Two years ago today, 2017 Mid-Season Invitational representative from Taiwan's League of Legends Master Series Flash Wolves swept Turkish representative SuperMassive eSports 3-0. With its dominant victory, Flash Wolves qualified for the main stage of MSI 2017. 

The 2017 Mid-Season Invitiational featured the very first MSI Play-In stage. Champions from around the world represented their respective regions in the first round of the Play-In. Pool 1 consisted of  Brazil's CBLOL champion Red Canids, Turkey's TCL champion SuperMassive, Russia's CIS champion Virtus.pro, and GPL champion GIGABYTE Marines, a  Vietnamese team who were representing all of southeast Asia before the split of the GPL and Vietnamese Championship Series in 2018. 

Pool 2 consisted of Australia's OCE champion Dire Wolves, Japan's LJL champion Rampage, and since Latin America did not merge until 2019, both LAS champion Isurus Gaming and LAN champion Lyon Gaming rounded out the pool. In Group A, SuperMassive eSports triumphed over RED Canids, Dire Wolves, and Rampage with a 5-1 record. GIGABYTE Marines matched the Turkish representative, taking Group B with a matching record over Lyon Gaming, Isurus Gaming, and Virtus.pro.

In Round 2 of the Play-In, GIGABYTE Marines faced off against North America's NA LCS champion TSM. While TSM managed to live up to the expected result and win, the Marines took the North American representative to five games. Because SuperMassive looked stronger than GIGABYTE Marines in the first round of the Play-In, people expected a formidable matchup against Taiwan's LMS Champion Flash Wolves given the competitive nature of  TSM's win over GIGABYTE Marines.

Flash Wolves had other plans, flipping its notorious international switch and dispatching of SuperMassive eSports in a 3-0 sweep. Flash Wolves utterly outclassed SuperMassive, besting them across the early games with superior individual mechanics and coordinated aggression throughout the series.

Flash Wolves joined TSM in qualifying for the 2017 Mid-Season Invitational's main stage. GIGABYTE Marines joined as the sixth and final seed in the Group Stage after a 3-1 defeat of SuperMassive in the final day of the 2017 MSI Play-In.