G2 Esports Win LEC Winter 2024

LEC Winter 2024 is over and its winner, unsurprisingly, was G2 Esports. This team dominated the group stage, ending it in 1^st place with a record of 7 W – 2 L. While the other Grand Finalist, MAD Lions KOI, had finished the group stage with a record of 5 W – 4 L.

The playoffs of LEC Winter featured eight teams. Only two of the group stage participants were eliminated prior to this second stage. Those teams were Rogue and Karmine Corp. Both of them ended with a record of 2 W – 7 L.

YOUR LEC WINTER BACK-TO-BACK CHAMPIONS 🏆 pic.twitter.com/SIDazoynxw

— G2 League of Legends (@G2League) February 18, 2024

G2’s path to victory

Last year, G2 Esports won LEC Winter and LEC Summer. They also finished 4^th in LEC Spring, 5^th – 6^th at MSI, and then 9^th – 11^th at Worlds. In everyone’s eyes, they were the biggest favorite.

The first match was played against GIANTX and proved to be quite easy. This was a best-of-three series in which G2 picked champions like Senna and Maokai against a trio that was used by GIANTX in both games: Ezreal, Yuumi, and Xin Zhao.

Game 1 ended after 32 minutes while game 2 after just 22. The MVP of the match was Caps, who has been competing for the team for almost four years.

In the second match, G2 played against Fnatic, who had defeated MAD Lions with a score of 2 – 0. Some difficulties were encountered in game 2, lost by G2, due to a well-executed Jax – Orianna – Varus draft by Fnatic. But in the other two games, G2 were clearly better.

What’s amazing here is that MAD Lions went from losing the first upper bracket match to playing in the Grand Final. That required them to win all of their four lower bracket matches. In the process, they defeated teams like GIANTX, Team Vitality, Fnatic, and Team BDS.

G2’s 3^rd match of the playoffs was against Team BDS and it ended with a clear victory for them. At this stage, matches were best-of-five, so BDS had sufficient opportunities to prove themselves. But they weren’t able to beat the strongest team in Europe even once.

They insisted on playing around Varus and picked him three times, but it didn’t work at all. G2’s Kalista strategy, which they also used three times, was much better executed.

In the Grand Final, G2 lost game 1 due to a series of tactical errors. Mad Lions surprised them with Zac and Yasuo. But after that, everything went in their favor and the final score was 3 – 1.

Header: G2 Esports