FnaticMSI.HoN beat KDE to take the ESL July crown.

FnaticMSI.HoN have defeated one of their biggest rivals, KD-Gaming, in the ESL July Finals in extremely convincing fashion to pickup $500 and the crown.

FnaticMSI.HoN have been on a great run recently, not losing a single competative game since Dreamhack, they carried on that trend in a dominant win over the team that last put the knife to them.

The Game

Lanes

Top: Swiftblade (Kay`) & Slither (budgi) vs. Soulstealer (Overpow) & Glacius (Mag1x)

Middle: Corrupted Disciple (Trixi) & Andromeda (duQi) vs. Dark Lady (H4nn1) & Witch Slayer (Kebap)

Bottom: Madman (FreshPro) vs. Valkyrie (SemiJew)

The game started with a new lineup for KDe, seeing a stable name from the previous roster in Levent not playing and instead Semijew, a rather unknown player from Clan Influx, recently moving to KDe and taking his slot in one of his first competative games with the team.

FnaticMSI.HoN seemed to have a level of control from the very start, the choice of picks from KDe (mainly pointing at Dark Lady) brought into question whether they could handle the three carry strat of FnaticMSI and it seemed like they really couldn't.

The main amount of early action came from the top lane, two well synergised teams in the lane had to fight it out for control and it seemed the Slither Swiftblade combination was simply too much for the Glacius and Soulstealer too handle. Soulstealer being played by Overpow began to drop heavily to the aggressive and forward thinking style of FnaticMSI. Aggression was the name of the game for the team and it showed throughout, taking a fairly heavy hero kill lead it seemed that the Swiftblade being played by Kay` was very quickly getting out of control and out of the grasp of an already dejected KDe team.

With the Soulstealer being pinned down very heavily in the beginning it was down to the Dark Lady to try and bring his team back into the game with his farm, knowing that IF he got a good farm in the mid lane he could potentially take control of the game and give it to KDe. Again though this simply wasn't the case, KDe tried to catch FnaticMSI off guard by putting the Dark Lady / Witch Slayer lane middle but duQi playing the Andromeda moved quickly to make sure the lane was even. The trouble ranged lane proved troublesome and it seemed whatever KDe tried to do, FnaticMSI had the answer, couple this with the great farm that the three FnaticMSI carries were getting (mainly Swiftblade) the game began to quickly tip into their favour.

Moving on further in the game, very little changed, the only kills KDe were getting in terms of heroes was on the Andromeda and Slither, around 25 minutes in none of the three FnaticMSI carries had actually been killed and even though the Soulstealer and Dark Lady for KDe began to kick start their farm, all be it very late, it was simply not enough and FnaticMSI took total lane and map domination and crushed their main european rivals very convincingly, at a time when questions were around their lineup with Rexi having to go to his National Service.