Both Cloud9 and TSM have hit some very low points in their playoff journey to this point, falling into the Lower Bracket by losing series they were favoured to win. But their most recent matches have both been victories, Cloud9 constructing a reasonably convincing 3-0 over Evil Geniuses and TSM barely outlasting the Golden Guardians 3-2 in a rematch from the Upper Bracket.
With C9’s stronger regular season performance and better result in their most recent match, it might seem they are clear favourites to take out their long-time rivals and claim the final North American slot at the World Championships. But TSM should not be counted out whatsoever: the Golden Guardians were their kryptonite, while TSM have been able to go toe-to-toe with C9 all year, even when Blaber and friends were at the peak of their powers in Spring.
C9 vs. TSM promises to be a close, exciting series, as well it should be with so much on the line.
I definitely didn’t expect to be writing a Cloud9 vs. Evil Geniuses preview today. I’m still a little in shock at not only the fact that Cloud9 lost to FlyQuest, but the way the lost.
Hopefully C9 recover from that shock more quickly than I do, because they have a series to prep for, and they’d better not take it lightly if they want to maintain a shot at reaching Worlds.
Win Conditions
Cloud9
Take some deep breaths
Play the early game
I can’t imagine how tilted the entire Cloud9 roster and staff are feeling after yesterday. They need to breathe some fresh air and pull out the early game-oriented strategies that they’ve hopefully put at least some practice into during the past couple of weeks, because that’s where they’ve found their success all year.
Evil Geniuses
Attack Blaber
Draft reactive scaling picks (e.g. Shen and Gangplank)
FlyQuest just lobbed an alley-oop pass to Evil Geniuses, so EG need to jump up and slam it home with momentum.
The main storyline of this series is Cloud9’s fall from grace and sub-.500 record in the second half of the regular season. FlyQuest are worth talking about, but the conversation is mostly about C9 and their ability to recapture their Spring championship form. Every opinion about this series is going to spring directly out of assessments of why C9 fell off, and whether that was a sign of real problems, or just a temporary blip.
