Last night, on September 27th, the duel between Hertha BSC and No Need Orga took place in League of Legends: It was about promotion to the Prime League: Everything was going for Hertha BSC, they were overwhelmingly superior, just a few minutes away from deciding the series and securing promotion to the 1st league. But one man refused to go down silently: Niklot “Tolkin” Stüber (24).
Why was the game so important? It was about promotion to the 1st Prime League:
- Hertha BSC had invested a lot in the team, assembled a super roster, brought in players with a lot of experience, especially the Pole Mateusz “Matislaw” Zagórski, a 26-year-old midlaner. Hertha dominated the season in the 2nd league for the most part.
- No Need Orga, on the other hand, consists of Twitch streamers, some of whom are former professionals who had actually put their careers behind them. Toplaner Tolkin had ended his professional career in 2020 and started a job as a caster – but had to quit now to play for promotion.
The match yesterday was a nice appetizer before the Worlds start in a few days:
Berlin is overwhelmingly superior – A few minutes before promotion to the 1st league
How did the match go? From Hertha BSC’s perspective, it was a walk in the park: The Berliners were overwhelmingly superior for two and a half games, able to do whatever they wanted on the map, securing every objective, and taking the seemingly scattered players from NNO apart at will.
It seemed like
- Hertha played and acted as a unit
- it seemed that NNO had 5 people playing together, each doing their own thing and unable to act strategically
Every Herald, every Dragon, every Baron went to Hertha, NNO had no chance to get into the games.
Especially the supporter of NNO, Karni, served as a side snack on Nautilus, getting snacked on repeatedly by Hertha BSC. Jungler Agurin could hardly make an impact. Midlaner NoWay appeared isolated and was ganked early by the opposing jungler Lamabear.
At Hertha, ADC Coldraa was in top form and got two quadrakills.
It looked really bad.
Especially against Jinx, NNO found no answer at all:
The first two matches were quickly lost, and in match 3, NNO was actually hopelessly behind at 25 minutes:
Hertha BSC led with 11:3 kills and had almost 6,000 gold advantage – the match seemed already decided.
Tolkin goes “All In” with Aatrox
What play changed everything? It was actually already in the bag, Hertha just needed to seal the deal:
- Hertha had just snatched the Baron, although they lost the supporter, they also killed NNO’s jungler and chased top laner Tolkin away
- ADC Broeki hit the opponents with a rocket, but there was too much distance to the enemies. Hertha was on their way to the base to regroup. The next attack would come with Baron buff, NNO could hardly stop it
- There was actually no more danger: NNO had no vision on the escape route and couldn’t catch the opponents anymore.
But top laner Tolkin on Aatrox turned the situation around with a single play: He used the “Flash” ability to blindly teleport into the enemies and caught 2 opponents on the run, the approaching NoWay secured the 3rd kill.
“Tolkin from Hell”
How was the kill perceived? The casters of the game had almost given up on the game but suddenly saw it as a sign of life from NNO. In the cast, it was said:
Tolkin from Hell, just goes over this wall […] even shot blind, I believe. Didn’t even see him. […] A ray of hope for NNO, who will probably secure the 2nd Drake because of it and that’s only because Tolkin – and this has to be said – really has balls of steel and just goes over there against 3 men.
This is what happened after the kill: As the casters said, it was actually just a glimmer of hope – just a nuance that normally shouldn’t make much difference: Then Hertha would win 5 minutes later. But no.
This one action from Tolkin completely changed the course of the match. Suddenly, all of NNO played two to three classes better:
- It turned the other 4 players into “very good LoL players”,
- but Tolkin, who was already playing strong before, became a hard-hitting killing machine, succeeding in every close duel and becoming the match-winner for NNO.
In the further course of the encounter, he scored another solo kill in the top lane, successfully tanked 3 enemies in the teamfight, and almost took down the base all by himself at the crucial moment.
Tolkin suddenly had God mode activated:
When the series ended and the choice of who the MVP of the match was came up, there were 3 players to choose from: Tolkin, Tolkin, and Tolkin.
The players from Hertha, on the other hand, suddenly seemed to doubt everything. Although they had played so strongly before, it now looked as if someone had pulled the plug and they were resigned to their fate, “once again” facing a reverse sweep from this team that they had previously totally controlled.
Tolkin’s old pump almost exploded
What does Tolkin himself say about the action? The top laner is also one of the biggest Twitch streamers for LoL in Germany. In an interview after the match, he said:
Game 3 … it was rough. We were pretty outplayed by the vision and then we had bad teamfight positioning in that one fight and then … my heart almost exploded. We recorded the video, with us 2 as old men, Grandpa Broeki, Grandpa Tolkin – and my pump at that blind-flash play – I was. I was so scared it would go wrong, but I trusted myself in that moment and … hey, we pulled off the reverse sweep. It just worked. So – why not?
Why has such a strong player like Tolkin never made it to the LEC? Tolkin says he had the chance to work his way into an LEC team two times. But he “failed the promo” both times.
As Tolkin himself says, he was: “too good for the German scene, too bad for the LEC” (via youtube).
After missing the chance to move to the LEC, it wouldn’t have made sense to keep trying, so he went “into retirement”. However, if he can play 1st league Prime League again with his friends at NNO, that would be cool.
More about the game that reached so many viewers yesterday and was such a highlight in the LoL year can be found here:
LoL: 100,000 watch how 5 German Twitch streamers work on their eSports miracle
