The West's Final Hope: Rogue VS JD Gaming

Western region teams in the 2022 Worlds Championship have almost all been convincingly sent home by their stronger Eastern rivals. One Western team remains: Rogue looks to take down China’s JD Gaming in the first Quarterfinals match of the tournament.

THANK YOU MR. GAM

Straight out the gate, Rogue exceeded expectations taking games from challenging opponents in their group: China’s #2 seed Top Esports (TES) and Korea’s #4 seed DragonX (DRX).

Expectedly, Rogue took both games from Vietnam’s GAM Esports (GAM). Unfortunately for Rogue, they would not beat either DRX or TES again in their group.

Fortunately for Rogue, GAM played crabs in the bucket with TES. With GAM taking one game off of TES, they guaranteed entry into Quarters for Rogue, and snuffed out Top Esports’ chances of continuing their Worlds run. With this, a tiebreaker game was to be played pitting DRX and Rogue against one another for first seed in their group. While Rogue did not win the DRX tiebreaker, they are surely stoked to escape fairly narrowly.

ROGUE VERSUS THE REST OF THE WEST

Rogue (RGE) was the only Western team to escape what’s been the most one-sided Worlds in history. North American and Europe teams’ combined group stage results equate to a staggering 11-27, with basically a third of those wins going to Rogue with 4.

Meanwhile, North America has had their worst year in Groups yet, finishing with a combined score of 3-15. Crazily, Rogue won more in Groups this year than all of NA combined.

Their European brothers in Fnatic (FNC) and G2 Esports (G2) were dealt with in similar fashion to NA, with only FNC showing signs of life in an electric Week 1 of Groups, before collapsing in Week 2.

A PEEK AT ROGUE VS JD GAMING

JD Gaming (JDG) is a scary team this tournament. Rogue has an uphill battle ahead of them, having to take down some of the favorites for best player at Worlds 2022 like JDG’S

Top Laner Bai "369" Jia-Hao and Korean prodigy Seo “Kanavi” Jin-hyeok in the Jungle.

Rogue Jungler Kim "Malrang" Geun-seong will have the unenviable task of going toe-to-toe with Kanavi, either opting to beat Kanavi at his own game and take away Graves or Viego, or look to neutralize Kanavi with picks like Trundle.

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It will be interesting to see how Rogue can handle China’s first seed; JDG is already world famous for crazy invades and volatile level ones. Rogue will have to try some cheesy invades at the beginning of the game to get some early damage on JDG.

Thursday, 20 October Rogue will face JD Gaming in the first series of the tournament in the Quarterfinals. Rogue enters the series as real underdogs, as well as the West’s last chance to make a mark at Worlds 2022.

Image source: Rogue