The only remaining team from the West went up against Korea's strongest, GenG. This is their last chance at making history or at the very least dealing a devastating blow.
To everyone's surprise this series was a sight to behold, nobody was ready for what happened these games.
Game 1
FLY is innovating in draft from the start with the unique Seraphine pick. GenG has a more solid draft, compared to them placing all eggs in the basked called Inspired.
They don't do a bad job in the early game, knowing full well Xin Zhao must get ahead in order to win. The lane swap gave him room to work with, Bwipo disrupting Canyon creates a slight tempo lead and overall show good coordination by creating a very good map state for him.
FLY keeps some solid pressure, being able to take 2 grubbs away from GenG, creating really good early game leads. First Dragon is theirs thank to this and Inspired is even able to get a bit greedy with his clear, making it to the second batch of Voidgrubs in time. GenG tried to contest but are completely outplayed, losing 2 grubs along 3 of their players.
Lehends does a questionable engage on Quad, FLY just collapses on them, once again getting kills on top of objectives.
A midlane push goes terribly wrong for FLY, barely escaping with their lives. Herald is now won for GenG. FLY prepares for third Dragon by playing around the fog of war, getting an amazing pick to kick-start a teamfight. They end up trading 2 for 1, but this is more than enough to claim drake and reach Soul Point.
GenG's towers are falling and FLY has a clear win condition: patience, play for Mountain Soul and become unstoppable. Baron may become a death trap if they go for it too early. Due to incredible control of the map, FLY earns anoher very one sided fight. With Canyon dead and multiple cooldowns burned they have a chance at getting Baron now. Busio sacrifices himselfs to guarantee it, even though Dragon was given up for the play.
Surprisingly FLY don't seem to know what to do with this Baron buff as their towers are falling and their lead dissipating. Their inferior Macro is showing as they almost net negative from this.
FLY repeats a succesful tactic engaging from the fog of war, burning multiple key cooldowns in order to get Dragon Soul before GenG has a chance to fight back. In an attempt to maybe steal the objective they're now caught as they try to escape. This was enough to take the nexus giving NA some hope.
Game 2
This series just keeps getting more exciting, Nunu locked in for inspired and GenG have Chovy on Kassadin. GenG is very heavy on Magic Damage but their scaling is incredible; meanwhile FLY needs Renekton to get ahead for their composition to work.
Lanes are swapped and GenG is being a bit unorthodox by having Kassadin lane alone in order to get solo experience. A 3v2 dive botlane against Renekton and Rakan pays off immensly, Bwipo dies without getting anything in return. Their most important player fell behind very early on making this game very hard to play for FLY.
An atempt to dive Chovy fails, backfiring with GenG getting yet another kill. FLY has no option but to focus on crossmapping, taking Dragon while Herald is claimed. Inspired rolls down mid for another shot at killing Chovy, but gives him the kill instead, staying truthful to his Disco Nunu skin.
Dragon has spawned and GenG finds an angle to dive Bwipo. Spotting the greed of this decision, he outplays Kiin, getting the kill himself. He now gets caught on his way back to lane. FLY struggles to respond, ultimately killing Lehends in return, claiming a second Dragon this game.
FLY is desperate to make a play. An engage in midlane goes terribly wrong, giving GenG another 3 kills. They're getting outscaled fast and have nearly ran out of options. Nowhere is safe with them getting picked off constantly. GenG's cockyness does let FLY get some return kills, always at the cost of losing way more than they gain.
GenG's gold lead slowly reaches 10k, bringing the doomsday clock to midnight. FLY has ran out of time, their nexus has fallen.
Game 3
FLY keeps innovating, picking Zeri midlane and Urgot toplane. Trying to throw GenG off is definitely their best bet at beating them as they're sticking to World's meta.
GEN prepares a dive against botlane, but Bwipo managed to crash his wave in time, even pulling the next one away trying to proxy, buying tons of time to teleport and help his team. Almost backfiring, FLY is locked in, coming out victorious and securing a double kill for Massu. Massive lead from very early on since Bwipo lost very little and Inspired got to take over the jungle due to Canyon being forced to recall. These are the risks FLY has to take in order to win.
