Incarnati0n surprises with The Veigod in resounding C9 win

Well, that was an interesting champ select for the second game of the 2015 World Championship.

In an upset few saw coming, North America's Cloud9 bested Taiwan's ahq e-Sports Club in a sub-25 minute bout, thanks in no small part to the biggest surprise pick of Day 1 (so far): Veigar. To get some more insight on the craziness, we sat down with the Veigod himself, Nicolaj "Incarnati0n" Jensen.

"Veigar was the champ I had most success with in scrims," Incarnati0n said of his surprise Veigar pick.

Cloud9's composition looked pretty standard for the 5.18 meta, but it was nothing we had seen the team pick before with An "Balls" Lee on Gangplank and Hai "Hai" Lam on Lee Sin, in addition to the super surprising Veigar. But according to Incarnati0n, the pick just made sense in the context of the game.

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"We went into the game and we thought we were almost certainly going to blind pick Veigar," Incarnati0n said. "At first I thought it was a bit risky, but we played him quite a lot in scrims and had really good success with him. He's really good against these dive champions -- I knew there was a chance he'd play Fizz or another assassin… but I knew the strength of Veigar outside of the laning phase. I thought if I could go even in laning phase, I'd outscale and we'd win the game."

And that's exactly what Cloud9 did.

After a rough early game with Balls getting bullied, Incarnati0n having to play passively, and Sneaky falling behind at 10 minutes, Cloud9 realized their win conditions. "We knew we had really good siege, and they relied on diving us," Incarnati0n said. "So if we made sure that didn't happen, we were almost certainly going to win the fights."

With Tristana knocking towers down quickly, Gangplank split-pushing, and Incarnati0n zoning and assassinating champions, Cloud9 rolled to a sub-25 minute Baron and a very fast win. As Incarnati0n sees it, Veigar was the key to unlocking the game. "Veigar was really good against their team comp. I just had to protect [our team] and make picks. Since they went with Fizz, they didn't really have wave clear, so we could just siege and pressure them."

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Now with the cat out of the bag, and Incarnati0n's favorite Veigar now out in the open, we'll have to see if Fnatic and invictus Gaming react to the mid laner's strong performance. But one thing is certain, Veigar is once again relevant in professional play.

Make sure you catch Cloud9's next game against invictus Gaming Saturday October 3rd, and stay tuned to Lolesports for up-to-date coverage of all things #Worlds.

Frank Fields is a Senior Editor for Riot Games Esports Web Content team. Talk to him on Twitter about ordered lists, where your comments will be assimilated into the Matrix. You can also find him in Solo Queue in the Diamond 5 retirement home.