This is one of the few groups heading into the second week of the group stage where every team had a decent chance at actually making it out of group stages to compete in London. iG with the bleakest outlook to C9 with the easiest path to London, both would find their hopes in danger to the teams in the middle, ahq and Fnatic.

ahq vs iG

Tabe on the analyst desk revealed some insider info on what were supposedly iG’s secret picks… and iG picked it! Jungle Smite and Ignite Hecarim for Kakao. Supposedly, Kakao has been tearing up solo queue with it and maybe scrims too if they felt comfortable enough to run it right away. Speculation aside, it wasn’t as impressive as it could have been. The blame cannot go on Kakao solely however as both Kid and Kitties faltered all throughout the game and ahq took all leads over those mistakes to treat iG’s side of the map like their own playground. With that, iG will go home after today but they still have 2 more games to play after this one.

FNC vs C9

The long awaited rematch after C9 Balls gave Fnatic a Pentakill on his Darius last week -- I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll keep it short because anyone who hasn’t seen this game should just drop everything and watch it. It’s a 22 minute win for Fnatic the shortest game to date in the 2015 Worlds tournament. Fnatic locks in a Kennen and Shen duo bottom lane for both Rekkles and Yellowstar… and I should really just let the game speak for itself; it was incredibly bloody, brutal and a large amount of kills per minute. Incredible amounts of fun.

ahq vs C9

After that loss to Fnatic, C9 continued to drop off the face of their earth with their chances at a guaranteed bracket stage pass slipping away. AN’s Jinx all tournament AND this game have been absolutely amazing. In a skirmish in the bot lane, ahq Albis’s Thresh used his lantern to reposition AN the moment Lemonnation’s Braum put up his shield so he could snipe Sneaky, which snowballed him out of control. Not only that but Ziv’s Darius has been on fire all day.

A perfect trifecta of Ziv on Darius, AN on Jinx and Westdoor’s global pressure on Twisted Fate completely devastated C9 after 20 minutes of a relatively close gold difference between the two teams. After that, C9 never recovered and ahq tied for first in the group with C9 off of this win.

iG vs FNC

This game was a crucial one for Fnatic if they wanted to get out of groups alive. iG looked like they were about to make a huge 4 man play in bot lane until Huni, fresh with a kill off Zz1tai with the help of Reignover, counter teleported bottom and got a quadra kill on iG, completely becoming the biggest threat on the map. This game was very similar to the game against C9; Fnatic and their AD Kennen made really short work of iG. 25 minutes of Fnatic dominance.

iG vs C9

If you’re a C9 fan you’d be sighing with relief here. Hey at least we have quarterfinals to look forward to now righ-- no sorry this isn’t the free win you were looking for to guarantee quarterfinals. Everyone assumed that since iG hadn’t shown up all tournament, it was a guaranteed ticket.  Rookie on Lissandra had a great performance, Kakao was on Nidalee, and you know that C9 really really messed up hard when Kitties of all players acquired a triple kill at the end of the game on support Kennen.

iG still made some mistakes here and there, facechecking bushes and whatnot, but it barely mattered with a 10k gold lead in iG’s hands at around 30 minutes. It was just a matter of time before they destroyed the nexus. With iG’s last breath, they took away C9’s guaranteed playoff spot and it came down to a tiebreaker for second place with whoever wins between ahq and Fnatic’s tiebreaker game.

ahq vs FNC

This game was the best game of the day. It wasn’t perfect or flawless or anything of the sort but I can’t think of many games this year that were so back and forth without involving multiple throws. It was like watching two equally skilled boxers go hand to hand in a slugging contest. Hell, it was like watching Superman and Doomsday beat the crap out of each other, and the force behind both of their punches were Febiven and AN. This game was made or broken on the backs of these two carries.

Febiven stealing Baron with Leblanc, AN with monster level plays on his trusted Jinx and backup Kench in the hands of Albis: This game couldn’t have been more intense if it tried. Whether or not AN would carry ahq or if Febiven would carry Fnatic, in the end it was Febiven who took a blowtorch to almost all of ahq’s healthbars in their final push into Fnatics base, allowing Febiven’s boy band to march in and reverse push all the way to the Nexus taking the first spot out of Group B.

C9 vs ahq

The last game of the day dawned upon us and things looked the worst for North America. As of before this game, NA was 0-9 this week with a total sweep of all 3 NA teams going 0-3. Yet, with this tiebreaker, if C9 had won this game against ahq, they would actually have made it to London by going 1-9 for all of NA.

This isn’t a dream, though. It’s not a fairy tale,  and it’s definitely not a sports anime... sorry. This is harsh and cruel reality. AN was once again given Jinx and played like a possessed man, and his performance was fueled with the fresh loss against Fnatic in mind. Ziv, once again on Darius, assisted in C9’s final fall from glory. Going forward, the whole world now knows that Westdoor is not the biggest threat on ahq nor is he the sole carry. Ziv and AN are terrifying when put into their comfort zone, and it will be interesting to see how other teams going to London devise plans against them.

QUARTERFINALS DRAWS

Diamondprox was invited to do the drawings for all 8 teams remaining for London. The following shows your Quarterfinals matchups.