NA LCS 2014 Summer Split Playoffs: Counter Logic Gaming versus Dignitas (5th place match)

By Helmight

            The 5th place match is something every team hopes to avoid, but after losing to their respective opponents last week Counter Logic Gaming and Dignitas had no choice but to play it. Despite having the threat of relegation looming over their heads, Dignitas managed to stay composed and pulled out a 3-1 victory over CLG today to keep their place in the LCS.
            Game 1 was solidly in the hands of CLG. From the very beginning, CLG asserted their dominance over Dignitas, starting with a blue buff steal by a three-man CLG squad. This crippled Crumbzz’s Amumu and got Dignitas off to a poor start. From there, the game remained under CLG’s control – despite the gold staying relatively even, it was clear that Counter Logic Gaming could not be stopped. An early 21-minute Baron gave CLG a huge advantage in the midgame, forcing Dignitas onto the defensive while ZionSpartan tried to splitpush. Following that, a desperate engagement by Crumbzz under Dig’s mid inner tower went awry when none of his team was able to follow up. CLG easily mopped up Dignitas, with Doublelift picking up a quadrakill and two towers falling in the aftermath. From there, Dignitas’s fate was sealed and Game 1 ended soon afterwards with a win for CLG.
            The second game of the series was a much more closely-fought affair. Though CLG managed to secure the first dragon of the game, Dignitas snagged first blood thanks to a key Teleport by ZionSpartan into the bottom lane. From there though, the game was played cautiously by both teams – Dignitas managed to maintain a kill lead, while CLG pressured objectives. In the end however, it was CLG’s lack of hard engage that ruined their efforts. Shiphtur’s Syndra and Crumbzz’s Kha’Zix were easily able to disengage and peel away CLG every time they went for a fight, kiting them to hell and giving Dignitas an edge.  CLG’s desperation for a fight eventually led to a 4-0 skirmish for Dignitas, followed by a Baron and an inhibitor. Counter Logic Gaming couldn’t come back from that, allowing Dignitas to equalize the series at a game apiece.
            In all honesty, CLG should have won Game 3. Dignitas lost every single one of their inhibitors and was stuck just defending the Nexus against a CLG that looked very much like their old, dominant selves. For whatever reason though, CLG was unable to break through Dignitas’s determined defense to end the game. Multiple pushes ended with CLG limping home to lick their wounds while Dignitas scurried about fending off super minions. Despite this, Dignitas was still in an awful position – that is, until Crumbzz decided that he’d had enough. During yet another one of CLG’s pushes, Crumbzz managed to inSec Doublelift back into his team for a quick kill onto CLG’s carry. That led to a 4-kill teamfight for Dignitas, which quickly became 5 after Seraph tried to backdoor an inhibitor. With the long death timers keeping CLG out of the game, Dignitas was able to charge down mid to take CLG’s inhibitor. They didn’t stop there, though – even with CLG respawning, Dig went for the Nexus. After picking off CLG one-by-one, Dignitas brought down the Nexus in the most improbable comeback of the 2014 LCS.
            Anyone would be demoralized after losing a game like that, and CLG certainly was. All five of them looked defeated in their player cams as the fourth match started, and they played like it. Seraph got ganked numerous times by Crumbzz’s Kha’Zix and gave multiple kills over to ZionSpartan. With such a great start to the game, Zion’s Dr. Mundo would end up becoming an unkillable nightmare for CLG to face. Counter Logic Gaming put up a good fight and even held the gold lead for a short time, but the momentum was against them. Dignitas slowly and surely pressed in on CLG, and after ZionSpartan successfully soloed Link’s Yasuo in the bottom lane it was a simple matter for Dig to end the game.

 For stats and VoDs of each game, visit lolesports.com. In the meantime, let us know what you thought of the series below!

2015 LCS - Bigger and Better

By Helmight

            It’s official. The 2015 LCS season will have ten teams competing, as reported by lolesports.com. According to RiotNickAllen, the two additional spots in the LCS will be filled by a one-time Expansion Tournament that is planned to take place after Worlds. Slots for this tournament will be filled by top Challenger teams from the region, as well as losers of the Promotion Tournament. The top two teams in the Expansion tourney will earn a berth into the 2015 season.

            Additionally, RiotNickAllen mentioned that Riot has been considering adding some form of circuit points to the LCS. Currently, the Spring Split means relatively little in terms of a team’s World Championship dreams – provided they don’t get relegated, they still have just as much of a chance as any other team. Circuit points would make every match count, especially playoff games. However, this hasn’t been officially added to the LCS yet.

