Ranked Game #7

Hey dudes, I played another ranked game last night, but I didn't have time to write the summary, as I had other more important matters to attend to. This was a somewhat balanced game, with several changes in momentum throughout. However, the other team was able to do quite a bit more with theirs, giving them a good victory with little resistance at the end. I went in alone on this one, as 534N7R0N was busy.

For the first time, I was not captain. I had the third pick. We had second ban, so here they are:

Maokai, Rammus, Karthus, none

Yes, they only banned one champion, I didn't even know that could happen. Anyway, here's how the draft went:

Us: Amumu
Them: Twisted Fate, Leblanc
Us: Teemo, Urgot
Them: Warwick, Pantheon
Us: Cho'Gath, Gangplank
Them: Nasus


I was excited about this team composition compared to the enemy's. We had a good amount of bulk, and nice residual damage capability with Teemo and Gangplank. We also had a nice even mix of attack damage and ability power so they couldn't just build one type of armor and brush us off. I also liked that they had three champions that are typically built as glass cannons, meaning that if we could catch them out of position, we could break them very easily. Amumu took the jungle, Teemo soloed top and I soloed mid. That left Cho'Gath and Gangplank to take the bottom lane.

Early Game
I ended up laning against Leblanc, so this part of the game for me was just a lot of harassment between us. We could never quite kill each other without help. The same went for Teemo in top against Nasus, neither got a kill while laning. It was a completely different story with Cho'Gath and Gangplank though, who went up against Twisted Fate and Pantheon (Warwick was jungling). Gangplank gave up first blood off of a double stun, and then Cho'Gath died quickly after. He was able to take out Pantheon in the process though. The rest of the laning phase consisted of Cho and Gangplank dying constantly to the double stun combination, coupled with some ganks by Warwick bottom and middle. As a result, our bottom tower was the first to fall. At this point, the momentum was in their favor and the laning phase had broken down.

Mid Game
Here is where we began to lose towers quickly. They began traveling in small packs, wearing down towers when opportunities presented themselves. Eventually our remaining two outer towers were taken out. Several teamfights occurred in the middle of the map, usually initiated by Warwick's Infinite Duress. This was quickly followed by Pantheon's stun and Leblanc's burst, getting a couple quick kills. At this point Twisted Fate would come in with his stun to take out another, forcing a retreat. After one such fight, they killed four of us, allowing them to take down the inner middle turret easily. There was another one later on that helped us quite a bit though, shifting the momentum in our direction for a short amount of time. Cho'Gath and Amumu caught Twisted Fate off guard, killing him as the rest of our team arrived. The fight broke out, and we were able to take them all down, save Pantheon. While he retreated back to his base, we were able to destroy two towers in the middle, and bring the inhibitor tower down halfway.

Late Game
The hope we had gained from that teamfight was soon flushed down the drain though. They were able to take down four of our team members in a quick teamfight thanks to a poor initiation by me, and some shoddy Rupturing by Cho'Gath. They quickly took out our inhibitor and headed for Baron. By the time we had all respawned and ran over to surprise them, it was too late. The buff and their stuns got them an easy ace in our retreat. Following their super minions, they took out our Nexus at 48 minutes.

Here's the post game scoreboard:

Replay link: Game #7 - Urgot

What I learned:

- Leblanc's Distortion is one of the best escape abilities out there, its deception possibilities are vast

- A Cho'Gath that can't land Rupture is pretty much useless

- Jungle Amumu is indeed a great ganker, I hadn't seen it in action before

- Gangplank just isn't that great of a champion, his early game is fine but after that he's pretty much ignorable

- Pantheon is still the king of steamrolling

My Score: 7/11/9

My Build: Manamune, Mercury's Treads, Youmuu's Ghostblade, Banshee's Veil, Guardian Angel

Current ranked record: 4-3 (0 leaves)

ELO Rating: Unranked

Sorry this took so long to write up, today was a long day. I'll certainly be more prompt with my next game, which will either be Sunday or Monday. Hope you enjoyed reading, comments and suggestions are welcome.

-Chickenmoo