On the back of superior team compositions Friday, Newbee took a hard-fought 2-0 sweep of I May to open Week 4, Day 2 of the League of Legends Pro League in Shanghai.
The opening game of this series saw both teams draft heavy scaling compositions, with a Tristana for Newbee's Li "Vasilii" Wei Jun and a Twitch for I May's Xie "JinJiao" Jin-Shan. This led to both teams simply farming for the first major chunk of the game, with the first kills not coming until 16 minutes in. Once the kills hit, however, they came in droves, starting with a 3-for-0 out of nowhere for Newbee that gave it two immediate towers. While I May bounced back with two kills of its own, Newbee again took a big fight, this time a 3-for-1, that was dominated by Vasilii to pick up the top lane inhibitor at 24 minutes. From here it was essentially the Vasilii show, as he dominated every late game teamfight on his way to a 8/1/6 KDA (kills/deaths/assists). One final 3-for-0 teamfight win at the 37-minute mark allowed Newbee to pick up Baron and march in for the 40-minute victory.
I May came into Game 2 with a composition more focused on the early game -- an obvious decision given its struggles during the beginning portions of Game 1. The strategy seemed to work out, at least initially, since Newbee wasn't able to snowball as hard as it did in the first game. Even though Newbee picked up first blood and first tower, it only owned a modest 1,000-gold lead at the 20-minute mark. I May even threatened to move ahead in the contest with a 4-for-2 at 22 minutes, but a poor Baron attempt saw two members die to the Baron itself. This allowed Newbee to walk right in and pick up the objective, which all but secured the win for Newbee. To its credit, I May managed to stall fairly well, but all this served was to allow Vasilii's Kog'Maw to grow into a beast, finishing with an 11/3/14 KDA. It was only fitting, then, that Vasilii picked up a massive quadra kill in the final moments to lock up the drawn-out 50-minute win.