The wolves have slain the tigers.

The faith of North America's champions has finally been put to rest, and the newfound faith in the Brazilian region is only growing stronger.

To be clear, Group A wasn't the group of titans or a set of games that you'll watch and feel like you may be watching the potential Summoner's Cup winner. It was coined the 'Group of Life' because all four teams believed that they had a good chance of advancing through to the the quarterfinals.

As the dust settled on the most volatile group at Worlds, two teams clawed their way to the top.

The KOO Tigers used their mid-game prowess and late-game control to blow out their Group A competition, with the exception of the eventual winners.

The Flash Wolves from Taiwan became the first team from their region to secure four victories at Worlds since the Taipei Assassins shocked the globe by lifting the Summoner's Cup in 2012. With the Flash Wolves' three-headed core leading them to the quarterfinals, the Taiwanese underdogs have the potential to continue creating chaos in London next week regardless of whether they are considered to be favorites or not.

Fangs of a Beast

Throughout the opening round, the Wolves' three core players stepped up tremendously, especially on the last day of the group stages where they willed their team to the next round. While the advancement wasn't seamless by any stretch of the imagination — paiN Gaming will be watching tape of their loss to the Wolves all offseason — the Flash Wolves took advantage of what was given to them. When a team made sloppy calls that allowed them back into the game, the team's best players asserted themselves and led them back to a victory. When they were given the golden opportunity to avoid a tiebreaker against Counter Logic Gaming and get the first seed with a win over the KOO Tigers, the Wolves played their best game.

Although the team's two role players, Steak and NL, both played well on the final maps and completed their missions from the draft phase, it's impossible to talk about the Wolves' early success without talking about their 'Big 3' — the monstrous conductor in the jungle, the prized assassin in the mid lane, and the playmaking sniper at the support role.

Karsa: The Monster in the Jungle

When I ranked my Top 20 players for the World Championships, I had Karsa 19th on my list. While I am not an avid LMS viewer or reporter, my preparation before the tournament allowed me to become more acquainted with the Wolves' lightning rod. In a competition that appeared to have a vastly inferior jungler pool compared to last year's, Karsa stood out to be a player that had all the tools necessary to take over in Paris and make a name for himself with his fearless play and rapid movements around the map.

His Nidalee terrorized PraY every second of the map, and has become an instant ban against the Wolves in almost every one of their games since. Even without the speedy feline pouncing around in the brushes, Karsa was incredible today on Lee Sin, securing objectives for his team and getting his team out of trouble with timely kicks to high priority targets on the enemy team.

In six games, he's been everywhere for the Wolves. He gets one of the highest gold shares of any of the junglers at Worlds and that has resulted in three things: vision, damage, and objective control. Karsa's participated in 74% of his team's kills, is first when it comes to DPM (Damage per Minute) out of all junglers in the tournament, and he is also leading when it comes to placing wards on the map at his position. From setting up fights, outputting damage, granting vision, and securing objectives, Karsa has done it all for his team.

If there was a central head to this three-headed wolf attack, it would be Karsa. He's explosive, reliable, and has gone from being only recognized by Taiwanese followers to — at least at this moment — one of the best junglers in the world.

Maple: The Ace Assassin

When people outside of the Taiwanese analysts and fans talk about mid laners in the region, the first player that comes to mind is Westdoor, the Fizz-specialist on the region's champions, ahq e-Sports Club. But coming into the tournament, the mid laner that people from the region thought had the best chance of making a name for himself on the world-stage was Maple, the Wolves' assassin player that saved his best performances for the year's biggest tournament.

During Maple's first week at Worlds, his best performance was on the usually banned Gangplank in the middle lane, which teared through a KOO Tigers squad that couldn't handle the Wolves' we're-going-to-poke-you-and-annoy-you-until-you-die composition. In his other two games — on Ekko against CLG and Ahri against paiN — he was largely forgotten about, having a few bright moments but overshadowed by Karsa and Swordart's skillshot accuracy in the bottom lane.

Today, however, was Maple's day to shine. After having a ho-hum game on Yasuo in their opening win over paiN Gaming in a match that they were one better shot call away from losing, Maple picked LeBlanc and carried with his slick play on the Illusionist, dipping in and out of battle while chunking enemy carries to half health in one cycle of cooldowns. Against KOO in the climactic match that sent them to the quarterfinals, Maple was unstoppable, deleting Gorilla's Kennen from the map with one rotation of his skills and rendering PraY's Kalista useless by constantly taking him out before he could get rolling in a teamfight. He ended the game with a 12/1/8 scoreline following an impressive performance in the early-game where he kept Kuro's Azir neutralized from getting any sort of an advantage.

Legendary mid laners like Faker and xPeke will most likely be awaiting the Flash Wolves in the knockout rounds.

Maple has the talent to face them head-on.

SwordArt: The Skillshot Sniper

SwordArt is one of the hardest working pro-gamers in the world. He's practiced tirelessly in Korea's solo queue, rising into the upper echelon of the supports in the ranking. When he was having difficulties with the Wolves earlier in the season, he continued working on his skills, maturing as a player and a player, reaffirming his spot on the Taiwanese challengers and bringing them all the way to the world-stage.

Karsa is the man who sets the pace, and Maple, along with NL, are the ones who output the damage on the team. SwordArt is the one that has consistently set up the kills on a tee for his teammates, helping NL grow as the game goes along and locking enemy players in place with bullseye accuracy on his skillshots. He leads the team when in assists, racking up 72 of them while only dying 13 times in six games, ranking him above a player like Pyl who has already faced the grey screen 14 times in only three matches.

