Your post reminds me of the controversy with the brackets,I think the success of China (and Finland in the last WC) really shows that many underestimate the value of a team that has amazing chemistry and has played together for years. Teams like Norway or Canada had the flashier names, but their players - while awesome TG players - are on different clans, so there is just not the same level of experience together to build on for strategic innovation and so on. This is a reason why China and Finland (along with teams like Vietnam or Brazil) will often over-perform expectations that are only based on the individual strength of players.
Amazing play by China, and congrats to YO and Lyx for winning it all. MbL and Viper proved to be a tought match, and wp to them. My biggest surprise of this WC was Spain's almost-finals run, along with some nice surprises (Germany over Argentina in the group stage was a personal favorite, but Russia was really strong as well). Great job Nacho&T90 for this fun tournament. Hopefully we will also see some 2v2 (and other TG) clan tournaments in the near future, as well as another WC in 1 or 2 years.
Great put, but i cannot agree with you tho. lyx and yo have played together since 2013 i believe, and the synergy and chemesty between them just insanely well. They have the same knowledge and understand for all the civlls and maps, they know the callouts, they know how to make two weaker civlls work well, and so on. Like lyx said in the stream after the wc final 'we just the best duo in this game, i cannot go agro without Yo's support, and i will let Yo free boom with my everything'Congratulations to the finalists!
I think Lyx played a more strategically important role than Yo in the series, though the latter ended up top score in most games. I mean if we replace Yo by Hera, Viper or Lierey, this team might still make the same achievement (assuming they can communicate in the same language ofc), but if you replace lyx by anyone else, they won't be able to beat two 2.5k players like MBL + Viper.
Lyx sacrificed himself but managed to create chaos for both opponents in every game, and Yo just stepped up to finish them. It's amazing that this strategy worked all the time, especially in the China vs Brazil match.
One may be 2.5k in booming, micro, macro and late game trash war, but when it comes to villager fight, Lyx is the lord.