In a hard-fought 2-1 series, Samsung Galaxy took down Afreeca Freecs to open up Week 2 of League of Legends Champions Korea on Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea.
Coming out of the pick-ban phase, Afreeca (1-2, 4-5 match record) chose to focus on letting the solo lanes control the early game in the face of Samsung's late-game scaling composition. Afreeca executed its gameplan to perfection, using an early first blood to give top laner Jang "MaRin" Gyeong-Hwan's Renekton and mid laner Lee "Kuro" Seo-haeng's Viktor plenty of room to start pushing for advantages in their respective lanes. This led to complete domination in terms of both kills and objectives, with Samsung only picking up a single kill and no objectives during the 33-minute Afreeca victory.
The series continued to revolve around the solo lanes in Game 2, but this time it was Samsung (3-0, 6-2 match record) taking control from start to finish. While Afreeca mid laner Kuro was on the typically strong Galio, Samsung top laner Lee "CuVee" Seong-jin's Kled and mid laner Lee "Crown" Min-ho's Viktor made sure to keep the champion from scaling into the unkillable tank he normally is. With Crown owning the mid lane, CuVee managed to split push and become a complete terror around the map, resulting in a 4/1/8 KDA (kills/deaths/assists) that earned him MVP honors. While Afreeca managed to prolong the game to 37 minutes, with no dragons or towers and only six kills to speak of, it had no hope of preventing Samsung from pushing the series to a decisive Game 3.
Samsung went back to its late-game focused team composition from Game 1, and was able to finally make it work in the final game of the series. CuVee started things off with an amazing escape on Kennen in the top lane to prevent Afreeca from kicking off an early snowball. From then on, Afreeca did manage to control objectives all over the map, but it never pushed for an advantage. Samsung was allowed plenty of time to scale into the late-game perfectly, with two late teamfight wins that gave it complete control and allowed it to pick up the drawn-out, 43-minute win to take the series.