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With playoff seeding on the line, Newbee easy handled Suning Gaming in a 2-0 sweep on Saturday in Shanghai to open Week 9, Day 3 of the League of Legends Pro League.
It was apparent Newbee (9-6, 21-17 match record) was confident in its ability to win late game teamfights. Its win condition in both matches of the series was to win the big one by drafting scaling compositions.
Game 1 was played about as slowly as is ever seen in LPL with first blood not coming until SNG (6-9, 16-23 match record) won a team fight in the top lane. Meanwhile, Newbee was down 3-0 in kills and didn't a kill in 34 minutes in.
SNG somehow was able to maintain a gold lead for all 40 minutes of the game and still lose. The issue was that its lead never translated to a champion advantage, and no one member of the opposition was picked on to the point of losing relevance.
In a composition featuring double AD marksmen in Corki and Vayne, Newbee was more than willing to stall out and scale until the perfect late game fight presented itself. When he saw an opportunity, Lie "Lwx" Wei Xiang's Vayne charged forth nearly as fast as the bolts being hurled from her crossbow, securing a double kill during a 3-for-0 trade. With the advantage, Newbee marched down mid lane and took a single victory.
When the teams entered the Rift the second time, Newbee decided to beat its chest and took a 7-1 advantage in kills early. The majority of the action came on the top side of the map as Newbee top laner Fan "Skye" Qi-fang and jungler Baek "Swift" Dae Hoon were in perfect sync, accounting for the team's first four kills and each having 100 percent kill participation throughout the game. Yet the experience of Newbee showed as the game progressed, as it better distributed gold to the damage dealers for better late game strength.
The victory was 100 percent a team effort as no single player hard-carried, with the highest kill total being four in a game in which Newbee secured 15 in total.
With a playoff spot secured, Newbee will be playing for seeding against the surging Royal Never Give Up at 5 a.m. ET on Friday. Suning Gaming's last chance to move into playoff position comes at 2 a.m. ET on Aug. 17 against JD Gaming.