RheingoldRiver brings match reports and interviews form this week's big LoL matches

GAME 5: Team Solo Mid vs Cloud 9

Dyrus: Renekton

TheOddOne: Elise

Reginald: Orianna

WildTurtle: Ezreal

Xpecial: Sona

 

Balls: Ryze

Meteos: Zac

Hai: Kennen

SneakyCastro: Draven

LemonNation: Lulu

Aggressive level-1 play by both teams caused both junglers to use smite on the first camp, TheOddOne even forced off his blue and having to smite red.  Standard lane swaps resulted in a turret per team by 5 minutes, and the first dragon went to TSM at 7:20.  Cloud 9 was up a bit out of the early game, and kills were fairly back-and-forth between the two teams.  TSM took the first baron at about 24 minutes, but Cloud 9 won the ensuing fight and used its number advantage to push the first inhibitor of the game, in midlane.  Cloud 9 continued showing strong dragon control, and at 33 minutes they secured the next baron off the back of a successful teamfight.  At this point Cloud 9 started to take complete control of the game, and re-pushed the mid inhibitor at 35 minutes.  TSM made one final attempt to engage at 41 minutes, but Balls was too tanky, and Cloud 9 won the fight 4-0, forcing the surrender out of TSM at 41:30.

GAME 6: Team Coast vs Vulcun Techbargains

ZionSpartan: Riven

NintendudeX: Fiddlesticks

Shiphtur: Zed

DontMashMe: Ezreal

Daydreamin: Thresh

 

Sycho Sid: Elise

Xmithie: Cho'gath

mancloud: Karthus

Zuna: Caitlyn

BloodWater: Sona

Despite a lot of damage being exchanged at level 1, the starts were fairly passive from both teams.  First blood went to ZionSpartan in toplane at 7 minutes, and soon after Team Coast pushed its 2v1 tower in botlane.  A failed dragon attempt by Vulcun at 12 minutes led to a free kill onto Zuna for Coast, and ZionSpartan was able to pick up a second kill onto BloodWater shortly after, leading to the dragon in favor of Team Coast.  After a few kill pickups and a fantastic Thresh lantern-Crescendo juke by the blue team, they pushed down midlane.  The mid inhibitor fell just past 26 minutes, thanks to a great Arcane Shift from DontMashMe, and soon after Team Coast splitpushed the rest of Vulcun's base, winning the game at 29:18.

Throughout the day, I had the chance to talk to a couple of the players.  First I spoke with Nk Inc, the jungler from Velocity eSports.

Rhein: Congratulations on your win.  Did you expect that to happen against CLG?

Nk Inc: Going into it, we knew Cris was going to do really well toplane, because Nien didn't really know what he was doing.  So as soon as Cris got first blood, I felt like that would be the first thing we needed to win the game, because after Cris got first blood it was really easy for us to take map control and do dragons and that kind of stuff.

Did you prepare differently for the game based on CLG's roster/role changes?

We kinda just wrote it off very simply.  Doublelift or Link are gonna be the two people of the game, if they carry the game.  Those are gonna be the only two because Nien's laning phase isn't good enough for him to get to team fighting and be strong enough to carry the game.  So we were just like, all right.  If we 2v1 mid, that's gonna affect Link, and then if we invade on Jiji he's not gonna be able to snowball botlane or do anything like that.  So we planned to invade him and just shut him down, shut Link down, and then Doublelift would get shut down because they wouldn't be able to get kills and snowball.

You had a really successful invade that gave you 3 of the first 4 buffs.  How important was that?

It put Jiji half a level behind and he didn't have anything to do except small camps.  He got half a level behind from the buff being stolen, and his smite was on cooldown, and I got half a level ahead because of the red buff, so I put myself a level ahead and I had more gold, and it disrupted Chauster from being able to push bottom or whatever.  So that was kind of a big thing.  It's what we planned to do because we wanted to stop Jiji from being able to affect the game, and we knew we'd be able to do that if we did the set-up we did with two mid and one bottom.

How surprised were you that you got so many strong picks?

I'm not really sure why they didn't ban Draven, and I don't really know why they gave us a lot of the heroes they did, because we play those heroes quite frequently.  Maple's known for being a very good Draven, and they gave him Draven.  And I think that was mainly because Doublelift was just cocky that he'd be fine, but he picked Twitch into Lee Sin I believe.  I'm not sure on that one [note: he did], but I think he might have, and that was dumb.  And then he picked Twitch into Draven, which was dumb in my opinion too, and I thought that a lot of their picks were just really cocky, and I don't think they really came into the game very prepared.

