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Brazilian INTZ e-Sports has pulled off one of the biggest upsets in League of Legends history, taking down Chinese champions EDward Gaming in Day 1 of the Season 6 World Championship. EDG entered the tournament as one of the favorites to make the fields, while INTZ was largely considered an afterthought in it’s own group when the group draw was announced.
INTZ earned an early lead in laning phase thanks to the strong play of top laner Felipe "Yang" Zhao’s Gnar and jungler Gabriel "Revolta" Henud’s Lee Sin. The pair made life miserable for EDG top laner Yu-hao “Mouse” Chen, building a platform for INTZ to gain serious advantages from.
INTZ eSports set up the dive, and @revoltalol's Lee Sin gets 2 kills! #Worlds https://t.co/su2MOyrrVX
— lolesports #Worlds (@lolesports) September 30, 2016
In the bottom lane, Revolta helped counter the early first blood lead of EDG AD Carry Hyuk-kyu “Deft” Kim with a dive to secure a double kill. This helped transition INTZ into several very effective roams, which gave them both a dragon and tower lead early. From there the roaming gank squad of Yang and Revolta proved too much for Mouse to come back from as he was caught again and again.
GNAAAR! Yang grabs a double kill! #WORLDS pic.twitter.com/LjndCxVhlu
— The Rift Herald (@TheRiftHerald) September 30, 2016
INTZ qualified for Worlds out of the International Wildcard Tournament, winning the CBLoL title in Brazil and beating out champions from Turkey, Latin America North and other regions for one of two coveted spots at Worlds. While no Brazilian team has made it out of the group stages, this was not Brazil’s first win at Worlds — the most notable previously was KaBuM! e-Sports’ win over European powerhouse Alliance in 2014.
EDward Gaming automatically qualified for the tournament by winning the LPL title in China, running a perfect 18-0 season in series play. China struggled as a region at last year’s Worlds, but EDG was considered one of the favorites entering the tournament.
These two teams will play again next week. In the other Group C match Thursday, ahq e-Sports Club outlasted H2K in a sloppy game for both teams. With results like this, it’s not looking unreasonable at all for an International Wildcard team to make it out of the group stages.