After an unprecedented 4-way tie, our ROCCAT partner Gen.G Esports has earned the first seed placement from Group D with a 5-3 record and qualifies for the Knockout Stage at Worlds 2021! Before we start cheering for them during their bo5 game against Cloud 9 on Monday the 25th, we thought we’d take a look back at our top 3 favorite GEN matches from Groups.

#3: GEN vs. LNG Esports - Day 1

GEN certainly came out with a convincing first game to start off their Worlds run this year. Having had time to observe the developing meta during the Play-In stage and from earlier Group matches, LNG made a smart call banning Kennen, Amumu, Jarvan, and the ever so annoying Yuumi during draft. However, they forgot to ban BDD’s Zoe which is a risky call considering how proficient he is on the champion. Perhaps it was a simple matter of LNG’s midlaner Icon underestimating his Zoe (or overestimating his own play in the matchup) given that at barely 8 minutes into the game BDD was able to straight up solo kill Icon’s Sylas.

This set the tempo pretty much for the remainder of the game as for the next 14 minutes you could see LNG start wavering control of both vision and objectives. This was evident right around 22 minutes into the game where LNG got clean-aced fighting at Dragon. That gave GEN soul-point and allowed them to walk up to the enemy nexus and secure a 23 minute win with a 8-1 kill score.

#2: GEN vs. Team Liquid - Day 3

After their recent loss against EU’s MAD Lions, it was no secret that GEN was beatable. This game however was a little personal as GEN’s ADC Ruler and TL’s support CoreJJ won the 2017 World Championship together when they were both on Samsung Galaxy. They would now meet again at opposite sides of the Rift as rivals both searching for another World title.

Overall though this was a fun game to watch as there were back to back trade-kills all throughout the early game. The first turning point occurred from a 13 minute ace when GEN won a 4v4 top lane. Down bottom however TL’s ADC Tactical made one of the biggest mistakes of his career by erroneously trying to teleport top right in the face of Ruler who just attacked him for free to his death. Maybe this led to some false confidence though because despite a 7k gold lead at 22 minutes, GEN failed a dive at TL’s tier 3 bot tower and lost 4 members in the process. Luckily for GEN their small throw wasn’t enough to lose the game completely as they were able to capitalize on the massive lead their mid and jungler had and close out the game at 38 minutes, 23-15.

#1: GEN vs. Team Liquid - Day 7 (Tiebreaker)

It seemed like GEN’s confirmation into the Knockout Stage was inevitable after being allowed to draft Jarvan, Yuumi, and BDD’s Zoe. TL had a great, aggressive comp of their own but in hindsight I imagine they regretted giving up so many comfort champions over to GEN. As proof of that, just look at the sequence of events that happened at the 18 minute mark. The sleep onto Jensen’s Syndra was met by death, followed immediately by a bubble snipe onto jungler Santorin’s Xin Zhao under their tier 2 bot tower. BDD wasn’t satisfied with those 2 kills as he walked back to mid to find a low health Tristana under their tier 2 tower just waiting for one last long-range bubble for another kill.

To TL’s valiant credit, none of these things demoralized them as they fought hard to keep themselves in the game - even finding themselves a super clutch baron steal from Jensen. What sealed their fate though was perhaps nerves getting the best of Tactical as he curiously uses his W into the fog of war of their jungle where he would soon be met by 3 members of GEN. He tried to Flash away but he died anyway, which later led to GEN getting a baron, walking up to TL’s base, and using their 6.5k gold lead to win the game and eliminate TL from Worlds.