Study on Lv1 Openings and Strategies (1/5)

Introduction

This series of articles is devoted to studying the strategies used by the Taipei Assassins in the Season 2 World Championships. Though the number of games are few (9 in total to be exact), they reveal many interesting things about the game openings and strategies in general. I picked TPA as a target for study because they won the Championship and Scarra highly recommended their opening strategies.

Opening plays often have high impact on the game itself. League of legends is a snowbally game, early advantages can lend themselves to incrementally larger ones until the losing team is forced into risky play to come back. With the amount of lane swapping and 2v1s in the meta, some games are lost simply by having bad lane set-ups or bad starts, having a solid lvl1 strat is incredibly important. I consider “Lvl 1 strat” and “opening play” as a continuation of events from the start of the game until the lanes are settled and stable farming begins. This is usually between 0:00 to 4:00 in game time, when the initial wards placed down expires.

A note on the conclusions after the play-by-play. There will generally be three paragraphs here. The first showing the results of the opening play and its effect on the game. The second paragraph is where I will add additional notes to the details of the strat, comparisons with other openings, and general musings. The third paragraph is where I believe the teams could have played it out better.

About me, the author. I am not a high Elo player, but I do believe in the power of observation, and I follow multiple pro scenes quite in-depth. I try my best to keep what I write accurate and empirical, in the sense I haven’t put any of my own theory crafting into this article, but instead chose to draw on what professional teams are already doing. I enjoy constructive criticism, and non-rhetorical discussion, so feel free to leave opinions if you feel like you can contribute in the above fashion.

Terminologies

Sometimes it can be hard to describe what is going on in the many bushes of the League, so this I why made a map of the bushes on Summoner’s Rift. All the terms in the following article will be in accord with this map. MR just means “Mid Right”, ML “Mid left”.

>> Continue to Part 2, S2WC Quarter Finals Round: TPA vs. M5

Notes: All in-game icons and pictures are copy-righted materials belonging to Riot Games. Combinations of these icons with arrows and other such marks are of my doing, please contact me for usage.