LCS Quarterfinal Recap: Surprises and Sweeps
The League of Legends Championship Series playoffs are in full swing, and for some teams, the dream of reaching the Season 5 World Championships is already gone. With some blockbuster semifinal matches heading your way this weekend, let’s remind ourselves what happened in the quarterfinals.
With the shadow of Fnatic looming over the rest of Europe and a new hierarchy of power brewing in North America, the quarterfinal matches would give us a number of surprises over the four sets of games.
Team SoloMid vs Gravity Gaming: Role Reversal
In the past, Gravity had been able to keep up with TSM by catching them off guard. Ever since Jang “Keane” Lae-Young brought out the Urgot mid pick in the Spring Split, Gravity gained a reputation for pulling out unorthodox counter picks. With their growth in the summer, reaching the #1 spot for a number of weeks, it seemed like Gravity had a fair chance of beating NA’s classic top dog.
Little did Gravity know that TSM was pulling off their own unorthodox strategies. In an unprecedented move, TSM’s hard carry, Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, brought out more supportive mid lane picks such as Lulu and Orianna. A team traditionally built around their mid laner suddenly decided to focus on the top lane, as Marcus “Dyrus” Hill’s Olaf pick hacked his way through Gravity’s ranks.
Though Gravity fought back for one game, TSM’s new top lane focus managed to overwhelm them in the last two games, knocking Gravity out of the playoffs in convincing 3-1 fashion.
Unicorns of Love vs Team ROCCAT: The Sleeper Hit
While both these teams looked amazingly inconsistent throughout all of summer, it was up to one of them to steady themselves to face Fnatic in the semifinals. For UoL, that meant deviating from their usual poke game in the mid lane. For Roccat, they decided to take a page out of their opponent’s book and play some off meta picks, including Anivia and Corki mid.
Unfortunately for these teams, neither of those plans were enough to really get the upper hand on their opponent. Fortunately for us spectators, this meant that the series went the full 5 games, complete with an epic Nexus defense by Roccat, fighting back to win when all their turrets were down.
If you haven’t yet, I urge you to see this series as it was downright nail-biting, including Unicorns going down to the wire in order to narrowly close out the 5th game whilst being down on kills! For two teams that many thought didn’t have much fight in them, this series delivered the best action of the quarterfinals by far.
H2K-Gaming vs Giants! Gaming & Team Impulse vs Team Dignitas: The Sweep-er Hits
Despite the Unicorns and Roccat series being incredibly close, it was preceded by two very quick bouts. H2k and Giants, 2 teams that went on slumps in the last 3 weeks of the LCS, faced each other to determine which of them could pick themselves up from a downtrend.
Turns out the answer was easy and very clear: H2k dismantled Giants, with the opening game being close to perfect as no one on H2k even gave up a kill. Though https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMIahqnWoAE6S5w.jpgGiants showed more signs of life in the 2nd and 3rd games, their offense never really took off.
H2k was confident enough to debut their jungle sub, Joachim “betongJocke” Rasmussen, in game 3.
Isaac “Pepiinero” Flores was unable to carry his team to victory as he’d done so many times this year. In fact, Pepiinero was made a relative non-factor in all of the games, ironically by H2k’s quiet and unassuming mid laner, former top tier Korean talent, Ryu “Ryu” Sang-wook.
Impulse would pull off a similar performance against Dignitas, but with the added difficulty of playing without their regular mid laner. Because Yu “XiaoWeiXiao” Xian is suspended until February 2016 for elo-boosting and other offenses, Impulse had to make do with Austin “Gate” Yu, a former Challenger Series mid laner that was supposed to become the team’s support.
Despite the handicap, Impulse had no problem running their usual blitzkrieg-esque style as they threw themselves at Dignitas game after game. To Dignitas’ credit however, they didn’t fold under the pressure of their opponents like Giants did. The first game could have gone their way if not for a key play by Gate on Azir.
With so much riding on his performance, Gate delivered, and filled XiaoWeiXiao’s shoes admirably.
Though Dignitas’ AD Carry, Jo “Core JJ” Yong-in, put up some spirited performances, he couldn’t stop Lee “Rush” Yoonjae’s newfound mastery of Elise from tearing his team apart.
What does this mean for the 8 teams?
For the North American teams, TSM will be looking for revenge against Team Liquid, who stole their spot as top dog by becoming the regular season #1 team. Impulse’s semifinal opponent is Counter Logic Gaming, in the clash of the team that surges late in the season versus the team that crumbles before the finish line.
Gravity will have another shot at going to Worlds via the Regional Qualifier gauntlet, though they’ll be at the very bottom rung of the ladder. Dignitas are shunted to the sidelines, as their hopes of reaching worlds died with that series.
Over in Europe, the Unicorns face the Herculean task of going up against Fnatic. H2k will be looking to use their momentum to break through 2nd place team Origen, a team they’ve been unable to beat thus far.
Thanks to teams such as Gambit Gaming and SK Gaming forfeiting their circuit points by dropping into the Promotion Tournament, Giants and Roccat are still in the running for Worlds, and they’ll be facing off against each other in the first match of the gauntlet soon enough.
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