It all comes down to this – nine weeks of play in the Oceanic Pro League has seen three teams clinch their place in the postseason, one team has already been locked out, and four teams have everything to play for in their final three fixtures. For the Dire Wolves, Avant Gaming, Order, and Gravitas, every win matters.
Our prediction analysts Emma “ammeplays” Van der Brug, Bernadette “Nadette” Wong, and Harry “hispanicatd” Taylor break down the biggest matchups of Super Week as the conflicts across the table come to a head in the last week of the regular season.
Emma’s Feature Match of the Week: Gravitas (7-11) vs Dire Wolves (9-9)
Kicking off the matches on Saturday is Gravitas taking on the Dire Wolves. This match is Gravitas’ last chance at securing the ever-important victory.
They come into Saturday having played in the last game on Friday, and that means the momentum or ability to reset will be important. Dire Wolves are coming into Saturday fresh, as they play first on Friday and have the rest of the night to observe and learn from the other team’s games.
Both of these teams are fighting alongside Avant (8-10) and Order (7-11) for a spot in the gauntlet, and with 4 teams fighting for the remaining 2 spots, it’s now or never for them to claim those wins.
Historically, this matchup is heavily Gravitas favoured. Their head-to-head record is currently sitting at 5-0 across 2019. Gravitas took on the Wolves in Week 2 and 6, and claimed the run of the results with a 40 to 11 kill/death record. Both games were roughly 30 minutes long.
Jordan “Praelus” Fernandes was the star in these matchups, having only two deaths to the Dire Wolves this split. His commanding play of both Rek’Sai and Sylas shows his champion pool and his ability to take over the map when given the chance.
The Dire Wolves were put behind in both games through early jungle pressure from Praelus in the mid and bottom lanes.
In Week 2, he assisted Julian “Raid” Skordos and Daniel “Decoy” Ealam in the bottom lane to claim an early kill on Eun “Totoro” Jong-seop, and snowballed that lead from there to claim their first win of the split.
In their Week 5 match-up, the Wolfpack picked Aatrox mid again for Jarod “Getback” Tucker, and he was solo killed at 2:30 by Harry “Haeri” Kang on Yasuo for first blood. This early kill paved the way for Gravitas to out-scale with a Corki, Ashe, and Yasuo and decimate the Wolves through strong map pressure and rotations.
This matchup will be clutch for both teams. Depending on the day before their matchup may secure themselves a spot in the gauntlet, as well as the potential of a team just falling short.
I believe that this match will fall into the favour of Gravitas. Based on their previous matches as well as their recent improvement, Gravitas will be able to claim their final win for the split from the hands of the Dire Wolves.
Nadette’s Feature Match of the Week: Chiefs Esports Club (13-3) vs Bombers (12-6)
The regular season comes to a close this weekend, and we’re one step closer to finding out who’ll be representing our region at Worlds this year. Super Week will be wrapped up with a match between the Chiefs and Bombers, currently first and third in the standings respectively, with scores of 15-3 and 12-6 after 2-0ing their games last weekend.
While both of the teams have already secured a spot in the Gauntlet, it’s a matter of placement. In the final match of Saturday evening, the boys in blue look to establish solidify themselves as the titans at the finish line and finally retake the title for themselves.
In all of their other round robins, the Chiefs have gone positive – except in the case of the Bombers, who currently hold a 2-0 score over them. Their previous run-ins were fairly close, although tended to snowball in favour of the Bombers during the mid to late game.
This time around, I don’t believe the boys in blue will allow themselves to go winless in the matchup – this last game is to defend their pride.
A majority of the matches during super week will involve the teams fighting for a spot in the Gauntlet, but this particular match is one of dignity.
Last split, the Chiefs and Bombers were neck and neck up until the end of the regular split, with only a game difference between them. The Chiefs will be fuelled by their desire to win, bringing their A-Game with them to finish off the regular split.
The tables have turned this split, with the two teams in opposite positions; the Chiefs are now the ones that teams will have to run the Gauntlet to face, and they refuse to have their image tarnished any further by the Essendon squad.
Harry’s Feature Match of the Week: Order (7-11) vs Avant Gaming (8-10)
Saturday evening sees what has the potential to be one of, if not the most crucial fixtures of the split for Order and Avant Gaming, as they face off in what could be their split decider and season-definer.
This split has seen Avant and Order share the victories in their two contests. Avant took a convincing Week 2 victory, before Order claimed revenge comfortably in Week 6.
Split 2 and 2019 overall have been tumultuous one for both of these orgs. For Avant, everything seemed to start well for them, but a shaky second half finds them adrift once again from where they once were. Split 2 saw them start well, coming into the mid split break tied for first at 6-2, but everything has seemingly gone wrong since, with a 2-8 record since then.
This record has seen changes in the Avant camp, which in Week 8 saw support Ryan “Aladoric” Richardson come out for academy top laner Dragon “Dragku” Guo. The swap caused a knock-on of position changes to revamp the lineup.
Whilst this change hasn’t yet ultimately proven successful with a 1-3 record since the change, it has seen Avant take some games down to the wire, and given enough time will prove successful. The question is: will they be allowed to get the time they need for this?
After running the gauntlet at the end of last split, it was a question of whether Order were able to translate this form to the regular season and take a top seeding without hesitation. This hasn’t come to fruition, as Order once again come into Week 10 on the outside looking in. Having struggled all split to string more than three wins together, will Order once again be able to pull off the clutch Super Week to put themselves in contention for MEO?
The jungle-mid matchups will be critical in this game. With role-swapped mid laner Ryan “Chippys” Short and jungler Mi-reu “Miru” Park already linking up to great success in both solo lanes, they will need to take replicate it against long-established Order duo Samuel “Spookz” Broadley and Simon “Swiffer” Papamarkos.
With the potential critical value of this game for both orgs, neither teams will want to find themselves on the losing side of the coin and will go to any length to secure the win. Knowing League of Legends and the OPL, it’ll be likely a single team fight that will sway the tides and lead a team to victory. Ultimately, in this situation, I see Order being the ones more likely to pull off this clutch fight and find themselves the victory.
Super Week of the Oceanic Pro League begins this Friday at 4pm. Watch live on the new RiotGamesOCE Twitch channel, find more information and the full fixtures schedule at oce.lolesports.com.
Follow @ammeplays, @NadetteOCE, and @hispanicatd_ on Twitter.
