G2 Esports take down T1 in opening match of MSI 2022 Rumble Stage

In the 2022 Mid-Season Invitational‘s biggest upset thus far, G2 Esports took down T1 in a 40-minute brawl during Friday’s MSI Rumble Stage, shattering T1’s undefeated match streak and extending the League of Legends European Championship squad’s own to 21 straight games.

Both teams took risks in the draft with G2 putting a big bet behind mid laner Rasmus “caPs” Winther by drafting a composition around Yasuo while T1 looked to off-meta picks of Kennen and Rell. T1’s picks looked terrific in the early game as the LCK champions started off the game by jumping out to a massive lead.

Despite only having two kills on the scoreboard 15 minutes in the game, T1 amassed a 5K gold lead before Baron spawned. But it was a fight at Baron itself around the 27-minute mark where G2 said enough was enough and the Yasuo came online. G2 won a clean fight which got them back into the game. At that point, T1 found themselves outscaled without having a way to win a teamfight, and eventually the South Koreans lost their Nexus as a result.

CaPs is no stranger to Yasuo. He already has picked it at MSI 2022 before. But T1 top laner Choi “Zeus” Woo-je (Kennen) and support Ryu “Keria” Min-seok” (Rell) were had not yet used their champions at MSI 2022. Rell in particular was an odd pick for Keria. According to Gol.gg, this game was Keria’s first on Rell in 2022. The last time Keria played the champion was last August during the 2021 LCK summer playoffs.

But it’s not just an odd pick for Keria. In top levels of play, Rell has only been picked by major regions 15 times heading into MSI 2022. That amounts to a pick/ban rate of just 2.4%.

T1’s perfect season is technically over. Although the team has lost single games before, none of them have been recorded in the loss column because those losses were a part of best-of-three series. T1 still have not lost a series this year, while G2 have not lost a game since the lower bracket of the 2022 LEC spring playoffs. The team went 12-0 in the lower bracket to capture the LEC title. Then they proceeded to go 8-0 in the MSI 2022 group stage.