Welcome to the 2019 Gauntlet

With Liquid and C9 packing up their bags for worlds, there’s one more spot that teams will try to offer sacrifices to the League Gods to get.

Flyquest: Thanks to your 4th place finish in Spring, you somehow made the gauntlet. The summer split may have been an absolute disaster. The team just didn’t look the same as it did in Spring. Their signature aggressive style looked pacified and the team looked lost. Poebelter can’t stop getting caught out and the team lost in increasingly painful fashion. However, this is the gauntlet, this is the chance to put your disastrous summer behind you and make a run as magical as C9 back in 2015.

CG: Well, you lost to CLG in the 3rd place set. Your punishment, need to face everyone in the gauntlet to make it to Worlds. I’ll admit I was very surprised by your reversal of fortunes once you got into the playoffs. I initially thought you guys got lucky with the tiebreakers and you would flounder against TSM. Instead, you are a legitimate gauntlet contender after pushing Liquid to Silver Scrapes. They could be a real-life anime script for the gauntlet. If I were to choose which anime most similar to it, I'd go with Hajime no Ippo. You know, that boxing anime that started the whole underdog genre that My Hero Academia ripped off.

CLG: Conglaturation your team finally made it back to the gauntlet. It took you only 2 years. Once again proving that Darshan needed to go to make way for a top laner with some semblance of life in Ruin. The potential this squad had was always there. However, there was always one member that was more of a liability and the synergy was lacking. When the dust settled the last remaining member of the 2016 iteration is Stixxay who was the newest guy back then. I am most confident that this team will clinch the last golden ticket and go off to the Worlds Dream Factory.

TSM: Whenever I think this team is about to build momentum, the wheels came off the following game. There’s only so much Bjergsen can do to carry his team back to Worlds. The squad never seems to be on the right page. More worrying is their lack of an identity. This issue has been plaguing them for the past 2 seasons now. Their bot lane is just a visual of this problem. Zven and Smoothie are water and oil, Zven wants to play safe while Smoothie likes to go for the kill. Don’t even get me started on the ride that is their jungle carousel. While it’s nice to have different play styles to work with. You can’t just chuck a rookie that has no LCS experience into the fire. Your only saving grace is that you only have to beat one team to make it to worlds. Like Flyquest however, the gauntlet is the perfect opportunity to put behind past woes to make some magic happened.

Time for predictions:

Each team aside from Flyquest has a valid argument for why they could win the gauntlet.

Like I said earlier, I believe CLG has the best shot at getting the last Worlds berth. I just feel like they have more talent than CG and have hit their groove unlike TSM whereas CG has a solid identity while TSM has a lot of talent.

Please be right this time.