The opening series of the EU Masters 2020 Spring quarterfinals saw AGO ROGUE defy expectations to sweep mousesports. The Ultraliga champions came in as underdogs but left as victors.
How they got there
This was a game many people expected to be one-sided - in mousesports’ favor. The venerable German organization was one of the best teams in the strong DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) Prime League and won its EU Masters group with an unmatched 5-1 record. Meanwhile, Ultraliga champion AGO ROGUE, the academy squad of the LEC team, had a poor week one in the group before a 3-0 week and two tiebreaker games resulted in them taking the second place after a showdown with France’s LDLC OL.
Game 1: The Rogue factor
Mouse started strong, putting early pressure on the mid-game and successfully setting Paweł "Czekolad" Szczepanik’s Syndra behind as they took the first two kills and had a small net lead in the first 10 minutes. Rogue’s mid laner soon had his revenge, however, taking five kills in the next several minutes as the teams started fighting in earnest. The Polish squad slowly grew a gold and pressure lead until they exploited a poor positional play by mouse to take an inhibitor just 18 minutes into the game. Three minutes later, Czekolad and his team took an uncontested Baron. With it, they split mousesports’ base open, took the mountain soul and then pushed in for the win, eventually taking down Adam "LIDER" Ilyasov’s Azir after a prolonged fight that signaled the end for the German team. Once more, a Polish team would play the wildcard in the EU Masters. Could they go all the way?
Game 2: Early gamble dooms mousesports
The second game saw the Polish squad draft an identical composition and mousesports pick a very different lineup to match it. Just seven minutes in, however, things went horribly wrong for them.
Mouse chased the enemy bot lane too far and the collapse saw them aced. A minute later, ROGUE took two more kills and once again took over the game early. The won a fight 19 minutes in but lost four off a poorly coordinated engage a minute later, resulting in an early ocean soul for ROGUE. They followed it up with a Baron a few minutes later and split to siege the mousesports base. Seeing a potential weak spot, the German team tried to collapse on Mathias "Szygenda" Jensen’s Renekton, but the Dane survived long enough for the rest of the team to come and turn the fight around, then take the nexus.
It was a stellar performance from the Polish squad as all their members were on point today to give us one of the big upsets in the tournament. With this, the Polish Ultraliga has its first semifinalist in EU Masters since 2018’s Illuminar Gaming.
If you want to look back to what happened at the EU Masters so far, check out our previous coverage: