NA LCS games today are done and we saw some incredible action.
C9 played a fantastic team game against Team 8. Team 8 is the only team to beat Team Solomid this year so this match was going to be a good marker as to where C9 is at now after there difficult opening week, and one win, one loss week two. C9 played a very efficient game against Team 8. C9 Sneaky and Lemonation were able to dominate over Maplestreet8 bottom lane. Meteos and C9 Sneaky secured an early kill in bot lane and the dynamic duo looked dominant throughout the game. There was one point where Sneaky was challenging two Team8 players to come at him 1v2 and the Team 8 players backed off. Sneaky played very confidently throughout the match. Hai played Kassadin and during team fights moved confidently and explosively deep into the Team 8 backline casting large amounts of quick AOE damage on Team 8.
I watch a lot of Sneaky twitch streaming so it's fun to see him play as confidant on the LCS stage as he does in solo queue.
Team Solomid played against Team Dignitas. Team Dignitas tried something different with a Rek Sai top laner played against the Dyrus of team solomid. Rek Sai out traded, and out CS'd Dyrus and then even secured a kill 1v1 against him. Team Dignitas secured an early gank on Dyrus in the top lane but were not able to use that momentum to achieve much of anything. All Star midlaner Bjergsen bought an early Mejai's Soulstealer and then in the first big fight at Dragon Pit secured two kills and two assists on the four kills TSM gained there while winning the fight. After that Bjergsen led Team Solomid through his accurate shot calling and mechanically perfect skill execution as TSM ran over Dignitas.
The Team Liquid versus Team Coast had a good bit of drama in the story of Liquid Piglet. Piglet is a World Champion and there was a lot of media attention towards him moving to the NA LCS this year. Team Liquid played their first two matches with Liquid Keane because Piglet had visa issues. With Keane Team Liquid secured two wins in their first two matches and Keane looked awesome in both game. Last week Liquid Piglet arrived and had a terrible showing and Team Liquid lost both of those games. And in one of them Piglet didn't get a single kill. Since he's the all star World Champion this was brutal for him.
Piglet has been streaming every night until about three am. I watched him play a lot of games and some he looked terrible in and some he looked awesome in. But as the days went on he looked better and better. Watching him last night he was a monster securing objectives and getting kills in solo.
Team Coast made some really bad lane swapping decision early on and Piglet was able to get way ahead in CS. This gave Piglet a huge gold advantage and allowed him to split push hard all game long. Team Liquid won the Team fights and once they got rolling they never stopped. Piglets only death was when Liquid broke into Coasts base and Piglet chased down the enemy ADC to their bot turret. Piglet died from the turret after securing the 1v1 kill. This game was Liquid all the way and if anyone wants to tell me that Liquid Fenix sucks they can just watch this game and watch Fenix tear it up on Xerath in the team fights.
The final game I really enjoyed was Counter Logic Gaming verses Team Winterfox. Before week three CLG and TSM were tied for first in the league. After TSM's win earlier in the day TSM took sole possession of the number one spot and it was up to CLG to win another one to tie it up again. And boy did CLG come out swinging. A lot of attention has been put on the bot lane of CLG Doublelift and Aphromoo and that attention was well deserved. Doublelift and Aphromoo pushed aggressive early on and dominated bot lane. To me though the most exciting lane match up was CLG Link vs Pobelter. These guys are two of the most feared North American Challenger status solo queue players and it was really fun watching them go head to head. Pobelter early picked Kassadin and Link picked Nidalee to play against him.
I watch a lot of the pro's streams at night as I play my own games and I've heard a lot of talk about how dangerous Link is on every champion. Link was awesome on Nidalee throughout this entire game. I myself love playing Nidalee but damn if only I was as accurate with timely spears as Link was today on the LCS stage. During the main base sieges you could see how much attention Winterfox had to pay attention to dodging skill shots from Aphromoo on Morganna and Link on Nidalee just to be able to stay close to their turret. By the final base push you could tell that the morale of Winterfox was broken and they'd rather stay totally out of range of skillshots and concede their base turrets than risk getting poked down before CLG came raging into them.
Winterfox did win a couple good fights but CLG's gold lead was huge throughout the match. CLG is definitely a team to watch. They took the win and jumped back into a tie with TSM.
My three stars of the day would be TSM Bjergsen as mid laner and shot caller for TSM. Liquid Piglet as ADC from Team Liquid, and Link from CLG who played Mid.
