G2 vs Gen.G MSI Playoffs Preview – Meeting Korea’s Final Boss

G2 Esports made it to the top eight at MSI, but it was a much tougher run than most expected. Now, they will be facing tournament favorites Gen.G in the first round of the MSI playoffs in what could become a nightmare for the EU representative. Here’s our breakdown.

MSI Playoffs Round 1 – G2 vs Gen.G

Let’s not sugarcoat it: G2 are struggling and the team is far from the one we’ve seen in past seasons. The team barely scraped through FURIA and GAM, and got completely demolished by Chinese rivals BLG. We were expecting a weaker team coming into MSI, but the concerns around the European squad are growing.

There are two main reasons behind G2’s underperformance. The first one is BrokenBlade, who has looked off in most series and was dominated by FURIA’s top laner Guigo, in their best-of-series. While he fared a little better against Kiaya, he’s still far from the Godfather we witnessed in previous seasons.

Paired with the fact that SkewMond and Labrov don’t seem to click well still, G2’s win conditions are heavily reliant on Caps and Hans Sama. The Danish mid stepped up in some series during the play-ins but the ADC was more often than not invisible. In a team where the carries are struggling, you can’t really close out games, even if you put them in a condition to do so. Adding insult to the injury, G2 will now have to face the best team in the world.

Gen.G – they probably don’t even have to push themselves to the limit

Everyone is expecting the LCK #1 seed to make a deep run in the tournament, and that is probably reflected in most of the MSI Pick’Em. The thing about Gen.G is that they are stylistically the team that plays a slower and more controlled game, slowly choking out the enemies. If you’re not going to find openings by the mid-game, Gen.G will dominate in the teamfights.

G2 has struggled to find consistent advantages for themselves and when you imagine you will be going against the best top lane trio in the world with one of the most powerful bot lanes in the scene, the results can be disastrous. Aside from some drafting shenanigans or heavy underperformance from the enemy team, G2 cannot beat Gen.G in their current form. Even taking one game from Gen.G would be an outstanding result.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. G2 will have another chance in the lower bracket, and getting on-stage performance against one of the tournament favorites could allow them to gain valuable lessons on how to improve their gameplay. If play-ins were the warmup, their goal now is to absorb as much as they can to maintain their hopes alive in the lower bracket.

For G2 fans, if you are hoping to see a similar run to last year’s MSI, I’m sorry to say you probably won’t have to, because this year’s path looks even tougher. I can see a potential high ceiling, but the team is far from reaching it, and I doubt it will happen during the MSI Playoffs.