            Personally, I’m excited for the expansion of the LCS teams. As mentioned in our previous article, more teams will make the whole league more competitive and solve a lot of organizational headaches on the part of Riot. Much though I loved Super Weeks, five games a day for six days is a lot to watch and a LOT for teams to handle. Kudos to Riot for going ahead with this change.

            The circuit points, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about. Circuit points have always been a bit of a mystery for me and I’m sure they’re even more confusing for people who’ve never seen professional League of Legends before. Their addition would take a little bit of time to get my head around, and homogenize EU and NA’s competitive environments in terms of how the rest of the world operates. However, I do like the idea of having each match count – it would certainly keep teams from leaving the region during Super Week (lookin’ at you, CLG), and make Spring Split a little more exciting to watch. Only time will tell if Riot actually adds circuit points to the LCS, but I think there are more positives than negatives in this idea.

            Overall, the 2015 LCS season is going to be far better than before thanks to the addition of two more teams to the mix in each region, and could get even better with circuit points. Worlds hasn’t even happened yet, but I’m already excited for what’s to come.

What are your thoughts on the new and proposed changes to the LCS? Leave us your comments below!

NA LCS Summer Split 2014: Week 1 Recap

By Helmight

            With the conclusion of the NA LCS’s first week of playoffs, one thing is clear – no one in this league is giving anything less than 100%. Keep reading for the recap of TSM’s series against Dignitas and Curse’s matchup against CLG.

Team SoloMid versus Dignitas

            This series had some of the best games this split, hands-down. Team SoloMid and Dignitas went down to the wire in every match, three of which went on for 50+ minutes. Game 1 went solidly Dignitas’s way. ZionSpartan’s Nasus proved to be a perfect counter for Dyrus’s full tank Maokai and he literally splitpushed his way to victory. Dyrus could do nothing to stop the lategame Nasus from taking towers and inhibitors under his nose – he just didn’t have enough damage or enough crowd control to keep the jackal away from structures. All the rest of Curse had to do was keep from losing while Zion pushed, a strategy that was too easy to pull off thanks to the waveclear of Shiphtur’s Ziggs and Imaqtpie’s Corki. After getting a huge amount of Q stacks farmed up, ZionSpartan was able to Teleport into TSM’s base and solo the last Nexus tower before moving for the Nexus. Amazing did his best to kill Zion, but Dignitas’s toplaner survived with 53 health and took down TSM for their first victory.

            Game 2 ended with a backdoor play as well, but this time it came from Team SoloMid. WildTurtle rushed into Dignitas’s base and pounded away at the exposed Nexus while Dig frantically recalled. He may very well have taken the game, but for some reason Turtle decided to ult the Nexus instead of just attacking it. He might have been trying to get another Sheen proc off his ult, but it took too long. Dignitas collapsed and killed him, sparing their Nexus with barely 200 health. Dyrus was the next contestant and rushed into Dignitas’s base right after his marksman fell – however, Maokai isn’t exactly known for his structure-taking abilities and was chain-CCed by Dig until he died right next to the Nexus. Finally, it was TSM’s jungler Amazing who took the victory by waiting until Dignitas left the base and scurried inside to knock the last few hundred hitpoints off the Nexus.

            The third game was yet another 50-minute, closely-fought match. The burden of carrying was placed solely on the shoulders of WildTurtle for TSM in their Protect the Tristana composition and he pulled it off despite the assassination threat of Shiphtur’s Ahri. In the end, a simple rotation mistake by Dignitas marked their downfall – Tristana’s damage was high enough to melt Imaqtpie in three shots, and then the reset let him take out Crumbzz as well. With an inhibitor already down and two members dead, Dignitas could do nothing to stop Team SoloMid from taking an advantage in the series.

            And finally, after having fought so hard for so long, Dignitas cracked. Game 4 was a stomp for Team SoloMid, with three members going deathless and Wildturtle picking up seven kills throughout the course of the game. Dignitas had a big chance to win after ZionSpartan’s Olaf smashed Dyrus’s Lulu in lane, but even he couldn’t deal with the rest of TSM snowballing out of control. They finally fell after just 33 minutes of play to a composed and controlled TSM squad, giving Team SoloMid a pass into the next round of playoffs.

