In the 2019 LEC Spring Split finals, G2 Esports have shown that they can play anything to get a victory. For the team’s second match against Origen in Rotterdam, they were faced with another Sona-Taric bot lane matchup, which has been the bane of many teams’ existence.
G2, however, had another strategy of their own to counter such a duo. The team opted into a funnel composition, a strategy that we haven’t seen since last year. G2 placed Luka “Perkz” Perković on Xayah and had Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski and Rasmus “Caps” Winther pick up Morgana and Pyke. And the counter-strategy worked to perfection.
If you aren’t familiar with the funnel strategy, here’s a simple explanation: Your ADC takes Smite, heads mid lane, and constantly pushes in his wave alongside his support. When he pushes his own wave to tower, he’ll head into the jungle and take jungle camps. It may put some of the other lanes behind, but your ADC will be incredibly strong very early in the game.
One of the best ways to counter a funnel composition is to pressure the side lanes. Unfortunately, Origen were running Sona and Taric in the bot lane, which meant that they couldn’t build any pressure at all. Additionally, because G2 fed into a Xayah, the Taric pick wasn’t as effective due to the fact that Xayah is simply auto-attacking over and over instead of using spells.
After turning a gank in their favor in the mid lane, G2 continued to roam across the map and catch Origen off-guard. Perkz and crew were up 6,000 gold at 15 minutes, and even captured the quickest Baron buff of the split. The best team in Europe has demonstrated that they have plenty of tricks up their sleeves—and G2 will now try to wrap up this series in three short games.
