Immortal Combat — NA LCS Week One

The North American League Championship Series kicked off 2016 with its own version of El Clasico — a title imported from Europe over the off-season, along with numerous Europeans, including Yellowstar, who would join benedict Doublelift himself, and former SK Gaming jungler, Svenskeren. The Mayflower set sail again with promises of riches in foreign lands, and North America’s most storied teams — Team Solo Mid and Counter Logic Gaming — underwent significant facelifts, for better or for worse. They certainly came out swinging. They missed a lot of punches, but they swung. The result wasn’t the kind of heavyweight bout people wanted. Maybe it was the one they deserved, but it wasn’t the one they needed. Early predictions of TSM being the favorite were, well, early.

All eyes were on TSM’s new bot lane pairing. CLG, however, had other priorities. They didn’t get the memo that Dyrus retired, which led to an early trip to the top lane for first blood, to Hauntzer’s detriment. The game featured back-and-forth swings to provide fans with all the drama they wanted to keep them on the edge of their seats, but it was clear that neither roster had completely gelled. For all its taunts about strategic and team cohesion, CLG failed to snap on any of their initial advantages, be it first blood, the Rift Herald, or an early Baron. In addition to their surprise loss to Team Dignitas, CLG should hope it was just first week jitters. The team still seemed out of sync with Huhi. Darshan turned to split pushing. Aphromoo tried to make too many plays. In the past, they were able to turn to Doublelift to win games they had no business in winning. That option is no longer there.

TSM managed to swing their fortunes on the second day with a long slugfest against Team Liquid. Despite fluttering in the spider’s web for the early game, they managed to hang in thanks to major plays revolving around Bjergsen. The game swung on an over commitment from Team Liquid, where TSM managed to convert a 4 to 1 team fight in their favor into a victory thanks to a crucial Bjergsen stun. While the 18 game season means every win counts, it can’t be assuring for TSM to lose to their rival — after acquiring their franchise player — and then be gifted a victory by a team with a history of collapses. TSM has no excuses this year. They still have a lot of time to work out their kinks, but what we saw this week was more of the same: a dormant top laner, a newly acquired aggressive jungler relegated to support duties, and a mid-reliant strategy.

The first week of action did little to inspire hopes of a World Championship from the region’s mainstays, but even SKT lost over in Korea, so who’s to say? On the whole, the teams theoretically upgraded their rosters and infrastructure. The region should be one to fear. Perhaps they’re just beating up on each other. Without international competition for months, though, it’s difficult to assess them outside of looking at their execution within the game. And to that end, Immortals thundered into the LCS with two dominant victories, including this week’s Game of the Week.

GAME OF THE WEEK: Immortals vs. Cloud 9

This game was reminiscent of when Cloud 9 first blindsided the North American scene with lightning quick macro play. They forced everyone to adapt or die. Many teams did die. What we witnessed in this game was, perhaps, a passing of that torch. Immortals clobbered Cloud 9 like it was just another dynamic queue game for them. It’s not even that Cloud 9 made any major mistakes so much as it was they didn’t do anything at all. After a certain point, Immortals didn’t let them.

The game opened with C9’s harassment of the top and jungler pair at Krugs, which must have brought a nostalgic smirk to new C9 head coach Lemonnation. C9 seemed a little tunneled in their picks, though, and picked Miss Fortune, known for her early game prowess, along with Ryze, known for scaling into the end game. The Miss Fortune pick is hot right now in a local “solo” queue near you, but it works best with champions who can lock down the enemy team or zone them into a particular area. C9 paired it unreliable forms of crowd control and very little AoE damage otherwise.

Immortals, however, came out with a rare Cho’Gath pick to deal with the immobile Ryze and Miss Fortune, both of whom come to a standstill when dealing the bulk of their damage. This made ruptures or the threat thereof very powerful. They complimented it with global pressure from Twisted Fate and a strong early jungler to deal with Lee Sin. As a result, C9 fell behind early on CS alone. Despite matching them in kills and turrets, C9 saw Sneaky down 50 CS at the twelve minute mark and Rush down 20. Rush was on his signature champion, Lee Sin, but failed to generate any notable pressure — in large part thanks to the lanes not matching heads up. Rush failed to create any havoc in the enemy jungle as well, despite his reputation. Perhaps this calls to question if he hasn’t quite synced up with new support Bunnyfufu in generating vision to create opportunities for aggression.

