H2K secures 3rd place, likely Worlds spot after defeating Unicorns of Love

H2K beat the Unicorns of Love in the EU LCS third-place match in Krakow Saturday, winning the series three games to one. With the win, H2K will qualify for Worlds as long as G2 beats Splyce in the final Sunday.

This is H2K’s third 3rd place finish in the EU LCS and will likely lead to their second trip in a row to the World Championships. For UOL 4th place is their highest finish since coming in 2nd during their first split in the Spring of 2015. Unicorns of Love will go to the Regional Qualifiers, as the third seed, in an attempt to gain Europe’s third and final spot at Worlds.

Far and away the most important H2K player in this series was Jankos - playing in his home country of Poland. While he didn’t necessarily carry the damage in every game he did perfectly set up the team’s carries. In Game 1 Jankos played an unkillable Gragas that served as a front line for Ryu’s 9/1/2 Cassiopeia. While in Game 3 he set up most of Forg1ven’s early kills putting him in position to take over the game on Tristana. Finally, in Game 4 Jankos got the star performance he deserved. Playing a Nidalee that is considered fairly weak in the current meta Jankos took over the game participating in all but one of H2K’s kills in the game.

Game 1, was all about Jankos and Ryu. This was thanks in large part to a smart early game by Jankos who helped Odoamne secure first blood at 8 minutes on an overextended Gangplank.

Jankos also took advantage of Move’s poor jungle pathing to secure a 25 CS lead at 12 minutes. This early lead Jankos became a high damage, high disruption presence in all of the game’s team fights that UOL was forced to deal with. Ryu took advantage of the Jankos distraction to get off huge of damage with Cassiopeia while avoiding danger. The combination of these two made it nearly impossible for the Unicorns of Love to use their team fight composition to full effect, and helped H2K secure a clean Game 1 victory.

After a lengthy delay thanks to a Champion Select bug that resulted in the locking of random champions, Game 2 started out similarly to Game 1. H2K pulled out to an early lead and looked like they might run away with the series. But Unicorns of Love managed a chaotic ace that began with a catch on Ryu in the river in the 25th minute.

UOL followed the fight up with a Baron which helped pull them into a 5k gold lead at 29 minutes. They was able to turned this gold lead into objectives keeping the pressure high and never letting H2K back in the game. Thanks to this pressure, Unicorns of Love were able to close out the game at 40 minutes to even the series.

In Game 3 H2K bet big on Forg1ven’s Tristana, hoping if they could get their AD Carry a lead the damage would carry them through the game. And boy did it. Forg1ven picked up a small lead from first blood thanks to a gank from Jankos and Vander - also playing in his home country of Poland. But Forg1ven’s real moment came in an aggressive dive at UOL’s second tier top tower where he picked up a triple kill.

That play gave Forg1ven’s hyper-carry Tristana a massive lead in damage that Unicorns of Love never had a chance to counter. H2K kept up the highly aggressive style they had used all game and snowballed their lead into a sub-30 minute win.

The final game saw H2K tapping into more of the aggression they showed in Game 3. Jankos was a nearly constant presence in every lane, helping both bottom and top lanes get significant leads. These leads were quickly translated into objectives for H2K helping them finish the game in just 33 minutes and giving them their cleanest win of the series.

The EU LCS final between No. 1 G2 Esports and No. 2 Splyce will take place in Krakow Sunday, starting at 11 a.m. ET.