Curse versus Counter Logic Gaming

            Counter Logic Gaming was the heavy favorite going into this series, commanding nearly 70% of the popular vote and coming off a practice trip in Korea. Everyone expected to see a prepared and well-rested CLG coming out hard with new tactics and picks. What happened instead was a hard loss to Curse in three games and a disappointing end to their season. Game 1 however was a well-fought battle reminiscent of the TSM/DIG games. CLG countered Curse’s picks nicely, using the threat of Doublelift’s Twitch to reign in Quas’s splitpushing Nidalee. Without a splitpush threat, Curse was hard-pressed to find objective and pressure CLG – however, thanks to brilliant play by Voyboy and clutch ults from Xpecial’s Zilean, they stayed in the game. In the end, CLG brought about their own ruin when they overreached looking for an initiation. Doublelift’s Twitch managed to take down Voyboy from stealth, but not quickly enough – he went down to Voyboy and IWillDominate’s ults, and top of that Voyboy was resurrected by a timely Chronoshift. The remainder of the teamfight was a stomp for Curse, and with long death timers CLG could do nothing to stop Curse’s eventual win.

            With a tough loss under their belts, CLG needed to come back and win Game 2 if they wanted to stay in the series. Since Quas had proven to be instrumental in Curse’s first win, Counter Logic Gaming made the decision to camp his lane and remove his Nidalee as a threat. Though dexter managed to get first blood off of Quas during the laning phase, it was the only kill that CLG would get on Curse’s toplaner throughout the rest of the early game. Meanwhile, Link and Seraph were facing uphill battles in their respective lanes without any support from their jungler and naturally suffered for it. When the first teamfight finally hit, CLG made their second crucial mistake and tried to brute-force an engage without Aphromoo’s ult. The result was 2 kills for Curse and a solid 3k gold lead. Though CLG managed to get the kills back, Curse made a cheeky play and took a 17-minute Baron without contest. After that, it was all downhill for CLG and they went on to lose it in 23 minutes.

            The final game was similar to Game 2, but even worse for CLG. Curse snowballed early and snowballed hard, despite not having Nidalee or Syndra available for their solo lanes. Key to this was CLG’s early dragon attempt. If they had gotten away with it, they might have forestalled Curse’s power spike – however, no one outsmites a Nunu and IWillDominate was easily able to steal it away. The following teamfight resulted in three kills for Curse and a dominating early lead. A few fights later, Curse was standing triumphant at the Nexus and moving on to the next round.

For stats and VoDs for each game, check out LoL Esports: TSM vs Dignitas and Curse vs CLG

Summer Split 2014 Championship Recap: Fnatic versus Alliance

By Helmight

            The “super team” has finally delivered. Alliance defeated Fnatic today in 4 games to secure themselves their first-ever split championship title in convincing fashion. Thanks to superior early game control, especially in terms of dragons, Alliance dethroned the 3-time split champions to set themselves up as the team-to-beat from Europe.

            Fnatic got off to a slow start in the series and were seemingly unprepared to play against Alliance’s aggressive early moves. Numerous times, Fnatic made crucial mistakes and just flat-out bad decisions that gave Alliance an early gold lead and every single dragon of the game. Alliance is a team that knows how to use an early advantage and they exploited it to the utmost in their 38-minute victory.

            Game 2 was a much closer affair, in large part due to xPeke being allowed to play Kassadin. Alliance managed to get an early gold advantage as before, but a crucial midgame teamfight went awry for them after a stunning turnaround from xPeke. A triple kill onto Rekkles, in addition to an inner tower going down, cut Alliance’s gold lead down to a measly 1k following the play. However, Alliance still held an objective lead and wasn’t out of the fight. They eventually outmaneuvered Fnatic and took a successful 3-kill teamfight in Fnatic’s own red jungle, then translated the victory into a Baron. Fnatic managed to sneak down Alliance’s middle inhibitor tower in exchange for the Baron, but it was a lopsided trade. The Baroned-up Alliance proceeded demolish Fnatic under their own inhibitor tower, then took the middle inhibitor. Suddenly down 7k gold, Fnatic had no answer for Alliance’s team.

            Down 0-2, things were grim for Fnatic. However, Europe’s three-time champions weren’t defeated yet and they managed to pull out a clutch victory to stay in the series. Unlike the previous games, Fnatic prevented Alliance from snowballing the early game thanks to a series of good rotations and excellent plays by Rekkles. By 19 minutes, Fnatic had taken a 3k gold lead and had 5 kills on their marksman. The rest of the game continued in the same fashion, with Fnatic outrotating and outfighting Alliance, and Rekkles getting bigger and bigger. Alliance couldn’t manage to burn through Fnatic’s shields and eventually they were dismantled in dominating fashion.