At the 16:45 mark, a slow rotation to the outer mid turret created confusion as to whether C9 wanted to be there or not (they didn’t). This gave Immortals the initiative, and a retreating C9 team was obliterated in a team fight they had no business participating in. True to that, the top damage dealer in the fight for them was the tier two turret. The same situation repeated itself at dragon a few minutes later. Indecision led to another horrible loss for them. C9 clearly lacked any sort of initiative to make plays this game, as seemed to be the general theme for teams over the weekend. IMT snowballed those fights into a victory less than ten minutes later.

Last season, NA was dominated by playstyles which saw teams try to out-rotate each other. They traded objectives until an eventual ARAM style clash would settle the game. There wasn’t any of the greedy mentality that makes winners. Michael Jordan, for example, is universally agreed as the greatest player to ever play basketball. He is remembered for hitting crucial shots and being an offensive juggernaut. What’s sometimes lost is he received nine All-Defensive first teams. He scored on you, then made sure you didn’t score on him. Immortals looked like a team that only wanted to score. They wasted no time turning one advantage into another. That’s the type of rhythm that’s enjoyable to watch. So many other teams are saying they need time to figure out how to rotate their different cogs, but IMT’s combination of talent and upbeat personalities seems to have clicked immediately. Wildturtle and Huni are perfect compliments to each other, while the other three provide a stable hand from which they leap.

SPECULATION AND FOUR-SIGHT: Four Storylines to Watch

Jekyll and Hai

Much has been said about Hai’s shot calling. To me, it’s less that he’s telling the team the correct things to do and more that he says it decisively. Given time to assess a map, I believe most pro players would understand the correct micro and macro decisions. What a successful shot caller brings to a team, then, isn’t necessarily strategic genius but an identity. And Hai is Cloud 9. It’s one thing to know what to do, and another to vocalize it in a way that other people listen to. It’s one thing to inspire a team to believe in your ability to hit the skill shot or the CS, and another to inspire them to believe in themselves to do the same. The biggest difference in their game against Echo Fox wasn’t necessarily any major play by Hai. In fact, it was Rush who generated the first couple of kills. Hai had nothing to do with the first blood top lane. But what we’ve seen repeatedly, now, is a much more aggressive and decisive C9 with Hai on the roster. Going forward, it will be interesting to see who C9 fields at support. Can they play with the same decisiveness without Hai? Or do they invest in a makeup team that can convince Riot a wiretapped Bunnyfufu is Hai?

Mount Olympus

From the peak of the mythical mountain, new demi-gods descended in the form of Immortals. The infectious personalities of Huni and Wildturtle, perhaps, are all they need to convince people they crawled out of Zeus’s head himself. Their play this week was immaculate. Sure, Team Impulse might not actually exist. Photoshop and video editing has come a long way. Have you met TIP? Sure, you see some faces on stream, but what if it’s all in cahoots with the audience? Sure, the game was so lopsided that you started to wonder if it was played inside the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But it takes a lot of discipline to close out the game without giving up a thing of note (sorry, little minions). And to do it before the other team can surrender at 20. IMT lived up to their hype. Can the steady hands of Reignover and Adrian keep Huni and Turtle from running the train astray? Or do they continue to lay the tracks? And if so, how far will they roll?

Double Star

Yellow lift? Bora Peng? Where does the fan fiction start? Where does it end? TSM’s much anticipated launch was more Phantom Menace than The Force Awakens. At what point can the team find the cohesiveness that made them famous? The team has two players who absolutely demand all the resources. A lot waves were made when the Miami Heat first joined hands to form basketball’s axis of evil. People wondered how they could function together with just one ball. In TSM’s case, they’re about to find out. This is the west’s first assembled super team. But when it comes down to it, are Bjergsen or Doublelift still star players when all the resources are no longer funneled into them? Or are they just adept? There’s no doubt each of them possesses the mechanical talent to dominate in their roles. They have, and there will be moments this season where it happens again. Can they rally around a singular identity, though? Are we looking at LeBron James and Dwyane Wade or is this the 2012 Lakers all over again?

