Reposting This Week in League Week 2 (2020)

I'm reposting this as I got bombed by the downvote bots. So yeah.

Ah week 2 the time for when teams with fluke wins get exposed and to find if teams who started rough can actually prove they are legit. Unfortunately, aside from a few games, it was either a clown fiesta or a blowout.

Yes I had fun on my ski trip Gemeni Rune

Day 1

CLG vs 100T: Coming off of a disastrous Week 1, CLG are in desperate need of hitting the reset button. With the nature of both team comps, there was as much action as you expected for the first 10 minutes. The Thieves then wanted to pull the trigger as Ryoma nearly killed Crown if it weren't for a clutch stopwatch. Meteos should’ve cleaned up the kill but he mistimed the flag and drag allowing Crown to pull out his trap card Wiggly for first blood. After trading Drake for Shelly CLG wanted to get Ruin ahead with a tower dive. Little did they know that this was Ssumday’s corner where he decked out Ruin and Wiggly in a 2 for 1 dive. CLG are punished accordingly by losing their bot tower giving 100T first brick. In a tug of war for the mountain drake a 1 for 1 fight broke out and both teams disengaged. Ryoma lead the siege down mid and the squad picking apart CLG constantly catching out Ruin and claimed the mountain soul and baron. CLG could do nothing to stop the snowball until Ruin’s Kayle finally became useful and saved the game on a top inhib fight. CLG then forced baron but Ryoma’s poke and the pressure of super minions were too much. With Smoothie dead CLG had no engage and the Thieves could march in for the win and end this clown fiesta.

DIG vs TL: After a surprising 2-0 in week 1 Dignitas want to prove they are a legitimate contender by beating Liquid. Both teams went for mid-lategame comps that are primed for level 6 fights. Froggen and Grig put Jensen in the bouncy house of pain to secure first blood. Pushing the tempo they got shelly to destroy 2 towers in the bot lane. Afterward Dignitas opted to go for early dragons in exchange for pressure top. Things would have quieted down if not for the lure of an infernal bring both teams to the dragon pit. Grig got a clean secure but it left DIG in an awkward spot that Liquid could surround them in. A whiffed shockwave was Jensen’s cue to shred DIG’s hp. He then became unstoppable like 2003 Grievous with no one being able to contest him in a side lane. Next on TL’s shopping list was baron which with Senna should take a minute. A Lee Sin ult would deny Grig from stealing and TL got the baron at the small cost of Shernfire. While TL were priming their waves DIG rushed the drake to get the infernal soul. They then danced around baron only to settle for the gentleman’s agreement of Elder for Baron. It became a clown fiesta with both teams over extending. It looked like Liquid would be able to charge down and end this madness with DIG doing a typical desperation engagement. Johnson was able to display the power of Aphelios and shredded the backline enabling his team to charge down for a needed statement win.

C9 vs IMT: While Immortals need to keep the momentum going, the League Gods destroy any hope of that by having them face C9. And they forgot to ban Pantheon or take away Vulcan’s Kench. Predictable results occur as Nisqy smashes Eika in lane and Vulcan took away any fun that Immortals would have had. Looking to reset the tempo Immortals tried to collapse on C9 who were rushing shelly only be chased out and fed to the Pantheon blender. The perfect game then got ruined when Nisqy went out too far under the tier 2 mid turret and focused down. Due to the amount of globals that C9 had they could go and engage anywhere they wanted. Zven became a walking turret as he was nuking everyone. An ace down mid was all C9 needed and any optimism Immortals had is now dead.

EG vs GGS: I would put these teams on equal footing in the power rankings as they both show promise but still have flaws that hold them back. Then GoldenGlue goes full Doublelift and forgets he has flash and dies. The game then turned into a clown fiesta. Greediness, wasted flashes, mechanical mistakes, wiffed ults it had it all. It was like watching a game with silver ranked players. Teamfights would be bloody but lead to no objectives. Kieth’s misadventures with Nautilus were a sight to behold with missed hooks pulling him into terrain into the enemy team only to somehow survive most of the fights. The only players that are making any impact in this game are the top laners. Kumo for his teamfighting presence and Hauntzer for his splitpushing pressure. This pressure is then used by the Guardians to secure baron. After a fight for the clould drake EG wanted to end the game with FBI somehow surviving. Instead of clearing out the waves however, the mid laner and the bot lane tp’ed to try to backdoor. The problem it left Hauntzer in an impossible 1v3 if it weren’t for GoldenGlue and Kieth backing in time. They held off EG while FBI took out the turret that Kumo was teleporting to and destroyed the nexus. A perfect way to end a clown fiesta.

Day 2

TL vs FLY: After Dignitas pulled off the upset Flyquest look to do the same. They immediately tried to shut down Doublelift only for that to backfire as he had Cresendum on him to shred V1per in the shadow realm. Liquid then turned FLY’s top tower and the infernal into free real estate. What was a hyped up match turned into a blow out as TL went back to their dominant ways. They merely used objectives to bait Flyquest to their deaths. We get it Liquid you want a statement win just take it they’re already dead. Then came the baron push. Doublelift was a death machine and nothing could stop him and Jensen looked for FLY players to pick off to pad his stats. Like the heat death of the Earth there is nothing Flyquest could do as their nexus went timber.

