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Team Vitality crushed the dreams of the Unicorns of Love with a 2-0 sweep at the tail end of Week 10, Day 2 of the European League of Legends Championship Series in Berlin.
Team Vitality's victory, combined with a win by H2K Gaming against the Mysterious Monkeys earlier in the day, ensured that H2K would finish first in Group B, not the Unicorns of Love (8-4, 19-13 match record).
Team Vitality (5-7, 12-15 match record) managed to play spoiler for the second-place team but nothing else, as this victory does nothing to alter its position in the group. Vitality still maintains sole possession of fourth place and missed the playoffs as a result.
Unicorns of Love, however, has suddenly found itself in a tenuous position, as its recent performances have been anything but inspiring. Its loss Friday also robbed the team of the first-round playoff bye that might have been its ticket to Worlds. In order to possibly qualify for the World Championship via circuit points, Unicorns will now need to win at least an additional round of playoffs, and if it's eliminated in the first round, its hopes of finally making it to Worlds are all but finished.
The story of the series was one of growth on the part of Team Vitality, which finally showed something that we've been hoping to see from them for some time: a reasonable early game. Unicorns of Love is often known for taking control of the early stages of the game, but that wasn't the case over the course of this series, as the pressure that Erlend "Nukeduck" Vatevik Holm managed to exert in the mid lane helped Charly "Djoko" Guilliard take ownership of the opposing team's jungle.
In Game 1, the Unicorns didn't take Team Vitality's attempts to take control of the map lying down, but its attempts at stopping Nukeduck only served to feed his Kassadin two kills, and he promptly took over the game.
Game 2 was all about the top lane, however, as Vitality did everything in its power to punish the Gnar pick from the Unicorns, and Lucas "Cabochard" Simon-Meslet's Jayce proved able to do just that. With the help of his team, he snowballed the early game heavily in Vitality's favor, and it never let up on the aggression. While Unicorns of Love had a couple of skirmishes that went its way, the game as a whole was overwhelmingly in Vitality's favor, and it closed the door on the Unicorns just before the 40-minute mark.
Vitality will finish up its season at 11 a.m. ET on Sunday against Splyce, and Unicorns of Love will do battle with H2K Gaming at 2 p.m. ET that day to close out the regular season.