Esports VainGlory International Premier League

VIPL 4th Round Robin Preview

This week’s matches will round out our bracket and give us an excellent idea of how the elimination rounds will proceed. Saturday’s games will be played live on OGN Global’s Twitch channel. Tune in at 9 PM PDT on Saturday / 6 AM CEST on Sunday to watch the best team from Europe battle against the up-and-coming Korean club, Victorious.

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As Saturday’s games take place, the VIPL will only have one more set of matches to complete before the round robin stage is finished. After the round robin, the second place finishers in each group will battle to move on to the semi-finals. Because these round robin matches decide seeding, they are the deciding factor in which teams will move on to claim the tournament prize.

Victorious vs Unknown

Team Unknown has had impressive showing in the Vainglory Pro League hosted by ESL, as well as in the qualifier for the Vainglory World Invitational. They have experience playing in high stakes settings and under pressure. Despite having a loss in their first week’s matchup against Invincible Armada, Team Unknown is looking to bounce back against Victorious.

Victorious also had some early struggles, getting matched up against the Korean powerhouse, pQq, who defeated Invincible Armada on Thursday. In the VIPL, Group A is full of strong teams, and Victorious and Unknown are still fighting to see if they can recover. Due to the grouping structure, if either of these teams lose on Saturday they will have no chance at recovering to claim a top-two spot in their group, and will lose their shot at competing in the final bracket.

Unknown will need to make some magic happen. Despite a gold lead against Invincible Armada, they let the game evolve until Koshka was less of a factor. Once Koshka couldn’t delete any of Invincible Armada’s carries, their team comp looked out of place and disjointed.

In Victorious’ first loss, they never took advantage of their team comp, pick a Koshka and Catherine onto Shamdori and Transcript, but sticking to their own side of the jungle against Rain’s Krul. Perhaps the teams need a coach to help identify these weaknesses in team compositions and strategies, but Victorious needs to be ready to capitalize on any situation they can to avoid being relegated.

VAP vs Tiger-Phobia

The second match of the day will feature VAP against Tiger-Phobia. This is a match that could be considered very close, with Tiger-Phobia having the slight edge. The burden of proof lies on VAP, as they are actually a subsidiary team of Tiger-Phobia. Unfortunately, both teams were placed in the same group, so rather than prove themselves against other opponents, they are forced to battle one another.

Both VAP and Tiger-Phobia have their work cut out for them, being in the same bracket as Beyond and Gankstars. VAP showed a lot of promise when battling against Beyond, with an early gold and kill lead. However, in the battle of carry Adagio’s, it was hard for Chivalry to best the performance of Beyond’s function.

With the potential that VAP displayed against Beyond, I think this match will be a great one to watch.

RAID vs WILD

Wild brought in a new lane carry in their last match, but looked shaky against Hunters. However, now that they’ve had more time to learn playstyles, I am looking forward to seeing what they can do in game.

Raid won their first game with an interesting comp with two ranges carries, one crystal, one weapon. However, it was the longest games in VIPL, as they were unable to close the game out, which opened multiple opportunities for their opponents to make a comeback.

Wild’s first game was against Hunters, which is arguably the strongest team in the group. I expect this game to be close, with Raid having a slight edge thanks to their lane carry, Liege. Liege moves smoothly and builds efficiently. In their win against Hack, Liege build a Sorrowblade followed immediately by a Breaking Point, with an Aegis along the way. High health and defensive values allowed him to ramp his damage up with his Breaking Point and weave auto-attacks into each time fight.

Tune in this Saturday to OGN’s stream to catch all the action LIVE!