We spoke to the mid laner of Unicorns of Love Lev “Nomanz” Yakshin about his first match against RNG during MSI 2021 and his ambitions and expectations for the tournament.
How was it to play against RNG? They’re obviously a very strong contender to win it all, but that must’ve been a tough loss.
Nomanz: “I think we just lost the draft really hard in that game. Then we just didn’t know what to do in the early game. We had a really good teamfighting composition and if it goes to mid-game, only being slightly behind, we would win fights. They snowballed top, they snowballed jungle, they just farmed every camp that was still on the map. We couldn’t fight anymore and we didn’t manage to scale to the point where we would be able to pull off fights. So yes, it was a difficult game.”
You guys seemingly had some sort of a plan ahead of time, judging from the Kai’Sa instalock and the unconventional Trundle pick, but it unfortunately didn’t work out.
Nomanz: “Well missing the second round ban didn’t help (laughs). Maybe picking Trundle wasn’t the best idea here. Also blinding Gnar when they still had the option to put Lucian top or pick something like Jayce wasn’t good, meaning they’ll always have prio. So yes, our draft was… questionable.”
GGWP @RNGRoyal😮
We are back tomorrow🦄
— Unicorns Of Love (@UnicornsOfLove) May 7, 2021
I did feel you played out the laning phase relatively well in that matchup. Obviously Cryin is a very solid laner, so that must’ve been difficult.
Nomanz: “After I played against Showmaker I think every other mid laner will be a little easier. Cryin played the matchup like he should. His Ryze should get prio early and snowball and just start farming jungle camps and winning fights with his gold and xp advantage, which he did. Yet when Viktor, who I was playing, gets three items he gets outscaled hard. Unfortunately, we couldn’t reach that point, but he played a textbook Ryze game.”
I also wanted to quickly touch on yesterday’s match against Pentanet, where you were extremely dominant. Do you think there’s a big gap between you and Pentanet?
Nomanz: “I think their problem in that game against us was the same one we faced against RNG. They just lost the draft hard. Kindred is just not playable against Nidalee and Orianna, you’re just going to lose, you can’t auto-attack. It was definitely also just a hard game for them to play.”
The @UnicornsOfLove secure their first win! #MSI2021 pic.twitter.com/ZokHDWuS17
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) May 6, 2021
You’re well known as a mid laner who enjoys playing carries. What is your opinion on the current patch? Do you think the current meta suits you in that regard?
Nomanz: “Yes, I do think so. We still have a lot of things in the works, some interesting picks. Maybe we’ll show them soon. We might even surprise some teams.”
What do you think UOL’s chances are at MSI, is there any personal goal you want to achieve?
Nomanz: “For us as a team the goal is probably to win MSI, that’s what you always aim for, as it should be. But personally my goal is to reach the semi-finals of the tournament and play a best-of-five against DAMWON. That’d be really great, even taking a game from DAMWON would be huge, that’s the dream right now.”
Is there any mid laner here at MSI you still really want to face?
Nomanz: “Yes, of course it’s going to be Showmaker again. Yet I would also like to play Cryin again in a more contested matchup, I think that would be very interesting for him and me. Another one I’d like to play is Perkz. I already played against him one as an ADC, but I’d love to take him on as a mid laner. Humanoid is also up there of course, he’s the LEC champion and he’s really good so it’d be interesting for sure.”
Tomorrow’s a new day 🙂
Smth smth no more farming for late game ?
— Luka (@C9Perkz) May 6, 2021
Going into the next matches tomorrow, you’re going up against RNG yet again in the current format. How will your plans and strategy change or shift going into that matchup?
Nomanz: “We’re on red side so we can get a lot of advantages in the draft. We just need to find out what they want to first pick and what they put priority on and I’d say we kind of know it already after this match. So I do think tomorrow’s game against RNG will be a little easier.”
Best of luck to you and Unicorns of Love, Nomanz!
Also read:
- MAD Kaiser: “At the start of the season I already knew we had a lot of potential”
- Schalke 04 LIMIT: “We told ourselves to not give in to Fnatic’s fiesta playstyle”
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