Welcome to Snowball’s OPL Team of the Week!
Welcome to Snowball’s Team of the Week, which highlights and recognises a player from each role that played well over the weekend’s games.
Thien
Romeo Tran – Chiefs Esports Club
In what might be a Team of the Week first, Thien has managed to slot himself into lineup with only one game played over the weekend, however, his one game played for the week was certainly one of the best performances.
Thien styled on the Legacy top side at nine minutes, picking up a double kill off a botched two-vs-one dive. This may have been one of the best performances from a player in the Oceanic Pro League this split. At 18 minutes Thien made his Riven gameplay look like he was playing Fruit Ninja, slicing up his opponents and taking two men down in a one-vs-three outplay. It’s also worth noting that he was very close to taking down all three.
Thien finished the game with a cool 8/0/6 scoreline in a game that finished within 23 minutes. One of the cleanest Riven performances you’ll see in the OPL.
Only
Jordan Middleton – Chiefs Esports Club
Navigating the Blind Monk for his first match for the week, Only played Summoner’s Rift like he had perfect vision. The Chiefs jungler was able to pull off two successful ganks in the opening four minutes securing both kills for himself. Only made a small error with a misjudged collapse into his red-side jungle as his team loses a fight, but aside from that single error, it was smooth sailing for the jungle who plays a near-perfect game keeping his team ahead.
In game two, while Only’s performance on the scoreboard is nothing special-looking, a deeper at how the Chiefs were able to achieve their leads and advantages showed Only was able to play a critical part in the setup. The Chiefs jungler scored four dragons to zero, and secured two Barons to help ensure his side stayed ahead of the curve in a high-kill game that saw blows traded across the board.
Ryoma
Stephen Li – Mammoth
Triple lead the charge for an early stampede in opening minute locking down the Order Support, providing Mammoth first blood and Triple with some handy assist gold. In a game that didn’t have much bloodshed, Triple was able to show the Sylas’ scaling abilities through a small lead in farm that gave him the advantage to zone out Order at a 20-minute Baron contest.
Team play was able to get Triple the scaling start he needed with the mid laner teleporting with a Yuumi attached, ‘packaging’ into enemy lines to pick up a much needed double kill. Triple’s presence in the rest of the game was immense, a sieging machine while also taking names when anyone stood in his path, the mid laner ended up finishing the game 6/1/6 rounding off an impressive set of performances for the weekend.
Looch
Carlo La Civita – Bombers
The former mid-laner turned ADC added another string in his bow as he flexed his ability to play Sona, and Looch certainly looked at home playing the champion. Around 13 minutes into the game Looch – without hesitation – turned onto Gravitas in a four-vs-four fight. He landed Sona’s Crescendo, and the stun-lock helped turned the Bombers’ snowball into a victory. Looch ended the game deathless, and with a 300g bounty to his name.
Looch stepped back onto a traditional marksman for game two, playing the lovers’ duo like two birds of a feather. Looch got off to a flying start, narrowly missing out on first blood as the duo dove the enemy bottom lane at the four-minute mark, which secured a kill for the Xayah. A few moments later Looch was able to replicate another successful dive, which meant he was now 2-0 up in the lane. The Bombers stuttered a little in the mid-game and Looch does find himself out of position in the bottom lane at one point in time, but he’s able to recover, show a bit of swagger and confidence and drive the Bombers home ending 9/2/8.
Rogue
Jake Sharwood – Bombers
Rogue must have been over the moon about this game, a rare opportunity provided to the support being able to farm for the opening part of the game, however, I suspect he will be slightly disappointed about falling 4 cs short of the ton. Rogue did an excellent job of keeping his team safe and keeping his teammates out of trouble.
On the Rakan it looked like Rogue was doing shuttle runs and running the beep test this game – he was everywhere. Implementing big engage knock-ups to then quickly fall back to protect his bot laner, his presence was immense and felt across all skirmishes and teamfights he was involved in. This was reflected in Rogue’s impressive scoreline as he found himself second in kill participation for the match at 84 percent, and only narrowly outdone by his laning companion.
With the Melbourne Esports Open a month away, which players were in your Team of the Week? Tweet at us and let us know @snowballesports with the hashtag #TOTW.