GenG starts taking Voidgrubs, FLY is quick to cross map cleanly diving Peyz. Bwipo is killed in retaliation but this size of a lead in Kai'Sa could be enough to win the game. FLY is not contesting objectives in order to safely scale. Keeping the lead they already have is priority, waiting until they hit important item spikes on their carries will maximize the chances of winning.
Thanks to very good botside map control, FLY was able to claim a Dragon and take down first tower. Wasting tons of time chasing Kiin botlane, GEN take down midlane and toplane tower. A single kill made them lose a lot, and now they have to be careful of GEN's 6 grub stacks. Not learning from their mistakes they chase Chovy too far in toplane and just give kills away.
Blows are being traded midlane as Baron is on the line with Dragon joining soon. Bwipo goes down and FLY is lacking damage, although GEN was noticeably injured. FLY only has one shot at this, they begin pulling them deeper and deeper, buying time for Inspired to come back from base. Hexgates come in clutch, he gets there just in time and flips the tables. GEN has been aced and Baron has been claimed. The tempo carries over and Dragon is taken soon after.
FLY must be careful when sieging as the goal is still to scale, they're very close to reaching a point where they become unstoppable. After succesfully playing it slow they spot Kiin overextended and land another kill for Massu who is now holding half the lead of the entire team. Bwipo engages midlane a bit too soon, the fight almost goes terrible for his team but they cut their losses and disengage as they give up Dragon.
Baron is up again and Kai'Sa reaches full build. Timer is running so FLY start the objective in order to force a fight. The gold lead is clear to see, Canyon is the whole survivor as his team is massacred. This Baron buff might be the end of the game but the path to victory is foggy still. Slowly but surely inhibitors are falling. Soul point has been reached as the baron Buff runs out.
Quad reaches full build aswell. Trying to force a fight in base to end the game is quite risky still and Baron is only a few seconds away. FLY stays patient as they wait for baron and wipe GEN right after. NA now has the lead this series as they win this game.
Game 4
All innovation seems to have run out as FLY runs a very standard team composition and GEN prioritizes comfort picks.
Gen.G takes control over topside when the game starts in order to lane swap. This hurts Inspired as he will most likely take longer to clear his jungle after this. Busio then decides to gank midlane which, to everybody's surprise, ends up with Chovy burning his Flash. Meanwhile toplane, Bwipo is struggling to survive against Peyz and Lehends. Busio manages to make Peyz burn Flash and help his jungler catch Lehends, who was also forced to Flash away. Gen.G is just making incredibly weird decisions very early into the game.
All in all, Canyon still manages to double Inspired's CS and Chovy is dominating his lane regardless. Massu somehow benefited the most out of the lane swaps having a 500 gold lead on Ashe, who has been laning against Renekton this whole time. With this in mind FLY takes the first Dragon while GEN goes for Voidgrubs.
Even though Canyon is ahead 500 gold, Massu's lead is more significant due to the champions they're playing. Unfortunately for FLY, their ADC walked a bit to close to K'Sante, getting ulted under tower and promptely chased down. Even Rakan couldn't do much to help, Kiin lands First Blood and the scales are starting to swing in Gen.G's favor.
Some very good coordination between Inspired and Quad earn them a kill on Chovy, who even tried to Flash away. Both of them can now catch up in gold and XP. Voidgrubs spawn again, GEN knows their topside is weaker and give up rotating for the objective, in turn overloading botlane. After resetting, the sidelanes lane swapped, thus leaving Bwipo alone against a 4v1 dive. Even burning Flash wasn't enough to survive. They were able to confidently go for this play knowing they already have 3 stacks of Voidgrubs, therefore FLY can never have access to voidlings and now lose a massive wave bot. In turn they earned First Tower and all of its turret platings on top of the kill.
Choosing to minimize risk, FLY opts to giving away the second Dragon and instead look for a potential pick midlane. Flashes are traded by both sides and it's actually them who barely escape with their lives. They need to stay patient, scaling is on their side this game. GEN use Herald for midlane instantly after taking it, which was very low health but somehow survived with 1HP. Trying to access the sidelane, Quad is killed in tribush. This did leave Chovy unable to escape and ends up being a 1 for 1 trade. GenG has been able to have at least one person farming at all times somewhere on the map, slowly building up a lead, even though neither team having a clear upper hand thanks to XP leads.
