The Golden Guardians pulled off the only upset of the first week of LCS Summer Playoffs, dismantling TSM 3-0 on the back of star performances by FBI and huhi. It was a coming-of-age of sorts for that bot lane, who spent the entire season playing the same way and delivering similar results but not really getting credit for it until they did it to Doublelift three games in a row.
The bad news for GG is that they’re coming up against Team Liquid in the next round, a team that not only finished the regular season with the LCS’s best record, but also employs a play style and skill profile that almost perfectly counters the way GG won in the first round.
Win Conditions
Team Liquid
Control early dragons
Be patient and play reactively
Golden Guardians
Get Damonte out of his lane
Surprise TL with something they haven’t seen before
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.
Typically you’d expect to have a clear favourite when one of the teams was seeded directly into the Lower Bracket, but 100 Thieves mopped up EG pretty convincingly in the teams’ last meeting, and the head-to-head role matchups stack up quite well for 100T. Both teams are top side-heavy, with relatively quiet contributions from the mid and bot lanes.
With such similar profiles on paper, preparation and coaching could make the real difference.
