Chapter 303: Different lineup, similar tactics!

Summoner's Rift descends.

Feeling a tremor through the floor beneath his feet, Liang Yan took a deep breath, placed his hands on the mouse and keyboard, and quickly sent out several signals.

"Charge!!!"

Zven shouted fervently, taking the lead with his female police officer and charging out of the fountain.

Lao Zhang walked at the rear, also shouting "charge, charge, charge," his face ferocious, a stark contrast to the serene monk he had just been meditating as.

Perkz glanced down at the far right, smiling as he teased Lao Zhang:

"Brother, I still think your cold‑hearted look just now was the coolest."

Lao Zhang immediately broke into an embarrassed smile:

"I was just pretending; I'm not that excited now, afraid I'd hold you back."

Perkz laughed three times:

"Don't worry, I'll carry this game!"

Liang Yan immediately responded:

"That's great; I'll leave this game to you."

Perkz gave another two ha‑has, not knowing what it meant.

On the big screen, the five players from each side lined up in a row on either side of the river in Summoner's Rift.

The live commentator shouted:

"The highly anticipated third game!"

"Blue side, G2 led by the super‑new star Firrrrrre and the new magic king Perkz! If they win this match, G2 will become the strongest dark horse in history, rising from the secondary league to the global finals within a year and ultimately winning the championship—without a doubt they will become legends!"

"Red side, this is a powerful team, ROX, boasting four global top‑20 players. Before the match we all thought ROX would crush G2 and take the crown, but now we see ROX has been pushed to the brink by G2—either they rally and chase hard, or they fall into the abyss. No matter the outcome, the answer will soon be revealed; let's witness it together!"

The entire audience:

"Let's go G2!"

"Let's go G2!"

"Let's go G2!"

In the LPL livestream room, Wawa's loud voice rang out:

"All right! I believe the friends watching the screen heard it—the on‑site cheers are like a mountain‑shaking, sea‑roaring tsunami; we here feel our blood boiling hot. Everyone, if you have the chance, you really should come to the venue to feel it—it's so passionate! But let's cut the chatter; the battle has already begun, come see how both sides start off…"

Time skips past the first 50 seconds of the opening, and the personnel at each position for both sides begin to stir.

On the bottom lane side, after some cautious probing, the ROX duo determined that G2 had only two defenders in the entire bottom half, so they teamed up, using the long range and AOE advantage of Glacial Arrow to press forward, pushing back the two G2 players, then each placed a vision ward at the two key spots—the triangular grass on the blue side bottom lane and the grass in front of the blue side bottom lane tower—to prevent being caught by a level‑2 Gragas gank.

In the top half, however, G2's top‑mid‑jungle trio held the advantage, grouping together to invade ROX's top‑half jungle, and through the wall they placed a ward inside the red buff camp.

Soon after, Gragas headed straight for the bottom half.

The mid lane minion wave reached the front line first; Perkz moved up to meet the wave, his positioning extremely arrogant, standing right near where the enemy melee minions clash.

Ziggs is one of the few mages with basic‑attack damage, but against a true physical marksman, even a level‑1 Ziggs' sustained damage is lackluster, especially when facing a lane‑dominating champion like Lucian; thus Kuro chose to simply push the wave, not going in to auto‑attack, using his Q to finish off two low‑health melee minions before retreating.

The jungle monsters respawned two seconds after the mid‑lane minion clash, arriving at the bottom half's Gragas, who started his jungle clear alone from the red buff.

In the bottom lane, the G2 duo had a level‑1 push advantage, but to preserve health they didn't push all the way; the female police officer held her skills, kept separate positioning from Karma, maintained a steady auto‑attack rhythm—neither pushing nor abandoning the lane, striving to keep the minion wave balanced.

The ROX duo also had their own considerations: since Xiao Huasheng's Vi originated from the top half, they didn't dare push the lane too fast, lest the minion wave outrun Vi's arrival and invite a gank; thus the female gunner refrained from spamming skills to avoid pushing the line.

When the two marksmen face Karma—especially Karma paired with the female police officer—if they don't apply pressure at level 1, they effectively give up lane control, because starting at level 2 Karma gains a shield, rendering the gunner's E almost harmless; thereafter the lane dynamic flips in favor of the police officer‑Karma combo, an advantage that generally holds until around level 6, after which it reverses once more, since at that point the ice‑arrow marksman and the gunner will have their ultimates ready, while the police officer's ultimate lacks threat, and Karma herself has no ultimate.

From the moment the lane began, Perkz kept auto‑attacking minions; the more Kuro pushed the wave, the harder Perkz attacked. In under fifteen seconds, Lucian landed a single Q to finish off two low‑health ranged minions, then turned and headed down the river.

Having just finished clearing the Stone Armor Beetle and now killing the red buff, Xiao Huasheng saw this, immediately clicked his own blue buff, his voice tense:

"Ruixing Ge, come over later and place a ward to see if they're stealing my blue!"

Kuro acknowledged with a sound and sped up his lane clearing.

Unbeknownst to them, the instant Lucian entered the brush he activated his burst of speed.

The Holy Spear Wanderer (i. e., Lucian) seemed to have rockets on his feet, shooting down like a wisp of smoke.

Gragas, having finished the red buff, likewise dashed through walls, circumventing vision to chase downstream.

At a spot just below the dragon pit, Perkz caught up to Gragas from behind, and the two kept running downstream along the red side jungle river wall.

At that moment, mid lane Kuro's Ziggs had just used a basic attack to finish off the last low‑health ranged minion, then turned and ran from the side path into the jungle, intending to come over and place a ward in his own blue buff camp to see if the enemy was stealing blue.

G2's pace had always been very fast; Nofe had warned before going offline that Gragas possessed a level‑2 gank capability, so they needed to be wary, but as long as they stayed within the river, the danger was limited, since neither Gragas nor the opposing duo could instantly kill someone with their combined damage.

But nobody could have imagined that G2 was employing a jungle‑plus‑mid‑lane strategy!

The ROX bottom lane was completely unprepared! After all, Lucian had vanished from the lane only a few seconds ago—no one expected him to come sprinting in with his burst of speed for a level‑2 gank!

Even if ROX had experienced similar situations before, they still wouldn't have seen it coming, because the champions involved are different!

"A level‑1 gank! G2 is brutal!!"

"G2's sneaky tactics are over the top!!"

Miller and Wawa's shocked cries echoed in the LPL livestream room.

Originally it would take more than ten seconds to go from mid lane to bottom lane, but with the speed boost that time was compressed to under ten seconds!

At that moment the bottom lane hadn't even finished clearing its first wave!

Guan Zeyuan stared at the big screen, yet a scene from the group stage flashed back to mind:

"Good heavens, isn't this just the CLG versus ROX Dragon King level‑1 gank tactic from the group stage? And yet G2 is running it with a swapped lineup!"