Inspired by Diamond and Genja posts I decided to share my feelings about the travel and tournament too. It was long time compared to LCS between the travels so I even missed my Gambit Comrades and was looking forward to meet Edward and play with him on Lan again. It hurt to go out of family again after such a break but it was not for a long time and my wife was looking forward waiting for the tournament cheering me up and hoping for us to win.
We were traveling with Edward and Genja from Moscow, Darien came by himself earlier and Diamond went with MCJ (our photographer and media editor). Arthur came tonight and Groove came on the next day right before the games. In the evening of the day me and Danil made the research on our russian enemies because we knew that we shouldn't underestimate them. We knew that their main heroes were Fiddlesticks and Shen and he looked into their jungler plays and said that he is not bad I knew that Fomko is not bad too because I met him a lot in SoloQ but I was pretty sure that we can outplay them on LAN because of their lack of international experience. Our games went smooth against them but I think that they got really good potential and if they wont break their team they got good future in the Amateur Scene and maybe can reach LCS. Bad luck they meet us
The next day was the day against C9 and Fnatic. We couldn't do research on them because of no tournaments with them after the worlds, but we were sure that their playstyle wouldn't change much. I think the games against C9 were the hardest games for us of the tournament. In the first game I fed firstblood to Hai because that was high risk high reward situation. If he died there we would get fb+assist+diamond would get a lot of creeps on lane and he would lose a lot. Diamond got those creeps, but Hai got fb and I got no gold from lane, w/e shit happens. Diamond could dominate Meteos this game and our team played super good. In the second game I missed some ulties on Orianna but my team played really well and when enemies thought that they could engage us, Edward met them with 4man Annie ults. I think we got inspired after long break, the fact it was IEM and Edward being back to us. Genja was like the new man killing people apart. The games against Fnatic went much easier that we expected. Maybe they underestimated us or they lacked the trainings but the games were really easy. In the first game our enemies played pretty passive so we were slowly taking advantage and building items. Darien dominated Soaz really hard and that gave us a lot of free objectives. After we got our items we just pushed to victory. In the second game Diamond solo carried the game on his famous Evelynn. OP first blood bait by him xD made enemies lose flashes and then feed a lot of frags in revenge. He got lvl 6 first on map and couldn't be stopped.
I would say I didn't play super good this tournament, but I feel that I started to play much better and will try to increase more. I feel that I got understanding of several aspects of the game that helped me a lot during the tournament. I think that Diamond fully deserved MVP of this tournament, but Edward, Darien and Genja played supergood too. I think it was hard decision by the viewers, but the last game against Fnatic made the huge DOT in Diamond's Favor.
I want to thank my team for this awesome tournament and it seems that Genja started to play much more relaxed with Edward. I hope nothing will change and we can handle all the internal storms that will come to our team.
I want to thank all our fans watching us and rooting for our victory.