Greetings from ya boi Hoff (@belcam), In this week’s issue i’m going to be going over a few things from the Week 1 NA LCS games. I’m going to start off with some beautiful success from ECHO FOX (2-0) along with the 1-1 performance of FLY. In the second half I’ll be taking a look at the bottom of the list sans TSM, who’s tremendous faceplant in week 1 will be covered by our very own @morganaleflaye, this includes GGS, OPT, and CLG. So grab a drink, get comfortable, and let’s dive in this opening week of NA LCS 2018. The landing post for this can be found HERE.
ECHO FOX: COMING OUT SWINGING
Echo Fox has been in the LCS scene since Rick Fox purchased Gravity’s NA LCS Spring 2016 spot. They have had a rough run of things in the previous seasons but came into the 2018 season gunning for the top spot. With the NA LCS franchising and massive shuffle of team rosters, Echo Fox was no different. The new roster came out against FLY (flyquest) and CG (Clutch Gaming) swinging. Huni debuted his return to the NA LCS with his signature top lane Lucian in game one against Flame’s (FLY) Gangplank and really controlled the lane and continued to roll through the rest of the game, and basically dominated Solo (CG) in their game two victory. Dardoch appeared to be stable, working to apply pressure for his laners and counter jungling when possible. Fenix did some work mid, game two saw him playing his iconic Azir and just man handling Febiven (CG). All in all, this Echo Fox team was dominate in their week one showing but will it continue with week two. I personally think this team has the skill and synergy to keep this momentum going but it’s going to come down to many different things. Will Dardoch have a repeat of his infamous issues getting along with his team or is this a new Dardoch? We know Huni is a monster top laner and Fenix is no slouch, will these two solo laners keep the team steamrolling forward? How will the Bot Lane continue to perform? These are similar questions that each team will have to answer as the season progresses.
FLYQUEST: FLYING PAST TSM
Flyquest is one of those teams that has had its share of ups and downs in LCS. This first week of the 2018 season was no different. They came out first game against an abusive Echo Fox team and were basically dominated, for lack of a better term. They could not get anything going against FOX and fell pretty handily to them. (see highlight video above) However, week one was not a total loss for FLY. They came out against TSM in the second game and pulled out a victory. Overall the game felt very even until it came to teamfights. FLY pulled out baron even with the TSM contest and managed to turn a lot of teamfights around. When it looked like it was possibly a won fight by TSM.. boom.. FLY would turn it around big time and send them running. With a final push and a solid catch on TSM’s bot lane duo in the base they clutched a victory. It is pretty safe to say that the two solo lanes are the big factors for FLY right now. If you look at the victory against TSM, Flame and Fly are really carrying things and finishing through in the fights, but at the same time they are getting help from Anda out of the jungle who was doing well. The bot lane was pretty stale all in all but Stunt was putting a lot of help down with his taric in team fights. With the 1-1 record, will FLY continue to improve into week two? We shall see.
BOTTOM RUNG: DOWN BUT NOT OUT
Here we are, coming into Week 2 of the spring 2018 split and we have four teams sitting at the bottom of the pack with 0-2 records, OpTic Gaming (OPT), Counter Logic Gaming (CLG), Golden Guardians (GGS), and Team Solomid (TSM). Now it is the very first week of the season, so nothing is set in stone and everything can change as we move forward. But right now these teams have got to start looking forward and looking up.
OpTic Gaming (OPT): They fell game one to 100 Thieves (100T) but this was by no means a blow out. That game was the longest game of the week and was a pretty good game imo, solid matchup but 100T just pulled it out and looked pretty good. OPT then moved to game two where they faced the formidable Team Liquid, who just came off a decisive win over TSM, and ended up falling to them as well. OPT put up a good showing against TL and even pulling out the first few kills. I think this roster has what they need to be successful but they will need to be able to finish strong.
Golden Guardians (GGS): I was expecting more from this team, even though they are young and arguably need the experience to get better, but man was this first week rough. They lost game one to Clutch Gaming (CG) with no towers pushed and just very little output. The team seemed disorganized in the game against CG and there just wasn’t much synergy there. In game two they came up against Cloud9 (C9) and I would say looked better than their first game against CG but still not enough to pull out a win. They were not able to capitalize on picks and did not have the pushing power to keep C9 at bay. So far in the first week GGS is not looking very strong or showing much synergy in their gameplay. Let’s hope that Coach Locodoco and the veteran experience from Hai can bring this young team in and get them moving in the right direction.
Counter Logic Gaming (CLG): CLG came into this split with 3 of their members from last season; Darshan (top), Huhi (mid), and Stixxay (adc). They lost long time support Aphromoo to 100 Thieves, filling the void with TSM’s Biofrost, in the shuffle and picked up Reignover as their new jungler for 2018. I won’t say CLG looked particularly bad in their first week but they couldn’t grab a victory either. The game one with C9 was back and forth in most aspects but they could not contest a C9 baron and lost the teamfight bottom allowing C9 to push through to victory. Game two they found themselves up against 100T and their old support Aphromoo. This game was not necessarily as close a match as the C9 game. 100T has come out the first week strong and showed that against CLG. CLG could not get anything going against 100T and everything felt like it fell apart. They will need to work on some things coming into week 2 and hopefully turn their record around.
WEEK 2 INCOMING
We got week two kicking off Saturday, Jan 27, and I’m looking forward to catching the games and seeing what will happen. Are we going to see the 2-0 teams from week 1 continue their domination or is the back of the pack going to start making a comeback. Couple predictions for me going into the second week of NA LCS. Saturday’s matchups: CG over CLG, TSM over OPT, FOX over C9, TL over 100T, FLY over GGS. Sunday’s matchups: FOX over TSM, 100T over C9, FLY over OPT, GGS over CLG, TL over CG. I’m basing these off what we saw from these teams in week 1 but chances are I’m dead wrong but who knows.