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The LCK finals have come to an end and given us two of the three Korean representatives for the 2018 World Championship, but there’s still one left to be decided in the Regional Qualifier gauntlet.
As shocking as it may sound to fans who only follow the LCK at the end of the year, the first match up in this year’s gauntlet is a rematch of last year’s World Championship game: SK telecom T1 vs Gen. G — formerly Samsung Galaxy. While neither team is necessarily bad, both struggled often during the 2018 season as the rest of the league grew by leaps and bounds and seems to have left these two teams behind. That being said, Gen. G has always been a team that thrived in the gauntlet format, and you can never really count SKT mid laner, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok out.
The winner of that first match will then have to taken on most impressive newcomer to the LCK in since the ROX Tigers, Griffin. While Griffin may be a young team lacking in experience, they certainly aren’t lacking in talent as they dominated the LCK regular season for the first half, and even managed to take the Summer Split champion kt Rolster to five games in the finals last weekend.
The team sitting atop the gauntlet as either the final test for hopeful teams or the eventual champions themselves is KING-ZONE DragonX. While KING-ZONE is certainly one of the most talent teams in the LCK, they are also one of the most inconsistent. Along with a few disappointing performances at international events in the past, KING-ZONE were also stopped short in their playoff ambitions during the Summer Split thanks to a 3-1 defeat to Afreeca Freecs. But with a roster full of LCK veterans, there’s still plenty of time for KING-ZONE to pull together for their one series in the gauntlet and qualify for the World Championship.
All of these matches will be best of fives, and each can be seen on Riot’s LCK Twitch and YouTube channels.
Schedule
Wednesday, Sept. 12
- Gen G. vs SK telecom T1, 3-2
Friday, Sept. 14
- Griffin vs Gen G., 3-2
Sunday, Sept. 16
- KING-ZONE DragonX vs TBD, 4 a.m. ET