This article is part of our LoL Recap series.
Day 1 of IEM featured some matchups that were predicted to be lopsided based on the regions involved, but largely featured teams that have been out of the spotlight for the last few months. The first match of the day saw Europe's Unicorns of Love completely dominate Brazil's INTZ from start to finish. INTZ were outclassed across the board, and UoL made sure to go for the throat once they found a lead -- a simple thing to find considering Fabian "Exileh" Schubert lived up to his post-season peak from earlier this year, completely blowing away INTZ's Gabriel "Tockers" Claumann in both games. Exileh paved the way for the team to work their historically strong rotational play, and they never gave INTZ an opportunity to mount a comeback.
The second game was equally lopsided, but more interesting to many western fans due to the relative obscurity of the teams involved. Oceania's Chiefs made their debut on the IEM stage, only to face South Korea's Longzhu, who were also making their IEM debut. The match started off with an exciting back and forth in Game 1 that almost led to a Chief's victory thanks to their unexpectedly strong coordination and the efforts from Samuel "Spookz" Broadley and Simon "Swiffer" Papamarkos, their jungle and mid laner, respectively. Unfortunately, the deficit that their top laner, Brandon "Swip3rR" Holland, had against Bon-Taek "Expession" Gu proved to be too much to bear; despite their strong teamfighting the Chiefs just proved unable to fight Longzhu 1-vs-1 in the split push they initiated. Game 2 would prove nowhere near as competitive: Longzhu stomped Chiefs flat thanks to an amazing game from Lee "Chaser" Sang-hyum, who's early pressure in the solo lanes gave Expession the opportunity to once again dominate Swip3rR and split push the team to a win.
Tomorrow is sure to be an exciting day, as Unicorns take on Team SoloMid while Longzhu will challenge Flash Wolves. With Unicorns in some of the best form in their organization's history, they're sure to give the hometown heroes a good fight, while Longzhu look to keep the Flash Wolves win streak against Korean teams broken by following in SKT's footsteps and thrashing the longtime thorn in the side of Korean hegemony.
Wherever the dice fall tomorrow, we'll be crowning a new champion of IEM Oakland come the evening, after what are sure to be some close and exciting matches, a welcome change after today's bloodbaths.
