League of Legends news » Whose Wildcard is it anyway?

We’ve witnessed history ladies and gentlemen. For the very first time at Worlds we’re seeing an International Wildcard team finish 2nd in the Group Stages and book their tickets to Quarterfinals.

And what an incredible way to do it -- by conquering the No. 1 seed from Korea and tournament favorites ROX Tigers. The game itself was the stuff of legends. It was a 66 minute slugfest that had the fans pulling their hair out, hoping, praying, that Albus NoX Luna could do what no wildcard team has done before.

To put it in perspective as to how unlikely their victory was -- only 4.9% of people had ANX finishing 2nd in Pick ‘Ems. That means at the very most only 4.9% of Pick ‘Ems are still alive.

It all started with some great picks on Kuro in the mid lane. PvPStejos’ Nidalee spears were heat seeking missiles and Kira was more than capable of following up on Vlad for the kills. 

“My early game plays were successful and I felt a lot of power inside me,” says PvPStejos. “When I was winning the early game vs. Peanut and vs. ROX Tigers I was like ‘holy moly, these guys are mechanical gods from Korea and I’m just from the poor Russian region. How come we are winning the early games versus them?’”

From these small, incremental advantages, ANX managed to build on their lead and shift it across the map. The gold lead ballooned for ANX but ROX still managed to hold on for dear life. Peanut proved again to be an MVP when it comes to stealing Baron, and PraY’s late game Caitlyn was doing some out of control damage.

“I was like, okay, Peanut is a hardcore jungler, and he’s outplaying us,” says PvPStejos. “So we need to stop doing stuff where he can outplay us. We just stop doing Barons and try and win the game without it. Usually, I’m the main shotcaller. But this game was democratic and everything was decided by the team.”

ANX switched up their game plan and did something that plenty of LCK teams were unable to do this past split. They managed to out-rotate ROX, and dropped inhibitor after inhibitor. Though still ROX held on, pinching both Baron and Elder Dragon.

“They got Baron and [Elder] Drake, and I was like okay it’s even harder now,” says PvPStejos. “But I felt some power inside me to throw spears and most of them hit Kuro or PraY which delayed them from a push. It went back and forth, and we decided as a team that if we couldn’t find the objectives, we needed to rotate and take inhibs to pressure by the winions.”

The game was decided in one final, mad dash for the Nexus. All the inhibitors were down and super minions were pouring into ROX's base. ANX members were dropping like flies while Deficio screamed “hit the Nexus!” over and over. In the end, it was the sole surviving Taric and the aforementioned winions who finished it off.

PvPStejos had a good laugh about it. “Likkrit is the king of the winions!”

With their win not only did ANX manage to make history -- but they also knocked out the European No. 1 seed in G2 Esports and the North American No. 2 seed Counter Logic Gaming. It’s kind of ironic that both these teams were shooting banter back and forth about which one of them was the second wildcard team in the group -- when it turns out they both were.

“Being an underdog means you don’t have pressure,” says PvPStejos. “We went into the tournament after having visa issues, we lost training time to fix the visa issues, we got [placed with] the No. 1 from Korea, the No. 1 from Europe, the No. 2 from NA. Our mindset was that we can just chill and go for 0-6. But sometimes life doesn’t let you end your journey."

"We got to the LCL Finals and reverse swept," he continued. "We go to the [IWCQ] and overcame a 1-2 score. Finally, we think we can rest at Worlds -- but no, people like losing games to us. We have no idea what’s going on.”

Neither do we PvPStejos, neither do we. 

Tonight the craziness of Worlds continues as Group C comes to its conclusion with games kicking off at 4PM PT.