This Friday, Worlds 2024 - the most prestigious yearly tournament of League of Legends - Play-Ins gave a foretaste of its verdict with the two first teams to qualify for the Swiss Stage: MAD Lions KOI and GAM Esports. With their loss against MDK, PSG Talon (1-2) are relegated to the lower bracket as they will be granted one last chance to qualify against the winner of SHG -100 Thieves tomorrow. Same for the LLA champion, Rainbow7 (0-2) who will face the victorious team from VKE - PNG BO3. If both qualified teams from this Friday were expected to join Swiss Stage, they still sent a strong signal to not be underestimated to their future opponents by making a grand entrance, directly via the upper bracket.

The Lions silence the doubters

MAD Lions KOI decided to let Huang "Maple" Yi-Tang's Akali open in draft, with a strategy in mind: flexing their Renekton and putting it on the midlane. But it eventually didn't end the way Bartłomiej "Fresskowy" Przewoźnik thought it would, as he was close to 2K gold behind before the 20 minutes mark. But MDK still recognized their strength and played for teamfights, while their botlane duo seems to not be done impressing the world yet.

Indeed, after a tremendous series against VKE, the two Spaniards carried their team again on this game 1. Meanwhile, PSG disappointed again, as they were expected to be the best powerhouse coming from play-ins, but some very suspicious plays like a chase they did all over the map on David "Supa" Martínez to finally all die together really question again the shape in which they entered the tournament.

Things started off a bit scuffed for MDK in game 2, as Javier "Elyoya" Prades forgot to buy his jungle item before coming out from base and therefore had a very big tempo disadvantage on his counterpart. But fortunately, PSG did not took any advantage out of it as Yu "JunJia" Chun-Chia seemed to not spot that mistake. Then again, the team abused their botlane momentum in the competition as Lu "Betty" Yu-Hung had a target on his back and even got solokilled by his direct opponent.

However, PSG sped up the mid game with a huge game phase after a pick on Fresskowy, they snowballed in the next 2 minutes as they rotated all together from top to bot to mid and got out with a lot of plates and four kills. After that, Huang "Azhi" Shang-Jhih was completely out of control in the sidelanes and with a bad Baron Nashor call from MDK, the game just completely slipped out of their hands.

For the decisive game, both teams played a bit slower with a strange counter pick to Aurora on the toplane: Azhi's Corki. The pick worked surprisingly well during laning phase, with a bit of disrespect from Alex "Myrwn" Pastor Villarejo and Supa who got caught one or two times. But eventually, the champion felt completely useless coming into the midgame, even with a 1k gold advantage as he seemed to have no way of playing any fights without exposing himself too much. The disturbing champ for MDK was again manoeuvred by Maple: Leblanc.

As Supa played completely on the limits with his Ezreal, he achieved some outplays and prevented more than once the game from going the other way. But yet again, it's his duo, Álvaro "Alvaro" Fernández who found the clutch on the opposing midlaner which led to a perfect team fight, the Baron Nashor and finally, after good management of their lead, a qualification to Swiss Stage. However, it feels like the two sololaners will have to step up their games if MDK is to reach new heights.

GAM, Perpetuating tradition

In game 1, Đỗ "Levi" Duy Khánh got to show out his Shyvana, and again: what a performance. With better overall macro play than R7, GAM avoided unnecessary fights and focused on outplaying them through map control in the early game. With that big advantage in their pockets, the mid/jungle especially snowballed hard the game to gained map control. But the only area where they faltered was dragon control and they eventually paid the price when they lost soul after a single bad fight without their fed midlaner. But this was just a detail as their advantage was way too big and they just ran down midlane with Baron, one win away from joining MDK to Swiss Stage.

As Levi's BO3 against SHG, his opponents didn't want to see his scary dragon again and decided to remove it from draft phase in the second game. But just like in their last series, it didn't change the outcome of game 2. Worse, it was even more of an easy clap one as all the lanes just snowballed very early, after a fight for Grubs that went the way of the Vietnamese. Nguyễn "Emo" Thái Vinh's Yone, especially, should start to be respected in draft as the midlaner had great performances within three games manoeuvring the champion. GAM left no hopes to the LLA as they closed out the series in a 26-minute victory in that game and qualified without ever being challenged throughout their play-ins journey. It's the third year in a row that the Vietnamese team get through Play-ins.