Da Kun Gaming have won the inaugural Wild Rift Horizon Cup after taking down ThunderTalk Gaming 4-2 Sunday. It was an all-Chinese finals, with both teams coming from the same region but two different leagues. The two teams met for the first time as they never crossed paths in the regional stages.
🏆 DA KUN GAMING ARE THE #WILDRIFTHORIZONCUP CHAMPIONS! 🏆 pic.twitter.com/zHOq7jEJcB
— Wild Rift Esports (@WildRiftEsports) November 21, 2021
DKG finished the Horizon Cup without losing a series and only dropped four games in total. With this win, the team cement their place in history as the winners of the first Wild Rift international tournament.
“It just means five members of our team are the strongest at the Horizon Cup,” Zhenyu “Wind” Qi, a DKG player, said during the post-match interview.
Da Kun Gaming evolved to lift Wild Rift Horizon Cup
Heading into the Horizon Cup, there were high expectations from the Chinese super-teams as well as squads from the SEA region. As the tournament progressed, however, it was clear that the Chinese teams were a level above everyone else. DKG came in with a game plan centered around their star jungler, Fangjun “Huiba” Li. He mostly played carry champions like Jax and would found the perfect sidelane picks to set his team up for success. While this playstyle worked well, they became predictable and teams tried to focus on shutting down Huiba.
Da Kun Gaming identified that they needed to mix things up and adjust as the competition got tougher. Even though Huiba was still the engine of the team, he was not the only one who could move them forward. All their players, especially DKG’s support Mochen “Emo” Fan, stepped up to this position. His Rakan engages earned him the MVP of the final series.
Additionally, although ThunderTalk lost to DKG, their journey to final should also be commended. The team lost most of their starting roster due to travel issues and were forced to use different players on an international stage. Overall, the Wild Rift Horizon Cup has shown that China is the region to beat and there are lots of players like Huiba and Zhou “Z” Tianjian who could go on to become the best players in the world.
