There’s something about a good ol’ fashioned drinking competition, a race to the finish with shouts of “CHUG CHUG CHUG”! I’m not Brolaf, but I’ve done my fair share of beer bongs. The rush of beer straight down to the gullet through the great science of the funnel. The current gold funneling strategy as it’s been so aptly coined, is just that, minus the hangover. The team pours an enormous amount of resources into one person and fluctuates the normal gamestate to an accelerated one, having a primary carry to snowball them to victory. The gold funneling strat has only been recently discovered, with traces back to China and recently brought to the western audience by popular streamer Cowsep. This tactic is now becoming popularized as players perfect their compositions, even so far as to swapping roles and using unorthodox champions in the mid lane such as Taric and Braum. We’ve seen many junglers being funneled as well, such as Kai’sa, Yi, Lucian and even Irelia. There are a couple things to consider when running this type of strategy, as there are several requirements to execute it properly or defend against it. Pushing sidelanes are crucial when doing a funnel composition. Since your team will not have jungler assistance, and since the enemy team composition might not be funneling, it’s imperative that your team has winning sidelanes in order to keep the balance of the map stable and not crumble due to losing matchups. This might mean sacrificing a late game team comp, but when you have a hyperscaling jungler, you’re planning on ending the game through your jungle lead, not through even-gamestate towards the ladder parts of the match. Mid lane should be able to hold against the push. One great example of this is Echo Fox’s Huni on Irelia against OpTic Gaming’s PowerofEvil on Kai’Sa during Week 2 of the NA LCS 2018 Summer Split. Both of them tried to execute a funnel strat against one another, but the big difference was Huni being able to get Tiamat early on, which helps both in his jungle clear for raptors and wolves, along with mid wave clear, as his Q procs Tiamat’s AOE. The large problem with Echo Fox’s plan was sacrificing their top through both vision control and team composition, as Ornn is much easier to function around than a Karthus. What must be said is that Karthus was only a viable pick simply because, as a champion, Karthus is very prone to ganks, but since both teams were funneling, the jungle presence is non-existent so Fenix should have been able to abuse the lane to a higher degree but he was unable to get a CS lead. Another important note that should be considered is the ban phase. Golden Guardians against Cloud 9 shows the value of a mid laner which can counter-push and hold mid lane on his own. Although GGS did the Kai’sa and Braum funnel strat, C9 decided to play standard with Evelynn and Swain. It’s important to note that during this game, anytime GGS decided to make a play around the map, Goldenglue was able to push mid wave in order to punish them for their lack of mid lane presence. Swain is a great pick to counter funnels and Svenskeren was allowed to take 2 infernal drakes very early on. It is paramount to try and invade and take objectives such as Rift Herald and dragon against a funnel comp to limit the amount of farm and team power they can obtain, which is exactly what Svenskeren did this game. Whilst GGS ultimately won the game, that was more indicative of a lack of execution from Cloud 9 and their inability to create advantages elsewhere on the map. Nocturne, The Eternal Nightmare is one such pick that is fantastic against gold funnel compositions because of his global ganking pressure at level 6, creating a skewed map which can easily tilt side lanes to his advantage while the enemy is preoccupied mid lane. Camille can be added to the ban list too, as she has great gank potential and functions well during team fights to create zones of pressure against the funneled champion and increase the difficulty of offering them peel. Of course, both of these picks often demand bans just because of their raw power as champions, but it should be a conscious decision to ban these champions when attempting a funnel composition. As we progress throughout this patch, we’ll see this gold funneling strategy develop into more nuances and intricacies. The beauty of this meta is it plays into the fundamentals of League of Legends itself, as stats are generally multiplicative in LoL, which is to an incredible benefit when pouring resources into one person; they’re able to stack those multiplicative stats even more quickly. That’s the whole reason why supports became so popular in the bot lane during Season 1, as Fnatic showed NA that getting an ADC to scale faster is the superior way to play the game. We’re going through a cerebral revolution right now and I for one am excited to see the game progress from this groundbreaking meta.