Gameplay and Balance, let's talk about Cheese

http://i.imgur.com/n0JbDiSb.jpg

#So, mi ramfan, what exactly is Cheese?

I'm glad you asked.

In strategy games, Cheese is any strategy that puts the onus of proper play on the opponent, with improper play giving a large advantage to the person cheesing. However, if the opponent plays properly against the cheese, the cheesing player will fall behind.

There are a lot of examples of this in other strategy games; I drew the term itself from Starcraft 2, which has plenty of cheese builds that are easily held with proper scouting and micromanagement but can beat unprepared players. In fact, probably the most well-known cheese in Starcraft 2 is the Zerg's 6 pool build (more commonly known as a zerg rush):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCrf2AcKP3Y

This build absolutely cripples the Zerg's early game economy in hopes of dealing catastrophic damage to the opponent. If the opponent properly scouts the early spawning pool and micros their workers effectively until their first Marine/Zealot comes out, the Zerg player is left very far behind and may lose outright.

Another example of cheese in starcraft is the Protoss' Proxy 2 Gate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmgcHg0KiI

This build aims to hide a Pylon and 2 Gateways in or near an opponent's base outside of their vision range, allowing the Protoss to spawn units directly inside the enemy base and bypassing the defender's advantage usually granted by the time it takes for the attacking units to cross the map. However, if the Gateways are found before they are finished warping in units, the Protoss is left very vulnerable at his own base and will certainly lose the gateways (a massive mineral investment).

Not all cheese is early game focused, of course. One Zerg semi-cheese that's popular at higher levels is 3 Hatch before Pool, where the Zerg player expands twice before getting a Spawning Pool (which allows Zerg to spawn the basic army unit Zerglings). If the enemy attacks the Zerg player after he builds his Hatcheries but before he builds defensive units, the 600 minerals (700 if you count the 2 drones that morphed into the hatcheries) will easily be wasted when the defenseless bases are killed, easily a game-ending loss at that stage of the game.

#Cheese in League of Legends

Unfortunately, there's not as much cheese in League of Legends as in other strategy games. This is because the rune/mastery setups that are desirable to run cheeses optimally take a long time to grind for, all of which is wasted if the cheese isn't actually good. However, there has been some appearances of cheese in both ladder play and pro League of Legends. Let's go through some of the more famous cheeses:

AP Tristana

Focus: Early Game Spells: Flash/Ignite Runes: Flat AP/Hybrid Pen marks, Armor seals, flat AP glyphs, flat AP quints Masteries: AP-focused 21/0/9 Goal: Crush lane with high early burst, transition into a snowballing assassin

Basically, Tristana building AP. Probably one of the more obnoxious things to deal with in mid lane, especially before her ult cooldown nerf. She had tons of harass in lane with her high base damage E, and her E->W->R->Ignite burst come level 6 is just incredible. However, you had to get fairly far ahead early game for this build to succeed, because in the late game AP Trist's Q is deadweight and she must dive into the middle of the enemy team to secure kills and reset her W. For this reason, AP Tristana is not frequently played. This cheese loses to any opponent who respects Tristana's burst and plays safely against her early.

Proxy Singed

Focus: Mid/Late Game Spells: Ghost/Teleport Runes: Armor Marks, Armor Seals, MR/level Glyphs, Movement Speed quints Masteries: 0/21/9 or 0/30/0 Goal: Get free farm and draw jungle attention away from other lanes, transition into unkillable tank lategame

This build was initially popularized by druiddruid, who climbed to Diamond fairly rapidly playing this build. He would go in between the enemy's inner and outer turrets and clear minions with Singed's poison trail, pinning the enemy top laner against their own tower and drawing early ganks from the enemy jungler. The GOAL of this strat is to draw early ganks, wasting much of the enemy jungler's time thanks to Singed's great early bulk and poison trail. Under the old bounty system, after a certain number of deaths it would no longer be worth the time or resources required to kill Singed, allowing him to run around getting free farm as deep as the enemy nexus and prevent enemy champions from pushing their lanes. This strategy died with the changes to the bounty system that required Singed to give a massive gold advantage to the enemy team in order to get to the point where it was no longer worth it to kill him (much larger then previously).

Level 1 Riven All-In Cheese

Focus: Level 1 Spells: Flash/Ignite OR Exhaust/Ignite Runes: Flat AD marks, armor seals, Flat AD Glyphs, Flat AD Marks Masteries: 21/9/0 or 30/0/0 Goal: Pick up an easy level 1/2 kill, transition into snowballing assassin

This build was the source of one of the many "Riven OP" cries from players, because in its prime it was very difficult to deal with. In this build, Riven would start with a Fort Pot and 3 potions and abuse her Q ratios and multiple passive procs to burst down enemy top laners at early levels. Using autoattack weaving made Riven's burst deceptively high even at Level 1, allowing a Fort Pot boosted Q->AA->Q->AA->Q->AA->Ignite to easily kill most top laners at early levels. However, if the enemy top laner was not at least forced out of lane at Level 1, Riven would be left severely behind due to the gold wasted on the Fort Pot.

13 Health Pot Mordekaiser

Focus: Early Game Spells: Flash/Teleport Runes: Mpen Marks, Armor seals, AP Glyphs, AP Quints Masteries: 21/9/0 or 9/21/0 Goal: Infinite Lane Sustain transitioning into AP caster

Back in the days when starting items had been nerfed a ton and you could still infinitely stack health potions, someone got the bright idea to play Mordekaiser and stack up 13 health potions. The massive amount of potions in combination with Mordekaiser's passive shield totally neutralized both his own health costs and enemy harassment, making him extremely hard to deal with in the laning phase. However, leaving lane was also undesirable due to Mordekaiser's immense pushing power. This build put the opponent between a rock and a hard place with no right answer to be found, and became popular on many manaless champions like Rumble, Kennen, and Akali until health pot stacking was removed.

Level 2 Wraith Bush Gank

Focus: Early Game Spells: Smite/Ignite OR Exhaust/Ignite Runes: Standard for champion Masteries: 21/9/0 Goal: Crippling the enemy jungler

This is why everyone hates Shaco. Basically, at level 1, Shaco would go to the enemy Red or Blue buff and take it with boxes and maybe a little help from teammates. Once Shaco captured the buff, he would level his E and begin erecting a box nest in a brush that he knew the enemy jungler would be going through. Cue Amumu walking into the brush and getting instagibbed, costing them their buff and granting Shaco first blood+level 3. This strategy was most effective in season 2 when many junglers were weak during their first clear and there were no Trinkets to ward with. While Shaco is the most well-known user of this strategy, other strong dueling junglers like Shyvana and Lee Sin could also do this effectively.

#What about you?

If you didn't gather from reading the descriptions, most of these cheese builds have been made irrelevant by changing metagames and nerfs from Riot. That's why I made this thread; I think that cheese does add something to the metagame and I think that more of it wouldn't be a bad thing. True, it is really annoying to get proxy gated or timing pushed every game in low level Starcraft, but those strategies are still good for the game because people get better in learning how to deal with them. Some cheese (so long as it's not every game) is good for the meta.

Let's try to get a discussion going on that wonderful product of dairy, cheese. What cheeses have you personally seen or done? How well did they work? Are there any you're interested in trying?