Royal Never Give Up

Royal Never Give Up continues to surprise the e-sports world this season: after changing the best player's position from Mid to Top, RNGU won the LPL 2021 Spring regular season and, after a poor start in the playoffs, climbed out of the losers' bracket to triumph and secure a ticket to MSI 2021. Of course, it wasn't just Xiaohu's role change that had such an impact on RNGU's game improvement, but it was undoubtedly one of the key moments. Xiaohu is an individually talented player who has spent many years with this organization and stands out among Top position players with his Mid “Champ pool.”

Another noteworthy aspect of RNGU's game is the team's bottom lane duo Ming and GALA. Ming is a veteran in the RNGU ranks, having played alongside the best ADC of all time, Uzi, when RNGU stood at the world's elite. It seems that GALA, playing alongside Ming in one lane, is improving not by seasons but by weeks. From being a team rookie in his second season playing for RNGU, GALA has become one of the team's reliable leaders.

All the changes have led to RNGU returning to the LPL elite for the first time this season since one of the brightest LPL personalities, Uzi, retired. Royal Never Give Up remains the only undefeated team in the MSI tournament, so they will undoubtedly aim to continue the streak and remove the favorites' label from DAMWON KIA, whom they would become favorites to win the tournament if they defeat for the second time.

DAMWON KIA

DAMWON KIA won the LCK spring season without any problems and continued their dominance in this league. The team that won the world championship title made one significant change this season – instead of Nuguri, considered the best Top position player in the world, the team brought in the experienced and individually very talented Khan. Khan's playstyle is quite different from Nuguri's, but it is more team-oriented and less focused on finding opportunities to outplay the opponent 1×1. This can sometimes be a positive or negative thing, but the fact is that it brings more stability to the team.

DAMWON KIA stands out among all MSI teams for their team play and game understanding – they can sacrifice one side of the map if they see that they can gain much more on the other side, they will sacrifice one kill to take 2 towers or another important objective. This is a smart-playing team that, even without appearing to play aggressively, can create significant advantages that lead to the formality of finishing the game.

Since DAMWON KIA lost the first match against RNGU, there is a high probability that this time they will take their opponents more seriously and avoid such hard-to-understand mistakes in champion selection, where DAMWON KIA simply outplayed themselves.

Prediction

The match between DAMWON KIA and RNGU will show which team deserves the tournament favorite status and which team will finish the second stage of the tournament in first place. In the first meeting of these teams, DAMWON KIA assembled a full AD team, while RNGU had tanky and late-game-oriented champions, which led to DAMWON's defeat. Overall, even in that match, if the team had drafted better, DAMWON had created advantages and could have possibly finished the match in the mid-game stage.