Ranked Game #6

I got around to playing a ranked game this afternoon with my friend, Quexolan. However, it did not turn out at all like we had hoped. It was probably one of the most frustrating games I have ever been a part of. There was also a lot of bickering between the five of us, I just wanted to get out of the game as fast as possible after a while.

I was captain and received the second ban. Heres how they went:

Rammus, Malphite, Shen, Amumu


The draft with my pick italicized:

Us: Singed
Them: Xin Zhao, Nocturne
Us: Miss Fortune, Nidalee
Them: Nasus, Kassadin
Us: Warwick, Akali (Quexolan)
Them: Cho'Gath


While the draft went on, Warwick said that he would jungle, which was promising as he's obviously one of the best jungling champs out there. We decided to have Miss Fortune go mid and Nidalee solo top, as they were the clear choices with their range. That left my friend and I with the bottom lane. I liked the combination of Singed and Akali, as the former can throw champs out of position and into an area that is safe for Akali to blink into and burst the crap out of them. I also had high hopes for the Nocturne (who I assumed was jungling) to be bad and feed us all day long. However, the rest of their team was pretty bulky, save Kassadin, which was a tad worrying as those teams are typically difficult to take out efficiently. When the loading screen came up, my thoughts of Nocturne jungling were confirmed.

Early Game
The game was quiet for a while, we pushed our bottom lane to their tower to try and get the upper hand quickly. It was risky and didn't end up doing us any good, but it didn't get us killed either. Nocturne never really tried ganking more than once in our lane. Cho'Gath got first blood on Miss Fortune during a failed gank by Warwick. She died while typing to scold him, which was very telling of what was to come later in the game. Warwick did take out Cho while he tried to escape though, for his only kill of the game. Once we let the bottom lane get pushed to our tower, a 2v2 fight broke out with us against Kassadin and Xin Zhao. We miraculously got Kassadin and eventually Xin, but that was probably the highlight of the laning phase. Our middle tower was the first to fall, with the bottom going down soon after.

Mid Game
This is where all hell broke loose for our team. We kept getting caught out of position alone and thus died very quickly. Warwick and I were especially guilty of this, as I would try to initiate at bad times and get myself killed, while he would ult in and die right away. Someone proposed surrendering at 20 minutes, but it got shot down 3-2. At one point they had picked enough of us off to easily take out the outer top tower and our inner mid tower. There was one teamfight in the middle of the map that gave me a little bit of hope for redemption. I flung Cho'Gath at our team while he was alone, and by the time we had killed him the rest of the enemy team had showed up. Eventually, it was down to just Nidalee, Miss Fortune and Xin Zhao alive. Miss Fortune was down to one or two bars of health, so she began to run away when Nidalee initiated on Xin. Nidalee got the kill on him, but neglected her teammate's low health and allowed her to die before getting the kill. So we had aced them, but with only one team member alive, we couldn't push anything. We were unable to stop their steamrolling at that point, so after a bit of defending and lots of dying, we surrendered at 38 minutes.

The postgame scoreboard can be seen below:

Replay link: Game #6 - Singed

What I learned:
- Nasus is quite formidable in the right hands, Wither is a very devastating spell when trying to run away
- Warwick is not a foolproof jungler, as ganking is an art that all junglers need to learn
- Singed is not as invincible as I thought, he needs lots of farm or a bit of time in order to get to that level
- Cho'Gath is probably the best tank that doesn't need tank items, which is why they nerfed him i suppose
- Playing Nocturnes in every game is annoying

My Score: 4/8/8
My Build: Rod of Ages, Boots of Swiftness, Force of Nature

Current ranked record: 4 - 2 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: Unranked

Guess I jinxed myself in my last post with that winning streak talk. Oh well, each game is a learning experience, even the miserable ones. Hope you guys enjoy the read, comments and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks for reading.

-Chickenmoo