G2 vs Fnatic – 2018 EU LCS Summer

Lore & Background

By the time the 2018 Summer split rolled around, G2 and Fnatic had already spent years trading blows across the EU LCS regular season. What made 2018 feel different was the density of star talent on both rosters. G2 fielded Perkz at mid, Wunder top, Bjerg in the jungle, Jankos on bot, and Ocelote on support—a lineup that blended raw mechanical aggression with a mid-lane player who treated every wave like a personal insult. Fnatic answered with Caps, Huni, GeT_RiGhT, Rekkles, and Haaavo, a roster built around the idea that if you could out-draw G2 in the laning phase, you could control the entire game.

The rivalry was not merely about wins and losses. It was about narrative. Perkz versus Caps became a proxy war for two different philosophies of mid-lane dominance: Perkz's chaotic, roam-heavy, kill-seeking style against Caps's surgical, wave-manipulating, macro-first approach. Rekkles and Jankos on bot lane gave fans a constant question—whose ADC would outplay whom in the teamfights that decided close games. Wunder and Huni at top represented two extremes of the position, one a pure duelist, the other a versatile all-rounder who could carry through utility and split-pushing alike.

In the broader canon of EU LCS, the 2018 G2–Fnatic clashes occupy the same cultural space as the old Counter-Strike finals or the Premier League title deciders: a recurring fixture where the identity of the region's best team was settled each time. Fans still reference the 2018 summer as the peak of that rivalry, the season where both teams were at their most complete and the margin between them was the thinnest it had ever been.

In Their Own Story

The arena lights dimmed to a low amber hum. Two rows of PCs sat in perfect symmetry, monitors glowing cold blue against the dark. On the left, Perkz cracked his knuckles, eyes locked on a small screen where a lane minimap pulsed like a heartbeat. On the right, Caps adjusted his headset, jaw set, already running through the first three waves in his head.

The crowd noise was a low tide, building. Somewhere in the back, a fan chanted a name—Perkz, then Caps, then Perkz again—like a pendulum. The caster's voice rose: "And here we go, the two teams that have been writing the story of European LoL all year."

Game one started. The first blood came at two minutes, a gank that smelled of Bjerg's jungle pathing. The second blood was Caps's, a flash-ezreal that sent the Fnatic side of the arena into a roar. By game three, the crowd was no longer watching a match; they were watching a verdict being written in real time, one objective at a time, one tower, one dragon, one held breath.

When the final Nexus shattered, the sound that filled the arena was not a cheer. It was an exhale. A long, collective, almost painful release, as if the whole room had been holding its breath since the first pick phase.

Reader's Guide

The 2018 EU LCS Summer split had already produced a tight regular-season table, with G2 and Fnatic trading first and second place week after week. By the time the playoffs arrived, the narrative was set: this was going to be a G2-versus-Fnatic story, and the rest of the EU field was watching from the sidelines.

The series unfolded over multiple games, each one a different chess problem. Perkz and Caps traded mid-lane duels that became instant replays in fan edits for months after. Wunder's top-lane duels with Huni swung games on their own—when Wunder won the early trades, G2's roaming game took over; when Huni got his space, Fnatic's macro engine clicked into gear. On bot, Rekkles and Jankos played a quiet war of positioning that only became visible in the teamfights, where a single well-timed ability from either ADC could erase a 2,000-gold lead.

What made the series iconic was not one single play but the consistency of quality. Every game featured a moment where one team's composition out-maneuvered the other, a jungle path that turned a 5v5 into a 3v3, a dragon steal that redefined the next ten minutes. The players who made it legendary were the mids—Perkz and Caps—because their individual games dictated the tempo of everything around them.

Fans still reference the 2018 summer G2–Fnatic clashes because they represent the last time EU LCS felt like a genuine two-team war rather than a tournament. The density of talent, the narrative weight of every series, the way the crowd treated each game like a final—none of that has been replicated at the same level since. It is the season EU fans point to when they say the region was at its best.

Did You Know?

• Perkz and Caps's 2018 mid-lane matchups became a recurring highlight in EU LCS broadcasts, with both players consistently posting some of the highest KDA and CS numbers in the split.
• Rekkles was widely regarded as one of the top ADCs in all of Europe during 2018, and his duels with Jankos in the G2–Fnatic series were a major draw for the broadcast audience.
• The 2018 EU LCS season is often cited by European fans as the peak of the G2–Fnatic rivalry, the period when both rosters were at their most complete and the margin between them was the smallest.
• Both G2 and Fnatic carried all-star rosters into the 2018 summer, making their head-to-head series one of the most talent-dense matchups in EU LCS history at that time.