Speaking of preparation, this was your first LCS game.  How nervous were you going in, and what was your preparation?

I wasn't really nervous at all going into it.  We prepared everything for the game.  We have a Summoners Rift map.  We planned out exactly what we were going to do with our level 1, where we were going to ward.  If they invaded, we planned on dropping a temp and make sure we knew what they were doing, and we knew everything that was gonna go into that, the buff steal.  So I had Evan get level 2: he took wolf experience and...got level 2 off midlane because midlane was shoved, and then we went to invade their red.  We had a level 2 Zyra and a level 2 Lee Sin against their lower-level Thresh, who was only level 1.  So that gave us a bit of an advantage.  We just prepared all of that and we knew everything they were gonna ban if they were smart.  And as soon as they didn't ban that, we knew it was a free Draven for maple, and we wanted Kennen because we could flex it and it's a strong pick in general.  They really didn't take anything from us, and I think we took everything from them that they would have wanted.

How do you think the rest of the super week is going to go?

I think we have a good shot of beating everyone.  We're just gonna prepare for every game and go into it hoping that that's enough to get us to win.

How about the rest of the split?

That's going be the same thing.  We’re going to tackle it with that mentality, that we're going to win, and we're not going to underestimate anyone.  Go in prepared, and hopefully the preparation pays off.

Any final shoutouts?

I'd like to shoutout to our sponsors, game4glory, lolhq.net, and gungho.

Later, I interviewed SnEaKyCaStRo, AD Carry of Cloud 9.

Rhein: Congratulations on 2-0'ing so far.  Was that what you expected against both teams?

SnEaKyCaStRo: I expected to beat Dignitas because I didn't think they were that strong, but they're definitely not weak.  But TSM?  I kinda thought it was 50-50, cause they're really strong in lanes, and we play only a few lanes compared to them.  So yes Dignitas, no TSM.

You scrim TSM a lot.  How do those scrims usually go?

We have a winning record against them.  We played them the day before yesterday and we went 4-2.  And then before relegations, we were 20-3.

That's a pretty impressive record.  Was it just because they were trying new things, or were you that much better than them?

I don't think we're that much better than them.  They were trying new things, and I mean it's scrims.  It's where you try stuff.  You try strategies and just overall work on things.  So they weren't putting their full effort into it I think.

For the rest of the LCS, what teams do you think are gonna be the most challenging?

Definitely TSM, because that was our closest match.  And Vulcun is really strong right now, so I think them and TSM.  Maybe Curse.  We haven't played them yet.

Watching a lot of your EPS games, it seems like you tend to have pretty weak level 1s and then have really great objective control for the rest of the game.  Why do you think that is?

We change up our level 1s a lot.  We've been trying to keep it not consistent recently because before we did the same level 1 like a billion times, and people just started running a strat where they sit in the bush and camp and kill us.  So we've been changing it up just because of that.  Objective-control-wise, we've worked on it a lot, and it's really just how we see how to play the game perfectly, where we just go for everything we can that's an objective and applying pressure everywhere.  That's just kind of our play style.

A lot of people have compared you to Korean teams.  How do you do that play style so well?

I think I kinda brought it to the team, because I just watched OGN by myself when I was on Dignitas B.  Some friends watched it with me every now and then, but I kinda brought it into the gaming house back when we were on Quantic, and they kinda liked watching it too.  So we just started integrating their strategies and realizing what was strong, what was weak, based off their gameplay and picks and stuff.  So that's kind of how we're a Korean team.

Speaking of training, a lot of people talk about how LemonNation trains the ADCs he plays with.  How has he influenced your play style?

He kind of looks for aggressive players.  If they're not already aggressive you can't really teach them to be aggressive so to say, so he looks for the aggressiveness and after he finds that he pairs up with them and trains them and pretty much tells us what to do.  Kinda like "follow me," "let's go here," "let's trade," "we should stay," "we should push," stuff like that.

In the game that you just played, how nervous did you get after Meteos died for the first time?

It was in my head, I was thinking, oh god, his first death, here it comes.  He was blobbed and moved forward slowly, and I kinda tried to defend him, but I was low on life, and I backed up and saw him die.  I was like awwwwww.  I didn't say anything in the chat because he probably would have gotten mad.

Did you think you were gonna lose the game after Meteos died?

No, we still had a really good advantage.  But it definitely sucked, seeing him die there.

Any shoutouts?

Yeah.  My sponsors, Crunchyroll, iBuyPower, HyperX, and Astro.

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