Both the LCK commentators and Jin Air Green Wings top-laner Heo ‘Lindarang’ Man-heung were left disappointed after what might have been a clever tactic with Sion went awry.
At the highest level, League of Legends is a game decided by the slightest margins, and those margins just weren’t in Jin Air’s favor for their match against Afreeca Freecs.
The strategy sees Sion attack the Blue Buff and the nearby Gromp simultaneously at level one, immediately after they’ve spawned. Between them, they’ll kill the Sion fairly easily – that’s the plan, in fact, and Lindarang even refrained from buying any items initially to allow himself to die quicker.
After Sion’s death, however, he’ll go into his zombie form, granting him enough damage to finish off both monsters. Upon respawning, Sion can make a bigger purchase and then immediately teleport to the top lane, having gained a gold and experience advantage without having missed out on too many minions.
The tactic does require a certain degree of efficiency with positioning and abilities in order to pull off, however, and unfortunately in this particular instance, Lindarang must have made the smallest of mistakes somewhere in the process.
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Though he was able to secure the Blue Buff, the Gromp survived with a barely-visible sliver of health, denying a significant chunk of the gold and experience that this strategy is designed to exploit – much to the disappointment of commentators Max ‘Atlus’ Anderson and Christopher ‘PapaSmithy’ Smith.
The moment really did add insult to injury for Jin Air, who had just lost an extended first game against Afreeca Freecs in which the pivotal moment was a Baron steal by an Ezreal ultimate of all things.
The same series saw Lee ‘Spirit’ Da-yoon, ostensibly a Jungler for Afreeca, playing Jarvan IV at Support, another factor that made for one of the more eventful matches of LCK Spring so far.