Reigning IEM world champions Moscow 5 versus the defending champions of Season 1, Fnatic. It’ll be heated, it’ll be extreme.

However the team with the best cards are Moscow 5, they’ve been dominating throughout the whole year, especially at offline events while Fnatic only just got back on that horse as one of the greats. They got out of the slump with the addition of sOAZ and will only keep improving. Today they’re probably the team who has the biggest chance for that 3rd spot but winning a bo3 against Moscow 5 would be seen as quite an upset. This is the plan the gaming gods have decided.

Game 1

The ban face was over in a few seconds, target banning was all what happened. M5 had first pick and used this to pick up Shen. Fnatic countered with Jayce to shut him down just like they did in their quarter finals against Curse.

Fnatic was the team taking the initiative and with worked out brilliantly, a first invade blew the flash of Ezreal near the red and since Diamondz starts red they tricked M5 in thinking that they were safe but they came back with 5 and took him down. At the start a few really well played exchanges came off and that came down to M5’s global presence, they had 2 teleports on Ryze and Shen. The latter even has 2 once he hits 6 which really screwed over Fnatic. They tried to take dragons but got pushed out several times, they had almost no control over the game and looked lost.

Once they got down the Anivia Egg M5 kicked it up a gear, one Fnatic couldn’t reach, a 3v2 towerdive on Xpeke mid following up with a roam towards bottom lane got the ball rolling. However when I took a 2nd look on the map it was Fnatic who had taken down 5 towers while M5 had none destroyed. And yet they still couldn’t take any foot on the ground. Fnatic was really just camping their towers in mid while the Russians slowly started catching on those little mistakes, pushing down towers while Fnatic was in the dark.

We were already close to the late game and a baron was up next but instead of a dance we got a solo from Diamondz, taking down the mighty beast with ease. M5 followed up with a head on push down mid, winning the exchanges without breaking a sweat, ending the game right there and then. Alex Ich said they were going to 2-0 their opponents. If they keep up the form this prediction will be spot on.

Game 2

M5 didn’t want to give away which they banned over Alistar, the cow was Fnatic’s first pick and they went for the double AP composition. Something which works very well especially with a Rumble or Vladimir top. Fnatic picked the former as well to have a really strong Area Of effect combo with Graves and Zyra. The lvl 1 was Fnatic having the same tactic, invading the red but this time Diamondz was ready for it.

M5 focused top early game since Rumble, even with his recent nerf, is still a very favorable pick. They managed to kill him twice and the Russians looked like taking over as soon as the early game. But one of the key moments which snowballed the whole game was the first 5v5 near dragon. Fnatic didn’t engage until M5 had started on the dragon and with a perfect initiate from Nrated they aced the Russians. Alex wasn’t able to do his damage and looked indecisive during game 2. Every following team fight only made the gold gap bigger , giving Fnatic a very comfortable position in every clash. Even the ones the failed to engage went in their favor, there was really nothing Moscow 5 could do and the longer the game went, the more towers that went down for M5.

At 1 point it looked like Fnatic almost gave M5 the chance to comeback but they got their shit together grouped up and pushed M5 of off the baron, closing out the game by diving towers because their advantage was just that big. An unexpected end of game 2 which will only make this series even better.

Game 3

The pick and ban face saw M5 picking up Xin Zhao for the toplane, someone we’ve not seen a lot of in competitive play since he was remade. The ryze pick was quite the counter to Ahri who had a very hard time from the gecko. Xpeke got first blooded by Alex and whatever the Mid player from Fnatic tried, his lane enemy was always there to pick up the pieces, racking up the kills to the point where they had to kill him first without his team being involved. The first big 5v5 fight wasn’t to be for Fnatic, they focused right but the whole team of Alex was there dealing an insane amount of damage. When Alex was finally dealt with, Fnatic had nothing more left to fight the other 4 which was the story for pretty much every next engagement they had.

The next objective for both squads was baron, something which Moscow 5 started and all though Fnatic stole the buff, there was nothing to do against the burst damage M5 had even without the buff. They wrapped Fnatic up and a push down mid, with Fnatic having to engage from behind their base had the outcome as every other battle. M5 breezed through Fnatic in this 3rd game, they’ll be going to Los Angeles and play the finals tomorrow against the winner of SK Gaming and CLG.eu