Best Korea

Speaking of basketball, the co-owners of the Sacramento Kings splashed into the scene with a very talented roster which has received little press thus far from fans. A lot of it can be attributed to the language barrier and being generally unknown, but with a mid laner named GankedByMom, what’s not to like? Their games weren’t as impressive as IMT’s, but the first game featured two subs, and still managed to win. GBM was a middling player in Korea, but we’ve seen plenty of middling Korean talent crush western competition. Impact was arguably the best top laner last season, and Altec, long heralded prodigy, may finally live up to his billing. There are question marks at their jungler and support positions, and that showed this week with unimpressive early games. They’ve been christened as an official NA team, though, via winning a game thanks to a Dignitoss at Baron. We will see if their 2–0 is just the product playing middling teams who made middling mistakes, or if their engine is just beginning to rev.

WEEK ONE MVP: WildTurtle

WildTurtle held a 50 CS advantage over Sneaky — forever memed as being the low key best ADC in North America — at 13 minutes. 13! Turtle has a history of dominating…sometimes. He was a major contributor to TSM at both the 2013 and 2014 worlds — at times looking like the only one amongst them who belonged. His patented aggression netted him the top three spots in solo queue at one point. But towards the end of his tenure with TSM, he became known more for getting caught out and stupidly-aggressive. He slowly became a shell of his patented style. It’ll be interesting to see if IMT has managed to release him from his TSM chains, or if this is just another aberration. Also, apparently he won a game in 18 minutes against a professional league of legends squad. No one can be sure it actually happened, though. This is the most dominant team to hit the LCS since Cloud 9, and Wildturtle is a major part of their identity.

WEEK ONE POWER RANKINGS: A Primer on Overreaction

1. Immortals — Aggressive synergy from their side lanes and consistency from the middle made for a very balanced attack on the map. Is holo the new yolo?

2. NRG Esports — Impressive debut for GankedByMom. Will they give old Starcraft 2 diehards flashbacks to the “American” SC2 scene?

3. Cloud 9 — Lifeless in one game and dominant the next. Hai is like the Green Ranger for them, and with him, they are still a force to be wary of.

4. Team Solo Mid — Maybe if one of them yells “Avengers, assemble!” before the next game, they’ll be able to click better. Let’s see if they have somebody who can rally their personalities.

5. Counter Logic Gaming — They seem very average at the moment. Saying your greatest strength is that you have more synergy right now than other teams just means other teams are bound to leap past you. How do they actually improve the talent? Who’s going to win the game for them when Darshan can’t split push?

6. Dignitas — How would their legacy change if Riot never invented Roshan, er, Baron? Dignitas has managed to hang on for years now, and they didn’t seem to make any notable changes in the off-season to shift away from mediocrity.

7. Renegades — The team will be pressured to perform better lest some shiny new Korean imports arrive — queue Montecristo. There’s some buzz around their bot lane pairing, but if Freeze was actually as good as his hype, you’d think he’d have found a more stable home by now.

8. Team Liquid — Heartbreak defines them, but many of their fans must be sick of the cliched narrative by now. They need to learn how to break from their choke-mold and live up to their brand and infrastructure.

9. Echo Fox — They say you are the one constant in all your failures. How much longer are we willing to give Froggen? Rick Fox has been surrounded by some of the greatest winners to play any game. Maybe he can help make the right adjustments.

10. Team Impulse — Please send proof of their existence.

GAME TO HYPE: Saturday, January 23 — Day 1 at ~1:00 pm: TSM vs Immortals

A lot of attention was directed on Doublelift’s battle against his former team. Likewise, Wildturtle returns to TSM on the other side of the rift river. This game should be a good measure for both teams. How does TSM stack against the early favorites? Both teams can fall back onto the excuse of having a short amount of time to gel, but only one of them has had to play that card thus far. This game should be a good indicator of how the first half of this split will go. And I think TSM fans will find themselves at 1–2, a lucky break away from being 0–3.

SOLO QUEUE: Final Stray Thought

Dynamic queue is due to finish testing this week. A lot of people are upset there’s no differentiation between solo queue and any multi-person group. I don’t think the client supports this at the moment, but I think back to all of my favorite gaming moments, and they’re with friends. Guilds in World of Warcraft, for example, were designed to gather similarly talented players. There were days I logged on just to talk to them. I hope this dynamic queue is a step towards integrating more communal aspects into the client. I think there’s an inherent design problem in a team game when a large portion of its user base seeks to play alone.