Damwon Gaming dominates Royal Youth in LoL Worlds 2019 play-in stage

Oct 3, 2019

Reading time: 2 min

Damwon Gaming has started its 2019 League of Legends World Championship run with a victory over Royal Youth.

LCK representative Damwon is off to a good start at Worlds. Korea’s third seed found its first win of the tournament at the expense of Turkey’s Royal Youth.

Damwon gets comfortable at League of Legends World Championship

Damwon was not concerned about picks like Qiyana and Sylas. The team let those champions slide through the bans and instead decided to focus on drafting for comfort. Jang “Nuguri” Ha-gwon and Heo “ShowMaker” Su’s rune choices were interesting as both solo laners went for Kleptomancy so they would get more gold and resources.

The early game was all about Royal Youth and jungler Can “Closer” Çelik. The team played through Damwon’s weak side, the bottom lane. A series of ganks down bottom put the Royal Youth duo ahead of the enemy team. The challenge was then translating that advantage into map control.

The inability to snowball off that bottom lane advantage affected Royal Youth’s overall performance. Closer on Qiyana still found picks for the team, as he was able to solo kill multiple members of Damwon without much trouble.

Despite all this, Damwon looked relaxed. Like they were in total control of the game.

Even after giving up kills, Damwon was never out of the match. Their objective control was superior and they knew how to deny vision. Royal Youth took the right approach, forcing team fights and pushing Damwon. But even when they had more kills, Royal Youth still couldn’t get control of the map.

Damwon was finally ready to seal the deal around the 30-minute mark. ShowMaker and Kim “Canyon” Geon-bu found Closer in the top lane and erased him from the map. Without a jungler, Royal Youth couldn’t contest the baron that Damwon took in a matter of seconds.

Powered up, Damwon marched into the enemy base and destroyed two inhibitors. Royal Youth couldn’t do anything to stop the attack and had to watch the nexus go down.

Royal Youth will get a chance for revenge on Saturday in the second half of the group stage.