Worlds 2023 Swiss Stage Day 4: Splitting Good from MAD

Day 4 of the Swiss Stage in Worlds 2023 will display all of the 1-1 teams fight to get one step closer to qualifying for the Knockout Stage! Here is how the fight for 2-1 went.

C9 vs T1 - A Perfect Game

C9 vs T1 Draft

T1 completely dominated Cloud9 in their match for 2-1. T1 drafted a very typical Korean team composition with high damage dealing champions and map wide pressure. C9 drafted similarly with less early power and more scaling with Orianna and Zeri. Unfortunately, it never got to that point.

Ryu "Keria" Min-Seok has the spotlight for this match as he set up almost all of the plays made by T1. With extremely high hit chance, Keria's Tempered Fate and Cosmic Bindings led to game breaking advantages against C9. The rest of T1 complimented this playmaking by dealing high amounts of burst and DPS. Keria was their win condition. C9 unfortunately did deal with it well as they received no kills or drakes, did not reach scaling points, and were caught out many times.

In the end, T1 destroyed C9's base with a gold lead of 14.3k at a game time of 22:25 minutes. T1 and C9 end Day 4 with a score of 2-1 and 1-2, respectively.

NRG vs MAD - Disappointing

MAD vs NRG Draft

NRG claimed their victory against MAD Lions in a back-and-forth game. MAD had a very good team composition as they adopted a dive and damage game plan. NRG drafted more poke down and engage with Jayce's Shock Blasts and Kai'Sa's Void Seekers.

NRG and MAD made massive blunders which caused the game to prolong in a back-and-forth paced game. MAD went for every play as a team and repeatedly relinquished all pressure on the other side of the map. NRG took advantage of this multiple times to take Baron and to end the game. NRG also made many map awareness errors, notably Niship "Dhokla" Doshi disrespecting MAD's gank pressure as he was dived multiple times.

A disappointing match for the Western world as these two teams performed underwhelmingly NRG ended the game with a gold lead of 5k at a game time of 41:40 minutes. NRG and MAD will start Day 5 with a score of 2-1 and 1-2, respectively.

FNC vs BLG - GigaBin Strikes Again

FNC vs BLG Draf

Bilibili Gaming Pingan Bank took over their game versus Fnatic. FNC had a different style draft exhibiting great peel and defensive options but lacked damage. The lack of damage was evident in the early skirmishes of the game and also in team fights. BLG on the other hand, had strong engage and frontline while having a great scaling damage dealers.

FNC earned themselves a lead after successfully creating cross-map plays. However, they were later punished with poor positioning for objective fights. With BLG taking advantage of this, they slowly but surely started suffocating FNC's members. Namely Zebin "Bin" Chen and Qi "Yagao" Zeng being the dominant players in this match. BLG destroyed FNC's Nexus with a gold lead of 9.5k at a game time of 32:59 minutes. BLG and FNC ended Day 4 with a score of 2-1 and 1-2, respectively.

WBG vs KT - More Items -> More Damage

WBG vs KT Draft

KT Rolster played a high tempo match against WeiboGaming FAW AUDI. With both teams drafting strong team compositions, it came down to who could satisfy their win conditions of dealing the most damage in team fights. Essentially, whichever team hits their item spikes first wins. In this case, KT hit their item spikes first, namely Kim "Aiming" Ha-Ram who ended the game with a 14/3/7 KDA. WBG did their best to take opportunities to punish and halt KT's tempo, but unfortunately KT had too large of a lead. KT ended the game with a gold lead of 14.6k at a game time of 38:40 minutes. KT and WBG will start Day 5 with a score of 2-1 and 1-2, respectively.

Read More:

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Featured Image Source: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games