Battle Report: Team Liquid goes 2-0 in week 1

The momentum from the Spring Split carried over onto our first week of the Summer Split. Team Liquid came out of opening weekend 2-0, taking out both Team Dragon Knights and Team 8. Victories against both teams were rather expected, as TDK had player penalties and TL has a great record against T8 (3-1).

I can’t say our games were perfect, actually, they were far from but each game did demonstrate the potential of our team. Quas still proved he could be consistent on any champion and Piglet in team fights is difficult to catch. Each member of the team leveraged different parts of each game. A few more games to shake the rust off and I think TL will be a force to be reckoned with.



It’s difficult to judge this game for what it is. TDK had 3 substitute players due to failure in locking their roster by Riot Game’s deadline and yet they still did fairly well. Every game is unpredictable, but I felt the win should have been more convincing.

• Team Liquid: Gnar, Gragas, Cassiopeia, Kalista, Annie
  
• Team Dragon Knights: Rumble, Rek’sai, Azir, Corki, Thresh

With IwillDominate and Quas on beefy frontline champions combined with hyper carries in Piglet and FeniX, we revolved our win conditions around team fighting. However, we gave away two early kills in the bottom and middle lanes, which would be detrimental against more established teams.

In the early game, I felt we gave up too much: first dragon and first blood. However, TDK insisted on bringing the fight to us and while their early skirmished favored them, the TL 5v5 is just too much. Taking down Team Liquid requires excellent map rotations and proper sieging, but if you insist on fighting us near the baron pit, you’re just going to fall apart. Quas became the hulking Gnar the team needed, taking on four players at a time and still coming out with a kill to equalize the situation.




Team 8 is out for blood. TL shattered their chances at the play-offs when we defeated them in the Spring Split tie-breaker for 6th. But unfortunately for them, we have Team 8 down to a science—ok not really, this game also was sloppy overall but the TL plays were sick. If you want to watch gameplay that demonstrates synergy, there are a few things better than what Quas’ Rumble did with Iwilldominate’s Nunu.

• Team Liquid: Rumble, Nunu, Cassiopeia, Sivir, Thresh
  
• Team 8: Irelia, Sejuani, Vladamir, Graves, Nautilus

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sold on Team 8’s Irelia pick, but in-game, we basically just fattened her up. At the 18-minute mark, we gave Calitrolz 4 kills on top of being ahead of Quas in CS.

Fortunately, Team Liquid was able to leverage their team fighting ability to win the game. Team 8 was ahead all the way up to the 30-minute mark. But a fed Irelia isn’t very useful when she’s dead; a pick by Piglet onto Nautilus forces a fight that favored TL, and it was all downhill for T8 from there. In a matter of minutes, Team Liquid would win fight after fight, eventually winning the game at the 40-minute mark.




Based off these two games, we don’t do well early game. We ramp up really hard after a slight win, whether it’s a skirmish or a few fortunate clean-up kills. It’s common to stall out the early game and keep it leveled through farming. TL tends to just give up a few kills early, and yet we can crawl out of the deficit. Imagine what would happen if we were ahead early.



There’s something about Team Liquid’s team fighting that’s just so magical. We have three players that will throw themselves into the enemies for the greater good and then we have two Koreans that play mechanically well. Despite our past troubles with the language barrier, there’s this innate synergy that just works when we group up.

Both games demonstrate our strength in 5v5s, but the ultimate question is will we be able to sustain when we give-up the early game to better tiered teams.