It’s a North American League of Legends tale as old as time: TSM versus Cloud9, the original fan favourites against the team that stole their crown as NA’s best. As the LCS squads prepare to fight for a World Championship spot on Saturday, their Academy teams will put an Academy Championship on the line the day before. Both matchups have the potential to be close, and hotly contested, but I’ll leave my LCS preview for tomorrow; today, let’s look into the Academy series that will cap off an excellent year of tier 2 North American competition.
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Win Conditions
TSM Academy
- Neutralize the early game
- Draft for team fights and let Lost and Treatz go to work
TSMA need to make sure C9A can’t run away with the early game: C9A’s 62.8 EGR was second-best in the league, and they didn’t throw away leads like some early-game-weighted teams do.
C9 Academy
- Play through the solo lanes
- Bring the pressure
If C9A can make the games revolve around the top and mid lanes, with mobile champions who can generate 1v1 leads and threaten the map, it will play perfectly to their strengths.
Prediction
C9A 3-1
With Treatz back in the TSMA lineup, they’ve definitely got a shot, but C9A are stronger in the middle of the map and can bring more different looks into the best-of-five.
TSM Academy Key Player and Path to Victory
The best thing about Lost is, well, everything. He’s a very balanced player, able to contribute in different ways. He can crush his lane, he can play safe and kite in the back line, he can Flash forward aggressively to clean up fights, whatever you need. Statistically, the main things that stand out (from the Summer regular season) are his kill participation (74.0%, highest of any starting Bot laner) and his death share (12.6%, second best of any starting Bot behind TLA’s Rikara). His laning numbers were decent but were much better with Treatz (+137 GXD10) than with Biofrost (-45 GXD10). His damage output is good. But it really comes down to his ability to meet his goals in any game situation. Some games you don’t notice him that much until, suddenly, you do. He loses quietly and wins loudly.
Extending the conversation to the bot lane as a whole, Lost and Treatz are the strongest duo lane in the league, and together they are definitely TSM Academy’s main win condition. That doesn’t mean they necessarily need to draft for a dominant pairing and go for turret plates and 2v2 kills, like FBI and huhi of the Golden Guardians, though they’re capable of doing so (just watch their excellent CC layering in their Semifinal series against Deftly and Matt of Evil Geniuses Academy). Lost and Treatz can also be a scaling win condition, with strong engage work by Treatz and team fight carry services from Lost.
Dhokla also has a huge job in this series: he needs to play Fudge to a standstill, either by applying enough pressure in lane to keep Fudge in one place so he can’t affect the map, or by matching his map movement. Dhokla is one of the better Top laners in Academy, and actually put together stronger laning stats than Fudge in the regular season (+500 GXD10 to Fudge’s +279), but Fudge beat out Dhokla in kill participation and damage because of his greater ability to influence the other lanes.
If TSMA’s goal is to neutralize the lanes and win through team fighting, as I think it should be, then Dhokla has to be a focal point, since he has the stiffest challenge. Evolved also has a tough task, with Palafox really growing this split and showing what a threat he can be. But the main purpose of those solo laners doing their job will be to set up Lost to succeed in the mid game, so that he doesn’t have to play from too far behind.
C9 Academy Key Player and Path to Victory
Call it ironic for the North American Academy league, but C9A’s key player is also an Oceanic import. He also happens to be the best player in Academy overall. The C9 management team will be fielding a lot of calls about his availability this offseason, but for now, his focus will be on winning another title.
Fudge has enough talent to will his team to victory, as long as he’s drafted onto the right kind of champion. Give him some Lucian like in the Semifinals, or Camille, or anything else proactive, and he can crush his lane, control the river, and snowball. But the thing is that you can also put him on Ornn and he can play very effectively, if the game plan and opponent profile calls for it. He doesn’t need to be in his comfort zone to contribute, which makes him even more dangerous since opponents can’t just ban him out. (I don’t think putting Fudge on tank duty is the right game plan against TSMA, for what it’s worth, but TSMA might try to force him into that with their drafts.)
In their two regular season meetings, C9A beat TSMA both times, relying on the trio of Fudge, Palafox, and Inori to lead them. Palafox outclassed Evolved, both on his signature Zoe and on Corki. Fudge executed a dominant split push game on Camille and was quieter but still very valuable on a Wukong. TSMA might be able to shut down Fudge or Palafox, but they probably won’t be able to beat them both unless Winston has the series of his life.
C9 Academy know just as well as I do that Lost and Treatz are the biggest threat on TSM Academy. They don’t need to be scared of that 2v2—Tomo and Diamond are a respectable duo in their own right—but they should hesitate to put themselves in situations where the bot lane outcome dictates too much of the overall result. That means planning drafts that put emphasis on the solo lanes, holding counterpicks and loading up on mobility and CC at Jungle and Support to give themselves flexibility to pick the Lucians and Irelias that they used very effectively last week.
Tomo and Diamond can comfortably settle in to their lane, focus on not giving up 2v2 kills or any kind of snowball, and offer utility, whether that means receiving roams from Palafox or TP plays from Fudge or just making sure TSMA can’t set up dragons too easily.
C9A can be very flexible in their drafts and game plans. I think they could even play a scaling team fight game and win, given the skill in their roster. But playing through Fudge and Palafox as individual threats will be their most comfortable path to the trophy.