This article is part of our LoL Season Splits series.
After diving into some of the longshots and wildcards to claim the EULCS Spring Split title Thursday, let's take a look at some of the favorites heading into the weekend including:
G2
To say that the success of G2 has been surprising would be a massive understatement. They entered the season straight out of the promotional tournament where they had lived in the shadows of the newly christened Splyce. Everyone assumed that they would be, at best, another team who would live in the mid to low side of the brackets. Even their ardent supporters have been amazed at the results they've managed to earn. Their success has largely been a symptom of the collapse of many of EU's greatest teams in the offseason, but their success against H2K in the regular season has firmly established that G2 is a great team in their own right, not simply one that looks good due to a lack of skilled competition like Unicorns of Love in Spring 2015. The reason for that is simple: in an environment that includes a variety of teams that all have both major strengths and weaknesses, G2 stands alone as the sole team to have neither. While G2's teamfighting is certainly above average - and arguably the strongest in their league - it's nothing impressive by global standards. G2's strength lies simply in their all around slightly-above-averageness. They maintain a consistent level of performance throughout all their games.
Critics of G2 will point out their extremely linear playstyle: they focus nearly entirely on teamfighting as a win condition and haven't really branched out from that over the course of the split. I would argue, though, that this is a strength as it gives G2 a very important advantage. Many, many games in Europe are lost simply because a team will default to teamfighting while playing a composition that's not suited to it, instead being focused on sieging, split pushing, or what have you. These teams do what analysts call "losing to themselves". They lose not because the enemy team has forced them into an undesirable position, but because they've forced themselves there. G2's single-minded devotion to teamfighting and their ability to force other teams - most notably H2K - to fight them means that they very rarely fall victim to their own decisions, as their linear strategy reduced the number of decisions they need to consider down to one: to fight or not to fight.
These strengths, combined with their favorable seeding, means that G2 is quite likely to end their first split in either first or second place. Both Origen and Unicorns of Love play a similar game to G2, but have proven less consistent at it. The only threat to G2 is that xPeke takes to the Rift and leads Origen back to their 2015 form. Barring that circumstance, G2 should face either H2K or Vitality in the finals, both of whom would prove to be a tough match. Each team has an opposite focus from G2, preferring to earn their advantages via map play, not through direct confrontation. G2's games with these teams thus far have come down entirely to whether G2 can find the engagements they want, and a theoretical series with either will play out much the same way. How such a series would end is anyone's guess, but there's plenty of reasons to believe that G2 is capable of taking either down and earning the championship title.
H2K
To most pundits, H2K were the heirs presumptive of the throne that Fnatic and Origen vacated during the offseason. From the beginning of the split they were the favorites to take it all, a view that was only reinforced by the struggles of the two former titans that had kept them down over the last year. For H2K this split was their opportunity to rise above the back-to-back 3-4th place finishes they earned in 2015. While both Vitality and, unexpectedly, G2 have arisen to challenge H2K's new - and likely improved - roster, neither hold a decisive leg up on them.
H2k's sights, then, are set solidly on the championship title. Their second place finish in the regular season ensures that their path there is shorter than that which most of their competition must tread. Unfortunately for them, they did end up getting the short end of the stick in terms of who they share their side of the bracket with. Both Fnatic and Vitality are potential challengers to H2K's dream of attending their first final, and each are teams with whom H2K has struggled against in the regular season. Their defeat at the hands of Fnatic can be nearly discounted, as it occurred at the beginning of the split, long before Fnatic's now glaring weaknesses were exposed. Vitality is a different beast entirely, however, as the teams share both a split record and a similar philosophy about how to approach the game. If H2K wish to analyze the weaknesses in Vitality's gameplay it will require, in many ways, that they look in a mirror and access their own. For many fans, though, and H2K vs. Vitality semifinal may well be the most interesting series of the entire tournament, regardless of who prevails. While the outcome may be uncertain, the deliberative and strategic gameplay that both teams would bring to the table is certain to be a source of excitement regardless of who advances.
Vitality
Thanks to their good seeding, Vitality may well be on the path to a finals appearance. They need only overcome Fnatic and G2 to find themselves fighting for the right to represent Europe at MSI. Their calculated playstyle has already proven to be the bane of Fnatic, and they are one of the few teams to take a game off G2 in the regular season. In their first meeting, Vitality utterly thrashed the first place team, and their loss in the second can be blamed on an inexplicable Nasus pick fairly reasonably. Assuming they steer away from fruitless gimmicks the path to the finals is a fairly easy one for Vitality.
What will happen when they get there, though, will be another matter entirely. Barring an upset they will be facing H2K in the finals in a series that would be something of a grudge match. KaSing and Hjarnan would be granted the opportunity to prove that their replacements are nothing but a pale imitation, while Cabochard would be granted the opportunity to take the title of EU's greatest top laner off of Odoamne, the heir presumptive after the loss of Huni. For many fans of EU, a Vitality/H2k final would be the highlight of the season, and the seeding makes that a realistic possibility.
