Garena Premier League Playoffs: SGS vs SAJ

The Garena Premier League Playoffs finally took place after a gruelling 20 week series of round robin matches involving six teams from across Southeas Asia. The Taipei Assassins came out on top winning 38 out of the 40 matches they played, granting them a spot in the finals. But first, the Singapore Sentinels and the Saigon Jokers duked it out in the semifinals best of three for a chance to play against TPA for the $40,000 grand prize.

Singapore Sentinels SGS

1

-

0

Saigon Jokers SAJ

Karthus				Blitzcrank
Shen				Gragas
Rengar				Lee Sin
Malphite				Lulu
Ezreal				Dr. Mundo
Sona				Zyra
Katarina				Jayce
Jax				Graves

Game 1: The game started off with an early double kill for ly4ly4ly4 on Ezreal, foreshadowing the many kills he ended up getting as the game progressed. Both teams had decided to 1v2, and both solo laners ended up coming out evenly. But with the kills on Ezreal and his team mates, SGS were able to maintain an early gold lead. Saigon Jokers had created a team compostion made for outlasting tower sieges with the heavy poke coming from Jayce, Zyra and Mundo. SGS was able to push their early game advantage to gain map control and keep SAJ from poking them away from towers. Eventually, SGS took an uncontested Baron and were able to push into the base of SAJ for the inevitable win.

Singapore Sentinels SGS

2

-

0

Saigon Jokers SAJ

Karthus				Blitzcrank
Shen				Lee Sin
Malphite				Gragas
Maokai				Ezreal
Sona				Leona
Corki				Dr. Mundo
Jax				Jayce
Katarina				Kog’Maw

Game 2: In the second game, SGS started off well by heavily denying the jungle from d4rkness on Maokai, causing him to drastically fall behind in levels and farm. SAJ were able to pick up some early kills on Archie’s Ezreal, however SGS was quick with the turnaround. Chawy on Katarina pulled his team back into the lead by ganking in place of Maokai, grabbing kills and assists for both of his outer lanes. SGS held onto the lead created by Chawy by grouping together and constantly catching SAJ members out of position. Once again SAJ was not able to accomplish their goal of poking out SGS because they fell so far behind during the laning phase. SGS quickly pushed SAJ into their base and gained map control, causing NIXWATER on AP Kog’Maw to never be able to farm past midgame or finish his core items in time. Much like game 1, SGS grabbed baron and pushed SAJ into their base for their second victory, making it to the finals to play against TPA.

	Chawy	Chawy played Katarina in both games and really showed his dominance playing the role of an assassin. In game one he knew exactly when to enter team fights to maximize his damage, and in game two he snowballed his team by ganking often and catching SAJ members out of position.
	SAJ Poke	In both games Saigon Jokers were looking to win by out-poking Singapore Sentinels in extended sieges.  But in both games, they let SGS snowball past the point where poke mattered and SGS was able to even dive past towers to keep encounters short.