How Samsung White built advantages out of nothing.

It's no secret Samsung White is unparalleled as the best team in the world right now. They demolished competition on their way to being Season 4 World Champions this weekend. I and many others could talk at length about the incredible subtleties in their play, in fact I have a few more ideas beyond this one already. I chose this to talk about specifically because SSW were kind enough to do it both from a lead and from behind against SHRC this weekend to really demonstrate how they can create advantages from nothing.

In both games one and four White had their level 1 lane swap matched by Royal Club, matching up 2v2 in the top lane. Both times White used that fact alone to create and advantage by having their duo be the first ones to swap back to the bottom side. Each time Mata bought wards and used the fact they were the first to swap back to safely invade SHRC's jungle for vision. 

In game 1 Mata and Dandy invade SHRC's red buff placing a combined total of 5 wards, 3 greens and 2 pinks. Almost immediately after they finish placing the wards Insec shows himself on the one at double golems and Dandy uses that knowledge to dive mid lane and snowball Pawn's Jayce. Pawn used the mid gank to push down his tower and roam top, Dandy used the vision to out maneuver Insec, and bot used the oppressive vision to safely pressure Uzi in the botlane. 

By the time those 5 wards were gone SSW had a 1k gold lead, significant damage on the mid turret which would fall soon after and had used the vision of Insec to gain vision control over the top side of SHRC's jungle as well setting up another tower dive. Still it's easy to downplay the importance of the early swap from Mata by talking about SSW's advantageous lane matchups and the level 1 first blood that helped them afford so many wards. Thankfully White provided us with an example of the same thing but from a position of weakness in game 4. 

This time instead of a first blood advantage and having pressured the lane before the swap it comes after Looper's Kassadin died to a gank bottom while Imp died in the 2v2 top. Off the back of the 2v2 death Mata backs and again he uses the fact that by being first to switch there's no threat of the enemy bot lane collapsing to invade for vision. He's not able to illuminate it as completely as the previous example but he still gets a strategically placed ward. 

Moments later that ward spots a level 6 Insec passing by to setup for his first Pantheon gank. When he walks past SSW ping him and Pawn cheats down from the mid lane while Dandy clears red. A few seconds after they spotted level 6 Insec heading towards bot White signals clear understanding of what's happening as they ping the bot lane where SHRC's duo is pushing the minions into the tower as hard as they can. Thanks to the early warning of Mata's deep ward Insec is barely able to get off his combo before Dandy's Rengar snarls out of the jungle to turn the gank into a disaster for SHRC, and shortly after Pawn arrives to clean up Uzi and take the dragon with his teammates. 

In game 1 Samsung White used the early swap back to slowly build one small advantage onto another. In game 4 they used the same move to turn an early deficit into a punishing advantage.In both scenarios Mata knew that by swapping first he was safe to invade for deep vision. That vision gave Samsung White the knowledge needed to make plays from ahead or behind, and build advantages from nothing.