On the evening of February 1st, Vikings Esports faced off against Team Whales. This was also the second strong opponent in the series of 4 matches that VKE has battled in the VCS Spring 2024 so far. The match drew attention as it would serve as another high-stakes test for VKE’s ambitions this season. Additionally, a victory would help TW temporarily dismiss doubts after their “embarrassing” defeat against the champions GAM Esports. TW needed a win against a truly strong opponent to prove they are still a formidable contender in the championship race.
However, the gameplay in both games can be described as somewhat… one-sided. In game 1, VKE still showed some fight as the top lane was performing well, but the bottom lane was completely dominated. Without much difficulty, the “Whales” ended both games swiftly following the same script: slow early game -> secure major objectives by winning lanes early -> snowball to finish the game. This loss allowed TW to maintain their pursuit of GAM and essentially did not impact VKE’s journey in the VCS Spring 2024.
However, one noteworthy statistic uncovered by the VCS community is that TW made VKE the first team in the history of League of Legends Vietnam to have the opponent use Baron Power Play to gain nearly 9k gold advantage. This is also the largest amount of gold a team can exploit from the Baron buff in VCS since Riot made adjustments to the gold gained from destroying towers by teams.
However, in the history of League of Legends, VKE can take some solace in that they are not the team that the opponent has exploited Baron the most efficiently. In the past, there were 2 matchups that also had very high gold from Baron Power Play. The first was the match between FunPlus Phoenix and Splyce with 9187 gold from Baron Power Play. But the top spot goes to the match between Afreeca Freecs (the predecessor of Kwangdong Freecs) and Phong Vũ Buffalo (the predecessor of VKE) during the group stage of Worlds 2018.
And perhaps the audience has also noticed the coincidence: VKE is the team that acquired the entire Saigon Buffalo roster (which was originally PVB rebranded). Thus, it can be said that VKE has continued the “noteworthy” legacy of PVB from years past. The only difference is that this context is within a match of the regional league.
Back to VKE, SofM’s team clearly has a lot of work to do. Apart from competing for titles or achieving a good ranking, VKE also needs to deliver a performance that meets the expectations of the audience, which is the most important thing for this “rookie” team in the VCS.