EG vs TSM: Two teams that are already in panic mode and need to hit the reset button. Unlike most of the other games they were aggressive early. Dardoch got Broken Blade ahead while EG focused on bot lane control. They then looked to up the tempo with shelly but it came at the cost of most of their momentum. They regained some control when they caught out Dardoch which led to Bjergsen’s death. TSM replied by forcing EG’s hand by rushing the ocean drake; Svenskaren stole it and even got a kill but he and the Italian Stallion were killed. It didn’t matter as they pushed down the mid turrets and got a baron. Before they could fully press their lead Svenskaren gets picked off as BB suplexes him out of his Respite and omen of things to come. Look Svenskeren I love you man but maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to pick Kindred into both a Gragas and a Sett. BB was every soloque player’s worst nightmare, a fed juggernaut that you can’t run away from, focus down and kill, and still one shots you. A stolen ocean drake by Dardoch was the que to rush baron to lure EG to their deaths. They then got their baron and sieged top and mid to force a useless desperation engage with Svenskaren being the first to die giving TSM an easy nexus to destroy.

100T vs C9: Yet another up and coming team for C9 to destroy the hopes and dreams of. As expected C9 took a commanding lead early with Blaber being seemingly everywhere at once. The Thieves tried to break out of the stranglehold by rushing shelly. The cost? 2 members. Then Licorice gets cocky and tries to steal blue only to die. This pattern repeated a little bit as C9 turned off their brains for about 5 minutes except for Zven and Nisqy. Licorice was the first to re-realize that he had a brain and solo kill Ssumday knowing that Meteos couldn’t babysit him. Then grass became green again as they dominated every team fight. Zven put the Thieves in a lose-lose situation, focus Zven only for him to escape or ignore him while he nukes everyone. After taking the cloud soul and baron C9 were primed to end this delayed blowout; the Thieves thought they had a free pick onto Licorice, except he had a Guardian Angel to let C9 kill everyone while his corpse revived. The only frustration C9 fans had was that the game was longer than their average game time.

IMT vs GGS: Oh god I’m already expecting this game to be a clown fiesta. Kieth can’t stop getting caught out and the rest of the team keeps on running into awkward misadventures. Immortals are running over the Guardians using death-brushes and were suffocating the Guardians. You could see the Guardians die in real time. Each fight was getting sadder and sadder to watch. The fight near the Guardians tier 2 mid was a back breaker. To prevent Immortals from getting the ocean soul, the Guardians rushed the drake forgetting that IMT could insta kill baron. The final push was effortless and even a mild breeze would have been enough to win the game. While it should have been an encouraging time to see Immortals find some success, watching the Guardians roll over and die is just depressing.

Monday Night League

TreeQuest vs DIG: The match of the week that everyone has been waiting for after week. Despite having different results against TL these teams are two sides of the same coin with a chance to separate from their counterpart with a win. With the aggressiveness of both teams early bloodshed followed. While $2.3 million man was fighting V1per, Santorin went full Dokes and surprised the m0t5er f%(k’er (BTW that meme came from the show Dexter). DIG then responded with a… rather lackluster gank mid despite committing the top laner as well. The only saving grace for the early game of DIG was Johnsun the dude is starting to emerge as a home grown stud. The breaking point was the fight for the first shelly that became a one sided 3 for nothing fight in favor of TreeQuest. From there they grew their lead into a budding thorn tree of death. Dignitas became push overs with IgNar always denying Froggen the big plays. Adding insult to injury is that the dragon soul being offered was the infernal soul which they got without any trouble. The only hope that Dignitas had was that they stole baron at the cost of nearly everyone. PowerOfEvil was roasting everyone on an open fire with the nexus following suit.

TSM vs CLG: Who would have thought going into the year that the Monday Night TSM vs CLG game would be a match between lolcows instead of the main event. The early game was a representation of this anticlimax. No surprise ganks, solo kills, or skirmishes. The cherry on top was a 3 minute pause. It didn’t do much to change the tempo as the only notable things happening were that two dragons were exchanged. Eventually CLG got bored and thought Broken Blade was Dyrus and camped him for a kill. Paired with 2 shellies and the top tower CLG should’ve a healthy lead key word is “should”. After getting greedy defending their mid turret, TSM punished them accordingly. CLG then imploded and all TSM had to do was let CLG beat themselves. Hell TSM even got an Ocean soul which meant there was almost no way they could lose. Unlike CLG, TSM made sure to close this disappointing game cleanly. We expected nothing and were still let down.

C9 is once again the team to beat though the only asterisk is that it was against weak teams. Week 3 should make for a decent litmus test. I would consider TSM to be back except if they only had any semblance of a mid game. It doesn’t really matter when TL get Broxah as they are still a top 4 team with Shernfire. Even though DIG beat TL and TL beat FLY and FLY beat DIG is DIG or FLY better or is it just stylistic mismatches.

I hope to the League Gods that NA doesn’t shit the bed again internationally.