Continuing a trend, Lehend is caught walking into the enemy team. This free kill also meant a free dragon for FLY. The opposite side of the map is overloaded again, Bwipo almost survives this time but ultimately falls, alongside his tower. So far they've been unable to respond to these cross-maps.
Kiin pushing deep in botlane showed the audience the biggest weakness in FlyQuest's team composition. He gets chased for a while but they don't have nearly enough damage to kill him before GEN rotates and gets the kills themselves. Another dragon claimed and towers keep falling; this game is looking extremely hard for the North American team.
Pressure around Baron is building, FLY must try something desperate as chances continue to fade. Bwipo's flank doesn't pay off, the fight is soon over with them desperately trying to run away, standing no chance in all-out combat. In an attempt to get them off Baron, considering their low DPS, more of them die. More time is bought indeed, but this only gives away even more gold simply bringing defeat closer.
This Baron is more than enough to siege the whole base as none of these champions are killable with this massive lead. Series reaches Game 5.
Game 5
We're holding nothing back at this point. FlyQuest blows the audience away picking Fiddlesticks and Sett; they're looking for a fight this time. GenG opts for a full scaling composition with some very LCK Meta champions. They have massive tools to just stall in order to reach late game, it's all up to FLY and how effective they'll be at picking fights.
Very early on FLY is finding difficulty, solo lanes are falling behind in CS and getting slightly crushed. They try to contest Voidgrubs; given their current weaknesses this is not possible for now. Bwipo even manages to shake off a three man gank. GEN wasted so much time doing this that FLY claims tons of resources botlane without even losing anything in top.
Inspired took Unsealed Spellbook, which he used to swap Smite for Ignite. This sends a notification in All Chat giving GEN full information about him not having it. Dragon is quickly claimed and now we wonder if they'll contest this Voidgrubs spawn without Smite. Peyz is by himself for a very short amount of time, a weakness instantly exploited by Massu and Busio, burning his Flash. This lets them take the grubs now that GenG don't have the tools to contest it.
Dragon is slain and it seems FLY are in control of the game right now. Both teams are a bit scared, the game state is not what they want it to be. GenG are first to take action, overloading again to dive Quad in botlane. Everyone is using Teleport for this play. This ultimately works out for them since they were able to move more people in less time. Chovy now has First Blood on top of 11 CS per minute.
Bwipo successfully defends botlane tower, allowing his team to claim Herald and First turret. Unfortunately Massu gets killed midlane during this, making the overall play better for Gen.G. Inspired has been unable to join a single fight all game, which is crucial. After 20 minutes we finally see this champion jump into the action. Chovy walked into botlane, exactly where Fiddlesticks was expecting him. A successful CC chain shutting him down wins FLY the teamfight.
Instead of looking for Dragon, they try to sneak Baron right as it spawns. Inspired and Massu get very close before they get spotted. The players die and Baron was kept from resetting long enough that Gen.G claims it instead. Absolute disaster for the North Americans but the game is not over yet. They need a miracle now that the koreans have scaled.
A desperate play topside seems to go well for them. Fiddlestick's ultimate is an amazing tool for picking off players, with Kiin being the victim this time. Forcing a fight right after the pick got them slaughtered. They can't kill any of these champions now that they were able to scale so hard.
Baron spawns once again, GEN is chasing them down. It's now or never; all of FLY rotates and takes their time with the fight. Nothing has changed once the teamfight breaks, they lack the damage to win fights. A clean ace and the dream is over, Gen.G advances to Semifinals.
No one is surprised Gen.G were the victors this series. Everyone was still surprised however, at everything that happened these games. From the most unexpected picks to FlyQuest not just winning some games, but actually standing a chance at winning against one of the strongest teams from the East.
This makes one hopeful for the future, perhaps we will see North America or Europe get closer to finals next year.
As mentioned in the Pre-Match post, we are giving away 30€ in Riot Merch Store (or RP!) to a random person who guesses the winner correctly. The winner for this match was @PhoenixKola!