Battle Report: Week 8 NA LCS

This week, Team Liquid would be met with triumph and heart break. A defeat to the hands of Counter Logic Gaming in Day 1—they were bound to win at least once in 13 games—met with a swift victory against Enemy Esports would place us in a position tied for 2nd place with three teams.

Next week is the last weekend, and the three 2nd place teams: Team Liquid, Counter Logic Gaming, and Team Impulse; all want the guaranteed spot at Madison Square Garden for the NA Finals. The questions is still who till get it? And week 8 showed anyone can take it.



For a long time, CLG has always had a difficult time taking on Team Liquid, even when we were Curse. With a 12-0 record against the NA power house, TL would go into this one with confidence. However, CLG did win out a few top picks for their team in champion select then looked to deny Quas. And they succeeded.




For the first time in a long while, CLG played a much slower game against TL. They usually attempt an early tower dive but after many games of devastating failure, they learned to stop that. Instead, they did the smartest thing possible: make Quas too far behind to be relevant.

Aside from spectacular play from FeniX on Azir, a consistent or ahead Quas usually nets us a very clean win. His team fight presence allows FeniX and Piglet to do their job well but because he was far behind CLG’s Fizz, it was difficult for him to stay relevant in team fights. It was then a matter of when Doublelift’s Tristana would ramp up.

For the first half of the match, fights were fairly close with the first few being even on kill trades. But team comp vs team comp, TL can’t let that happen since CLG’s composition revolves heavily around the late game; a true protect-the-Doublelift composition.

However, a very sloppy Baron play would cost us the game. With Xpecial down due to being Split, CLG would go for the Baron and TL would look for the steal. But in the midst of the chaos, TL tunnel visioned the Baron and allowed Doublelift free reign over Piglet and FeniX. The resulting fight and the failed Baron steal would Allow CLG to push into the base and straight end at the 37-minute mark.

Overall, the game wasn’t bad, but the call to steal Baron versus trying to get a pick onto the over-extended Doublelift is questionable. Truth be told, you never know when calls like that will be a good or bad idea until the event is over, but tunnel visioning is never a good thing, especially in a 4v5 situation. Even if Dominate got the Baron steal, Tristana was draped over Corki and Viktor, so the game may have been lost regardless of play.




Unfortunately, and fortunately, there are fewer ways to describe this match other than total annihilation in favor of Team Liquid. Every lane winning, every attempt for ENM to come back squandered, and the maps was fully controlled by the TL squad. The win was swift and took only 25-minutes: the score was 17 kills to 1. Need I say more?




A big deciding factor for this game was the level 4, 4v3 tower dive at the botlane. Team Liquid would give up one death but take two kills and a dragon off the back of this opening play. From there, anything Enemy would try to do would falter. With the top tower down for Enemy, Quas would be given free farm. On top of that, TL would take the next few teamfights with one or no casualties.

That’s all there was to it. Team Liquid got an early advantage and used it.
Last week coming up!

With this week ending in a 1-1, Team Liquid would be tied for 2nd with team Impulse and Counter Logic Gaming. The three teams would then be behind 1st place Gravity (12-4) by one game.

Our last two games are against Team 8 and Team Impulse respectively. Cheer us on the final day of NA LCS this weekend!