Royal Never Give Up entered their World’s 2017 campaign as the second seed after a disappointing reverse sweep loss in the LPL finals to EDG. As the second seed coming into the tournament on their home soil, RNG was also said to be the second best Chinese team. They were not ranked second to Summer champions EDG, but to Chinese 3rd seed Team WE who had to make it to the group stage through the play-in tournament. There’s a theme developing here for RNG, second place.

That theme goes deeper when we examine the star carry of RNG, AD carry Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao. Uzi’s career so far has been almost exclusively a list of falling just short. LPL Spring and Summer 2017, Summer 2016, China’s Regional Final 2014, and the two that hurt the most Worlds 2014 and 2013. For a player like Uzi, who believes that an AD Carry needs to be essentially perfect in terms of in-game micro play, coming just short of victory so many times has had to have done nothing more than fuel his desire to win.

And thus far that is exactly what Uzi and RNG have done. Win. Their campaign through the group stage saw them come out on top with a 5-1 record and with some of the most impressive individual stats of tournament. At the end of groups mid laner Li "xiaohu" Yuan Hao lead all players with an astonishing 24.0 KDA ratio, dying only twice in the 6 total games RNG played. What’s more impressive than the number is the fact that xiaohu was playing aggressively and bullying his lane opponents without being punished for it. Good vision control and roaming alongside jungler Liu "mlxg" Shi Yu allowed the team to take advantage of xiaohu’s pressure and take early towers. Many times these roams included the bot lane as well in order to get extra gold onto Uzi in the form of ganking lanes and handing the kills to him. Top laner Junze “Letme”

Yan has shown he can play the current team-oriented tanky picks at a high level and through the group stage made great teleport plays to help his team take fights. One of his most notable plays being in RNG’s first match against Europe's G2 which resulted in a quadra kill for Uzi at the baron pit and allowed the team to end the game.

In the bot lane Uzi and his faithful support Shi "Ming" Sen Ming showed they had a perfect handle on the meta and were able to win lane consistently. Ming had opted to include gold generation into his rune pages which allowed him to be able to purchase the all-so-important Ardent Censor that much early than usual. When Uzi’s staggeringly high 10.8 CS per minute is taken into context it shows that not only is Uzi farming at an excellent level in lane, but that his team is making sure to funnel the post lane phase resources to him as well. The strategy for RNG seemed clear, get Uzi fed and win the game through him. The level of play the team showed through groups this strategy was very reliable, only dropping one game in what could be described as a hiccup against G2. RNG looked sloppy in their only loss but quickly bounced back and finished their day by beating Samsung for the second time.  

After winning Group C, Royal Never Give Up was seeded to face Fnatic in the first round of the knockout stage. Game 1 Fnatic came with a large amount of pressure onto the bot lane of RNG, in hopes of suppressing Uzi and allowing them a more favorable chance of winning the game. Fnatic’s strategy worked in the short term as they took bot tower first and had Uzi and Ming at 0-1-0 and 0-2-0 respectively. But their success was short lived, superior team play, well-timed teleports from Letme and control of the neutral monsters outweighed the early pressure and RNG were victorious. Game 2 looked to be in Fnatic’s control as well but a stolen baron by mlxg gave RNG a boost, which ended up leading into another baron for them and after a few more fights ultimately the game. In what looked like it would be a relatively quick game 3 and a 3-0 for RNG, Fnatic were able to hold on and claw their way to victory. The game looked to be over at just past the 28 minute mark as RNG were onto the nexus turrets of Fnatic, but an unfortunate mistake tanking the nexus tower by Uzi meant that Fnatic had a chance. Game 4 was more of the same story of the series. Fnatic looked as if the game was in their control early but ultimately RNG outplayed their opponent and took the series. To be honest for RNG this series could have, and probably should have, been a 3-0 victory. If Uzi does not end up tanking nearly his entire health bar of damage to the nexus tower, RNG would have been able to end the game there and would have moved on to the semi finals that much sooner. A big take away from this series was that even when his lane was camped and he was forced to hide under his tower Uzi was not going to be held down.

For the series Uzi was 31-5-11 and averaged 11.8 cs per minute. Those are ridiculous numbers and are even more impressive when you take into account the amount of pressure Fnatic put into his lane. Uzi will need to be able to channel this level of performance again as RNG looks forward to their semifinal matchup against reigning world champions SK Telecom T1.

SKT so far this tournament has looked the worst that we have seen them in recent history. Even going further and adding in their performance in LCK Summer SKT looks uncharacteristically sloppy. In their quarterfinal matchup SKT was taken to a game 5 by Europe’s Misfits Gaming and to be fair, SKT had a good chance of actually losing that game. With a much less intimidating SKT squad to look forward to, RNG have to be taken seriously at this point as a true contender to win the tournament. RNG has beaten both the teams on the opposite side of the bracket recently, 2-0 against Samsung in groups and 3-2 against WE in the semifinals of LPL Summer. If SKT come to play against RNG in the same form as their match against Misfits, RNG will beat SKT without a doubt.

Now knowing SKT, and Faker, one should not expect SKT to come out flat, roll over and die in a semifinal match. They don’t say “never bet against SKT” for nothing. SKT’s bot lane of Bang and Wolf should be a much greater challenge for Uzi and Ming, and xiaohu will be facing off against Faker. Xiaohu will have a much harder time gaining priority over Faker and using that to break open the game. Another interesting point of contention is SKT’s top laner Huni has an extremely carry oriented style, Jayce being his most played so far at world’s, and loves to split push. Ass shown in their group stage match against Cloud 9 where he ended the game by himself while his team stalled C9. The way RNG choose to match Letme against Huni will be interesting, conventional thought would suggest we would see more meta picks such as Cho’Gath and Maokai. But would RNG try putting Letme on a more lane dominant pick to match the style Huni has favored during his career? We will have to wait and see, but it is a possibility. Early in his career Letme was known for a carry oriented style and more recently has adopted the tanky team based style to meet the needs of his team. RNG will also have to take into account the fact that SKT has shown a rather unique style of starting out a series with their jungler Peanut, scouting how the enemy plays the first game, and then possibly substituting Blank into the jungle for a strategic advantage.

Out of the many storylines to be drawn from this matchup, one thing is for certain. The winner of this series has to be the favorite going into the final matchup against either Samsung or Team WE. We all will see how it plays out on October 28th as RNG vs SKT kicks of the semifinals of Worlds 2017.

Photo Credits: Riot Games

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