of League’s preeminent poke bullies.
But this matchup is more than it seems. New runes have changed the whole game. Faker took Summon Aery as his keystone, and with Manaflow Band giving him free spells, he maxed Nasus’ E and zoned VVert off the wave. Those runes effectively made Nasus a poke champion. Wave-by-wave, Faker bullied VVert and forced him to miss CS. When Faker got to 99 minions, VVert had no choice but to go all-in. But Faker was ready for it and made VVert his 100th minion, winning in style.
Bjergsen’s win was more straightforward. Also playing against Varus, he took Syndra. The goal was simple: hit a stun and ult. Normally, all Syndra has to do is press R, but in this one, Bjergsen had to weave an extra auto-attack in.
In the third match of the night, EU mid Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage, who plugged his own candidacy for the All-Star Event to fans back home, failed to live up to expectations. He was winning against Pantheon on Orianna, his signature champion. But when Pantheon gets desperate, things get crazy.
The GPL’s Park “Jisu” Jin-cheol used Pantheon’s block in a near-frame-perfect trade. It doesn’t get any closer than that.
Faker and Bjergsen are now set to face off against one another in an epic one-vs-one showdown tomorrow (Dec. 9) at approximately 12:25am ET.
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