G2 Esports Preview – Worlds 2023

G2 Esports Preview is about the team that could be the last hope for the West – let’s hope that’s not the case.

The Swiss Stage for the League of Legends World Championship is right around the corner! 16 teams will gather in the KBS Arena in Seoul to decide which 8 of them can proceed to the Playoffs. Among the players are legends, such as Faker with T1, Deft with Dplus KIA, Ruler with JD Gaming or Caps with G2 Esports.

Fans of the LEC and all the West is expecting a lot from the latter team, as they are regarded as the strongest squad outside of the LPL and LCK teams. But can G2 Esports deliver?

G2 Esports Preview

G2 Esports Team History

G2 Esports joined European League of Legends back in 2015, where they managed to qualify for the EU LCS through the PGL Legends of the Rift tournament. They made a huge splash in their first season, as they won both the Spring and Summer tournaments, and made it to 5^th place in the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational. Even though they only finished in the top 16 during Worlds, they made it to the finals of the IEM Season 11 World Championship, getting beat by Flash Wolves in the finals.

They were a top contender in the European scene in the coming years, making it to the MSI Finals in 2017, where they first met SKT Telecom T1, but failed to beat them. They steadily improved in the next years, but weren’t perfect: Fnatic defeated them in the 2018 Spring Playoffs, and in the Summer Playoffs the same year, they couldn’t even make it to top 5. A redemption arc was in store for the roster lead by Perkz in the midlane, as they managed to qualify for Worlds through the Regional Finals, and finished in the top 4 that year.

That was still not the top of the mountain for them though. In 2019, G2 Esport signed Caps and Mikyx, and thus, the legendary roster of Wunder, Jankos, Caps, Perkz and Miky was born. That year, G2 Esports won the Mid-Season Invitational, becoming the only Western team to ever do so since LoL esports. They also broke another record by making it to the Worlds Finals, something that Fnatic achieved in the first Worlds and a year before G2 Esports, in 2018.

G2 Esports only had one bad year (compared to themselves) in 2021, when they couldn’t qualify for Worlds as the team couldn’t perform as good with Rekkles on board – but it wasn’t the Swedish ADC that dragged the team down, every member played poorly.

Since then, they rebuilt the roster almost completely, only keeping Caps and re-signing Mikyx from the legendary 5. This year G2 Esports dominated the LEC, winning the Winter and Summer Splits, as well as the Season Finals, and making it to the top 6 of the Mid-Season Invitational. Can the Kings of Europe replicate their 2019 success, or will they falter before the endgame?

G2 Esports Roster

• Sergen “BrokenBlade” Celik
• Martin “Yike” Sundelin
• Rasmus “Caps” Borregaard Winther
• Steven “Hans Sama” Liv
• Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle

G2 Esports Playstyle

G2 Esports is an incredibly dominant team in almost all stage of a match. They control their gold leads in most games, as they lost less than 20% of their games in the Summer LEC Split and in the Season Finals, and they had major gold deficits in closer to 10% of their matches.

Their early games are spent with fighting and winning those fights, getting leads through skirmishes and objective bouts. They are the most skirmish heavy team at Worlds, and they have an extremely high K+D@14 with 10.2, meaning that they could beat anyone domestically, but the extent they did is promising in the international scene as well. All 5 of their players are very skilled individually, so they usually come out of the laning phase with a lead even if they don’t get help from others. BrokenBlade is the most outstanding in this regard, having 18 solo kills in Summer even though the opponent’s jungler tends to focus him down. Caps is also another great example, who switched his laning style from a supportive midlaner to a carry one.

Later in the game, G2 Esports tends to slow down a bit compared to LEC teams, but in terms of Worlds, they are the best team in Major Lead, 2^nd in Kills/Game and Kils/Minute, and 3^rd in Major Deficit, as they don’t get behind that much. They are also very fast, ranking 5^th in fastest game time in the world, thanks to their early game domination. They also focus Baron Nashor almost as soon as it spawns to extend their leads and close out games while they are stronger than their opponents.

Even though they fight a lot in the early game and have a great KDA, they don’t do well in terms of damage – outside of Hans sama, who stands out from the team with dealing the 2^nd most damage/minute in the LEC Summer and Season Finals. That’s not because they don’t harass their opponents or lack the trading skills, its because they all do it so well that none of them stands out in this regard.

G2 Esports is also a very creative team, coming up with counters to big problems in the meta. The best example is BB’s Kled which is often picked against Renekton. Hans sama’s Kog’Maw paired with Mikyx’s Braum is also another good example which transforms G2 Esports from an early game team to a late game one.

G2 Esports has a lot of tricks up their sleeves and play a very clean and focused game on Summoner’s Rift. Even though they had their downs in the last few years, they could make history this year by making it to the top 4 even – or even the finals, if they managed to step their game up enough to compete with the Chinese and Korean teams.