            It could have been the start of an epic turnaround by Fnatic, but was instead a momentary flash of glory. A sneaky play by Alliance gave them first blood at two minutes into the game, snapping Fnatic fans out of their dreams of a comeback almost immediately. Every time Fnatic appeared to be clawing their way back into the game, Alliance pulled off a clever play or a well-orchestrated teamfight to keep their advantage. At the end of the day, Alliance didn’t even need Baron to put Fnatic away, as their comp was just too strong for Fnatic to overcome. As the Nexus fell, Alliance took the series and their first Split Championship.  

For more stats, including the VoDs for each game, check out LoL Esports 

Game of the Day: Fnatic versus ROCCAT (Game 5)

By Helmight

 

            You have to tip your hat to ROCCAT. Despite their lackluster performance throughout the split, they never gave up the fight and somehow managed to claw their way into the semifinals to face Fnatic. Despite a phenomenal series of games in which they pushed Fnatic to the limit, ROCCAT would eventually fall in game 5.

            In the end, it was Fnatic’s superior objective control and better siege comp that dismantled ROCCAT. With xPeke on Orianna and Rekkles on Kog’Maw, Fnatic’s team could chew through towers from a distance, and more importantly, were able to keep ROCCAT’s members from interfering. That, in conjunction with a few well-played teamfights, gave Fnatic an easy gold lead over their opponents. Fnatic struggled a bit while trying to end the game, but eventually their siege proved to be too effective for ROCCAT to break. With a 10k gold deficit and 2 inhibitors down, ROCCAT made a desperate Baron call. Their hope was likely to secure the objective while Fnatic recalled and then make a final stand at their Nexus – however, Fnatic arrived too soon for ROCCAT to finish off Baron. The fight was brief, and after three members of ROCCAT went down Fnatic was easily able to push in for the win.

            It was the last game for ROCCAT this split, but they played it beautifully. Jankos in particular was an absolute monster in the jungle, showing up to every lane and making ganks happen across the map. The obscene pressure allowed ROCCAT’s lanes to stay even with Fnatic’s and gave them a great setup for the midgame. However, Jankos’s early play was not without its mistakes. The decision to camp top was questionable – 3 kills onto Xaxus was certainly beneficial, but an Alistar and a Jarvan aren’t going to carry the game. Celaver meanwhile had a tough fight against Rekkles and YellOwStaR in the bottom lane and his Tristana never managed to have the same impact on teamfights that Rekkles’s Kog’Maw did.

            Fnatic meanwhile pulled together and gave one of their best performances this split. Every member of the team looked sharp and their powerful Protect the Kog comp was all but unbeatable for ROCCAT. xPeke reminded everyone how terrifying his Orianna can be, first by bullying Overpow mercilessly in the laning phase and then by landing clutch Shockwaves in the mid- and late-game teamfights. Rekkles showed up big for Fnatic too. His Kog’Maw dismantled towers in record time, though he ended up being equally effective at taking down champions.

Clever Teleport shenanigans by ROCCAT were a huge part of their early advantage. A lane gank by Cyanide could have potentially resulted in a pair of kills for Fnatic, but Xaxus and Overpow both TPed down to save their bot lane and pick up a double of their own. That lead to ROCCAT’s first dragon of the game, giving them a slight edge. However, Fnatic was quick to learn and adapt. A second Double Teleport play went awry for ROCCAT after Overpow’s ult missed and they were forced to back off. This allowed Fnatic to pressure down the bottom outer tower, which in turn would help them secure their own dragon. With the gold almost dead even, Fnatic proved who’s comp was superior after a siege in the middle lane gave them two additional towers. With their team slowly falling behind, ROCCAT fought hard to stay in the game, but couldn’t keep up with Fnatic’s beautiful rotations.

Fnatic (W)					ROCCAT (L)
Kills	Turrets		Gold		Kills	Turrets			Gold
15	11		73.4k		11	3			58k
Lineup
Position	Player		Champion	K/D/A	Position		Player			Champion	K/D/A
Top	sOAZ		Lulu	1/5/11	Top	Xaxus				Alistar	3/5/4
Jungle	Cyanide		Rengar	2/1/10	Jungle	Jankos				Jarvan IV	3/2/4
Mid	xPeke		Orianna	4/2/7	Mid	Overpow				Fizz	4/3/3
ADC	Rekkles		Kog’Maw	5/1/6	ADC	Celaver				Tristana	1/3/3
Support	YellOwStaR		Nami	3/2/8	Support	VandeR				Thresh	0/2/4
Bans
Maokai		Elise	Kha’Zix		Nidalee			Evelynn	Kassadin

Questions? Comments? Leave them below!