With their lost to Team Impulse, Counter Logic Gaming's 2nd place spot (and first round bye for the playoffs) was forced to a contested tiebreaker match against Cloud 9, who made it big this weekend by beating both Gravity and Team SoloMid.
And they came bringing the best game we've seen all season.
It was apparent that both teams had made preparations beforehand for this match. Counter Logic Gaming took a fairly standard approach, except for a last pick Vayne. Cloud 9, on the other hand, pulled out a few pocket picks that haven't seen a lot of play on the Rift. Meteos took Zac (a standard for him from Season 3), Hai took Jarvan IV mid lane (which has only recently seen competitive play over in Korea), and Sneaky took Draven.
Early pressure paid off for Cloud 9. They managed to secure first blood on ZionSpartan at 3:53, and managed to bring down their first tower 40 seconds later. Although Counter Logic Gaming pushed back fairly aggressively with a dragon and four kills, the early gold lead and lane dominance meant Cloud 9 never lost the gold lead.
Counter Logic Gaming tried to answer Cloud 9's aggression with towers, but C9 traded them for objectives and positioning. A few blunders on the side of CLG lead to a few deaths in the mid lane, and eventually a baron for C9. Another botched engage at the mid lane inhibitor turret threw things squarely in C9's favor, and they used the momentum to square away the game nicely in under 28 minutes.
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| ZionSpartan solo kills Balls in the top lane. |
1. ZionSpartan has brought something powerful to Counter Logic Gaming. In the past, CLG has been the Doublelift show. In game after game, Doublelift would rise above and become that fantastic carry that rolled over opponents game after game. With Aphromoo at his side, CLG's strategy seemed fairly straightforward: filter kills on down to Doublelift, get him rolling, protect him in the late game. In Season 5, things have changed dramatically with the addition of Link and ZionSpartan. Link has proven to be a great mid laner (even showing up Doublelift a bit with his Ezreal mid lane pick) and able to make plays in his own right. ZionSpartan, on the other hand, is a beast of the top lane, and really adds pressure where CLG needed it. In this game, ZionSpartan really was CLG's threat: he lead his team in kills, damage, and gold--despite the early ganks.
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| Jarvan IV in the midlane. What will we see next? |
2. Mid lane Jarvan IV is going to be a thing. Let's be honest with ourselves first: Hai contributed to team fights and dropped well place ultimates, but for a full damage Jarvan, he didn't really show up in a meaningful way that regularly. In the end, he only dealt 6.3k damage to champions, and took the least amount of damage (8.1k) of his teammates. However, mid lane Jarvan did what a lot of other mid lane picks struggle to do: keep down Lissandra. Prior to this match, the mid lane Jarvan pick has only showed up in the Korean scene in Season 5, and to similar effect. What makes Jarvan scary, though, is his presence--every player is forced to save their escape to get out of that arena. While the jury is still out about Jarvan's damage, his presence is enough to scare CLG into passive play.
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| CLG spreads a little too thin and gets punished heavily for it. |
3. Make a mistake? Expect to be punished for it. CLG seemed to be turning things around after getting answering Cloud 9's push with a few early kills. However, CLG lived up to their reputation and began to collapse under LCS pressure. Although similar mistakes were made often throughout the Spring Split, Cloud 9 showed exactly what happens when the pressure is on--punishment, time and time again.
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| Draven secures that first kill and cashes in on Adoration. |
4. With Draven, all it takes is a kill. From Champion Select, it became obvious that Cloud 9's team composition was centered around getting this Draven rolling--and with a champion who gets a substantial cash bonus on getting a kill, all it takes for Draven to become truly scary is one kill. Sneaky managed to get that around 16 minutes. His next back Sneaky picked up an Infinity Edge (2/3 items already completed) and a Youmuu's Ghostblade (1/2). Immediately, he garnered an item spike that allowed him to absolutely melt champions before they'd have a chance to build much armor. Those first two kills guaranteed the landslide that would lead to Cloud 9's victory.
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| The tower fight that ended it all. |
5. This is what International play will look like. We've seen a wide variety of play over the course of the last nine (really ten) weeks on both sides of the pond. We've seen the best of what SK Gaming has to offer (the 1-3-1 split push and FORG1VEN focused play is key), and the intricate positioning and skill of Team SoloMid (especially at IEM Katowice). We've also seen a healthy dose of experimentation (Keane's Urgot, later picked up by Bjergsen) and strategies that never seemed to come to fruition (Team Coast in every game except that one against Winterfox). What we haven't seen a lot of, though, is the sort of international play that will set the stage for Season 5 in this Mid Season Invitational. We got a glimpse in the best of five between TSM and WE, but really the best example we have of a team absolutely dismantling another strong team was played here in the tiebreaker match to secure Cloud 9's 2nd place position. Hopefully we'll see more of the same in these Bo5 to come.
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