Since 2015 the Mid-Season Invitational has been a staple for League of Legends international competition. After MSI 2020 was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, 2021’s event had a lot to live up to. With arguably the world’s two best teams in the LPL’s Royal Never Give Up and the LCK’s DAMWON KIA meeting in the finals for an insane five game series, MSI 2021 lived up to the hype. These are the top 5 craziest plays from MSI 2021.
Number 5: paiN Gaming’s Backdoor Flop
At Number 5, we have a failed backdoor attempt from the group stage, featuring MAD Lions and paiN Gaming. The whole game was pretty back and forth up to the final moment when paiN tried to outsmart their European opponents.
Except, they didn’t.
Forty minutes into the game, paiN teleported three members to the broken and burning MAD Lions base to backdoor them. But Armut held them off in a 1v3 just long enough for his friends to arrive and team wipe all of paiN Gaming. After the ace, MAD Lions booked it all the way to paiN Gaming’s nexus and it was GG.
Number 4: RNG Steps on Cloud9
RNG came into the Rumble stage looking strong. With Cloud9 coming off a 3-0 run and an upcoming match against the Chinese giants, this game was guaranteed to be a banger.
Thirty minutes into the game, Cloud9 started the Baron, but instead of contesting, RNG decided to head straight to their enemy’s nexus instead. Cloud9 finished the purple snake and tried to recall back to defend their base. But just two members of RNG held all five of them hostage, stopping all of their attempts to head back.
With Wei zooming around on Udyr and Ming flashing to stop Perkz’ teleport, the LCS representative were helpless to contest. It started off a long losing streak for Cloud9 that would result in their elimination from the tournament a few days later.
Number 3: Doggo Goes Sicko
In the semi-finals against Royal Never Give Up, PSG Talon’s temporary substitute Doggo was just a few auto-attacks away from making one of the best MSI plays ever.
In Game 4, PSG was down more than 1,000 gold to RNG and on the backfoot. Then, twenty-six minutes into the game, PSG engaged RNG to stop a Baron attempt.
Doggo was waiting patiently on the sidelines until the moment was right, and then jumped in. He immediately killed the RNG bot lane duo, but then found himself in a 1v3. Instead of jumping away to save himself, he jumped back into the fray to attempt the Pentakill.
Unfortunately, he just didn’t have the damage to make it happen. Doggo did save the game in that moment, but RNG eventually were able to regain control and close the series to advance to the Finals.
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