After an exciting first day, day two of the 2021 Mid-Season Invitational Rumble stage closed in the same fashion. Royal Never GiveUp continued their reign of MSI dominance as they defeated Pentanet.GG in the opening game of the day. All other games went as predicted, with only PSG Talon’s win against Cloud9 coming as a shock to many. MAD Lions ended the day with yet another win against PSG Talon. With the Rumble stage continuing on Sunday, here are the major takeaways from the second day.
RNG are clear cut Mid-Season Invitational Rumble favorites now
After defeating DWG KIA and MAD Lions, RNG have shown their dominance over the best teams in the competition. However, they may still have to prove themselves against either of these teams in a best-of-five series during the next stage of the Mid-Season Invitational Rumble. Nonetheless, RNG is the only team in the tournament yet to drop a single game. Even though they’ve had questionable drafts and builds in certain games like the one against DWG KIA, they still managed to come out on top.
RNG defeated Pentanet.GG for the fifth time at the 2021 MSI, earning them their third win of the Rumble Stage. The game between both teams was filled with a lot of team fighting, especially around Baron. Even though Pentanet were behind in gold, they still managed to match RNG in fights and even win out. However, RNG ended the game with an Ace in the last extended team fight.
After this, RNG faced MAD Lions, who had also not lost any game in the Rumble stage. They got off to a good start with a kill onto Marek “Humanoid” Brazda in mid lane. Although MAD started to match RNG in the team fights, RNG’s gold lead was simply too large for MAD Lions, despite their team fighting prowess. After taking their third Baron, RNG marched into MAD’s base with Baron-empowered minions and ended the game. RNG handed MAD their first Rumble stage defeat.
Heading into MSI 2021, RNG shared the tournament favorite spot with DWG KIA — and in some cases were ranked second. However, their performance so far has put them as clear favorites to win it all.
Pentanet and Cloud9 remain winless
The winless run for both Pentanet and Cloud9 continues in the Rumble stage. However, the streak will come to an end for at least one of these teams tomorrow as they face each other. C9 must win the game against Pentanet to keep their hopes of a knockout stage alive.
C9’s loss against DWG KIA came as a disappointment to many North American fans given how well they started the game. They got three early kills after successful ganks through Robert “Blaber” Huang. After this, they won a 2v2 in the bot lane and continued to pull ahead. C9 got more kills, took down the first tower of the game and were set to take the Dragon soul late into the mid-game. However, they got caught out in both sides of the river and DK continued to close the gold gap and take dragons.
As the game progressed, DK’s composition came alive with a Senna, Tahm Kench and Syndra combination. Heo “Showmaker'” Su’s crucial stuns on C9 members helped his team force their way back into the game. DK closed out the match in under 34 minutes after taking Baron and killing two C9 players.
The same story repeated itself in Cloud9’s game against PSG Talon. They got off to a flying start with two kills in the first few minutes. However, they made several mistakes and PSG Talon got a crucial kill onto Luka “Perkz” Perkovic. The game remained close with C9 maintaining a 1,000 gold lead. Things went from not so good to absolute disaster for Cloud9 during a 5v5 in mid lane. PSG caught Blaber out of position and punished him before proceeding to ace the whole team.
Furthermore, C9 lost their gold and PSG took total control of the game. After a game-winning team fight, PSG marched onto C9’s base to secure themselves a crucial victory. Cloud9’s loss to PSG leaves them with a shared 0-4 record and a bottom place in the Rumble stage standings.
A good day for DWG KIA
League of Legends World Champions DWG KIA have experienced some hiccups in their MSI journey. They have struggled with some of the best-of-ones, losing to Cloud9 and RNG and even almost losing to a wildcard region. In an interview, DK’s Jang “Ghost” Yong-jun stated that they were having issues with in-game communication. However after a 2-0 record today, DK will be very happy with how the day went considering their poor early game against C9.
With games against MAD Lions and C9 tomorrow, DK must show a massive improvement in team coordination and communication to finish the day with another 2-0 record.
Tune into day three of the Rumble Stage of the 2021 MSI on May 16 at 8 a.m EST with Cloud9 vs Pentanet as the opener.
2021 Mid-Season Invitational Standings as of May 15:
- RNG (4-0)
- MAD Lions (3-1)
- DWG KIA (3-1)
- PSG Talon (2-2)
- Pentanent.GG (0-4)
- Cloud9 (0-4)
