Royal Never Give Up vs Fnatic Worlds 2017 quarterfinal recap

After a tournament full of upsets and quarterfinal matches that no one could have predicted, a series has finally gone exactly the way it was supposed to as Royal Never Give Up take down Fnatic 3-1 to advance to the Worlds 2017 semifinals.

While Fnatic may have taken game three, RNG never seemed to let the series as a whole slip out of their control with near perfect play around objectives and immaculate teamfights in each of the games they won.

For Fnatic’s part in the series, they didn’t play poorly, particularly for a team that barely managed to escape through group, but the EU LCS third seed simply couldn’t keep up with the skill and coordination of Royal Never Give Up, who have definitely proven themselves as one of the tournament’s strongest teams.

For a full look at this quarterfinal series, check out our game by game breakdown below. Royal Never Give Up will play SK telecom T1 in the semifinals next weekend.

Game One

Winner: Royal Never Give Up

These two teams came into this game with two very different strategies. Fnatic focused bottom lane with everything they had in the early game, while RNG kept their attention in the top lane. For RNG, that focus gave their Cho’Gath a massive lead and made him practically unkillable, while Fnatic’s bottom lane, once again, proved an inability to carry the team at Worlds 2017.

Game Two

Winner: Royal Never Give Up

This game was a mirror image of the first, but this time, Fnatic got Sejuani and Cho’Gath and early on it looked like they might take the win. But they simply had no idea how to use the composition or their gold lead losing despite a 6k lead at 35 minutes. However, RNG played perfectly around Baron taking it twice, once a steal, and the second a sneak, allowing them to take the game out from under Fnatic.

Game Three

Winner: Fnatic

This time it was Fnatic’s chance to come back from a seemingly insurmountable deficit as RNG seemed to be in complete control until almost 30 minutes when Uzi taking a tower wound up losing them a critical teamfight giving Fnatic a window back into the game. The EU side took that advantage and ran with it pulling the game back and finishing the game at 54 minutes.

Game Four

Winner: Royal Never Give Up

After three back and forth matches Royal, it seems, decide that it’s time to go back to what worked for them in the Group Stage. RNG focused their composition around Corki and Twitch, with a real tank Jarvan to protect them, and spent most of the game down in gold, playing extremely safe, right up until about 35 minutes when they started fighting and quickly took the base of Fnatic.