The Wolves' support played three different champions on the final day: Annie against paiN gaming in a difficult win; Morgana in a match where seemingly every single of his bindings hit someone and allowed a teammate to secure a kill, resulting in 19 assists for him; and finally Thresh in the all important group clincher against the KOO Tigers, utilizing the champion wonderfully against a foe in Gorilla who is also one of the best Thresh players in the world.

World Stock Exchange

Rising Stock: The KOO Tigers

This might seem like a weird choice for a rising stock seeing as the Tigers collapsed at the final hurdle and failed to finish first in Group A, but you have to look deeper than results. The Tigers are a team that live and die through their innovation, mid-game objective control, and late-game team fighting. From what we saw in Group A, their objective control mid-game and team fighting are still stellar, and they really didn't have to show much against the rest of the field to advance. The only new things we saw from the Tigers outside of Smeb being able to dunk on Darius and Pray being able to play Mordekaiser was their composition against CLG today with Tahm Kench breaking down the North American champions and negating their Veigar pick in the middle lane.

The Tigers have shown that they can play on this map and even do well in the early-game, something that we couldn't say when they failed in their last international performance at IEM Katowice at a time when the Cinderhulk meta was hampering their play. Couple their success on adapting to this new patch with the fact that best-of-five matches will be the perfect place to unleash new strategies and champions with Nofe, one of the best drafting coaches at Worlds, and you have an extremely dangerous team for whichever of the top seeds from Group B, C, or D draw them in the quarterfinals.

Plummeting Stock: CLG 2015 World Champion T-Shirts

Well that wasn't good.

Let me preface this: I believe we didn't see the best team Counter Logic Gaming had to offer at Worlds. Players like Aphroomoo and ZionSpartan, two players I think can compete on the world-stage, had a lackluster tournament and the team went on to lose their last four games after getting off to a 2-0 start. CLG had the same tools as the Flash Wolves, paiN Gaming, and the KOO Tigers to advance from this tournament.

Obviously, if you watched their games, they wasted those tools. Their strategies felt stagnated for a majority of the tournament, going back to the fast pushing strategy too many times after it was ripped apart by the KOO Tigers. Atop of that, they made tiny mistakes in the early-game like taking hits from towers when there was no reason to and giving up needless kills in the opening minutes to put them at a severe disadvantage. As a team that did tremendously snowballing their early advantages to clean victories during the summer, CLG didn't have that luxury at Worlds, playing from behind for a large part of their six game. One of their only wins, against Flash Wolves, was a game where the Wolves made illogical mistakes in the late-game that allowed CLG with their Lulu-centric composition to get back into the game and eventually win.

While the year should be considered a success for CLG, finally winning their first LCS title against rivals TSM in Madison Square Garden and making a trip to Worlds for the first time in three years, there can't be any excuses after failing to advance to the quarterfinals. After Xmithie had his visa issues rectified, CLG entered the tournament with a fully powered starting five against one of the easiest groups they could have asked for. They finished 2-4, tied for last with an International Wildcard team, and could have even finished 1-5 if not for the Wolves playing Kkramer in their opening game instead of NL, the AD carry who has played ever since that loss.

At least CLG fans will also have New York City and those memories of beating TSM in the NA LCS finals. Just try to forget what happened in the aftermath and everything is perfectly happy.

Rising Stock: Brazil

Last year, Brazil came into Worlds as unknown element. Kabum! flipped Worlds on its head when — after dropping their first five games, they beat European champions Alliance to knock them out of the tournament which went down in history as one of the greatest upset stories in eSports history.

This year, Brazil returned with higher aspirations, as paiN Gaming were coming off of a dominating performance in the Latin America Regional Finals that saw them be practically untouched throughout the process. They were drawn into one of the best groups Brazil could have asked for, and paiN along with their fans believed they could stack up with the best teams from the power regions in North America, Taiwan, and Korea.

Not only did paiN Gaming prove that they belonged on the world-stage, they nearly advanced to the quarterfinals over the Flash Wolves. The strategy and talent was there for the Brazilian champions, playing well in the lane phase even against Korea's Tigers, but the difference came when it was time to make rapid and quick decisions around objectives. While the Wolves and the Tigers made play calls that helped them pick up that one map or two they needed to get into the Top 8, paiN couldn't convert on chances that could have propelled them into the knockout stage.

Finishing with a victory against CLG in a game that had no bearing on the standings, paiN leave the tournament with a 2-4 record that easily could have been 3-3 with more decisive, confident shot calling around Baron when they had the opportunity against the Flash Wolves in today's game that went down as the longest thus far in the tournament.

Although leaving the tournament sooner than they would have hoped, Brazil and paiN can keep their heads held high. They improved tremendously from last year, and 2016 will be their next step in the evolution as a growing region.

2014: Miracle upset

2015: Hard-fought effort that barely misses the quarterfinals

2016: Top 8?

If Brazil's infrastructure and talent continues to progress, I wouldn't bet against them.

The King of Worlds: Huang "Maple" Yi-Tang

To be honest, any of the Flash Wolves 'Big 3' could be the King of Worlds for tonight. Karsa was brilliant on Lee Sin and was a difference maker from the start of the game to the end, SwordArt was hitting every stun, hook, and bind humanly possible, and Maple was deleting players off the map with LeBlanc before they could even see him.

Seeing as I'm not going to cop-out and give it to everyone on Flash Wolves including their coach, chef, and dog, I'll give the award to Maple. In the most important game of the tournament, Maple was the player who had the best game, making PraY's high priority Kalista pick nothing more than a shiny piece of meat for the Wolves mid laner to devour.

Day 1: Hai "Hai" Lam

Day 2: Hung "Karsa" Hau Hsuan

Day 3: Jang "MaRin" Gyeong-Hwan

Day 4: An "Balls" Le

Day 5: Huang "Maple" Yi-Tang

Tyler "Fionn" Erzberger is a staff writer for theScore eSports. You can follow him on Twitter