Royal Never Give Up vs Evil Geniuses

Oh, the agony. This was supposed to be the simplest, most straight-forward match-up imaginable, what with Evil Geniuses not having even a single win over a pool 1 opponent. Fate, however, threw us all a curve ball; Evil Geniuses have pulled off the seemingly impossible by beating the reigning LCK champions and, in doing so, tying both them *and* G2 Esports in the standings. With four wins and three losses to their name, Evil Geniuses now stand shoulder to shoulder with two teams most folks deemed far superior.

And, needless to say, we're all impressed, if a bit baffled and overwhelmed.

In all fairness though, their win was less about them "delivering" and more about T1 dropping the ball. They've been struggling beyond measure lately and we're not quite sure as to why that's so. They're still astonishingly capable, but their iffy read on the meta and mid-game snafus have come back to bite them many a time and, well, things may still get worse if they fail to huddle up and deliver now when it matters most.

Evil Geniuses got the job done, so credit where credit is due, although we'd be remiss if we didn't say that beating a flawed and inconsistent T1 isn't worth much these days. It's still an accolade worthy of praise and celebration, but there's definitely an asterisk next to it.

Regardless, the LCS champions came in clutch with a scaling team comp and a metric ton of resilience. They persevered in the early game, found their openings, capitalized, and then snowballed to victory. That's about as much as we could have hoped for, given their relative inexperience.

Royal Never Give Up, however, are still a cut above. They, too, are flawed beyond measure and are prone to dropping the ball at the most random of moments, but even in that kind of state they still have all the tools necessary for the job. They are, without a doubt, the most consistent team over in Busan, South Korea, and while they haven't been nearly as consistent as we'd like, their utter dominance cannot be brought into question. They are a competitive LoL giant, and the fact that they're prone to making egregious blunders in the early game does very little (if anything) to change that. It doesn't cloud our judgement nor should it.

Our choice is clear: Royal Never Give Up all the way.