Week 7 EU LCS Preview! El Classico Round Two!

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos 

Three more weeks, three more games, and for some teams, one chance. Here’s what to watch out for in Week 7 of the EU LCS:

Day 1- Meet Your Makers (2-10) vs Giants Gaming (4-8)

The outlook is quite bleak for MYM who look to be heading down to the challenger scene as the first ever auto relegated LCS team. However, unlike their NA counterpart in Team Coast, the team is still showing signs of life and can realistically climb out of the bottom spot. Taking out one of the teams directly above them is the best way to go about this. Provided MYM can show up here and against the other team at 4-8 overall (Roccat) in their last game of the split, they can at least hope to pull off a tiebreaker or even trump the other two if they can pull off any more upsets. It isn't much to hold onto, but the true sign of a team that should remain in the LCS is the ability to adapt and turn deficits. If Gambit and H2k can do it, MYM can too.

Day 1- H2k Gaming (8-4) vs Gambit Gaming (7-5)

It’s the battle of the six game win streak vs the seven game win streak, a battle of the two teams with the most momentous turn around in EU LCS history since Alliance in spring 2014. Funnily enough, Gambit’s win streak started off with their victory over H2k in week three so what better team to end it than H2k themselves. If H2k win this match they tie second at the end of day one with the loser of El Classico round two, however if Gambit win they tie third with H2k and equal the second longest EU LCS win streak held by themselves, SK Gaming and Alliance at eight. Another win in day two then ties them for the longest held by Fnatic at nine. With all these teams have learnt and the momentum they've built since their rise, this could prove to be an even better game than Fnatic vs SK.

Day 1- SK Gaming (9-3) vs Fnatic (9-3)

Round two of the rightfully-hyped matchup, El Classico ended SK Gaming’s eight game win streak in Week 5 and now they have a chance to get one back on Fnatic and reclaim the first place spot. SK have been humbled in the past two weeks while Fnatic have been struggling to maintain perfect consistency having slipped up a few times to teams at the peak of their form (UOL, CW & GMB). If SK want to be taken seriously at IEM, they should look to fix themselves here. Realistically this game will decide which of these teams finishes in first and is subsequently the best team in EU at the moment. By far.

Fantasy Forecast-

For the first time in a while, no team is particularly safe. SK and Fnatic have each other to worry about while rising stars H2k and Gambit also clash.  Even the Unicorns who have Elements and Roccat should still be hesitant as the two most hyped teams in the preseason could still pull off a big win if they’ve begun to work on their problems. This week is a pure gamble.

Reminder: Wickd will be starting over Kev1n on EL and Noxiak over Nisbeth on MYM

EU LCS Week 4 Preview- Games to Watch

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos 

Week 4 of the EU LCS is about to begin, these are my picks on what will be the games to watch:

Day 1- Giants Gaming (2-4) vs Gambit Gaming (1-5)

Coming out of their first win of the split against H2k, the seemingly tilting Gambit squad should be going into this game with renewed confidence and their heads held high. If they can sustain the momentum and avoid being put behind early they should be able to give a good game to Giants. The lane to watch will more than likely be top lane since both Cabochard and Werlyb are key components in their team’s victories. Jungler interaction with the top lane will definitely be a swinging point in this matchup

Day 1- Unicorns of Love (3-3) vs Roccat (3-3)

This match has a lot of weight in being the match that decides who is biggest challenge to the top three in Fnatic, SK and Elements. As it stands UOL are 1-2 against the top three taking a game off Fnatic while Roccat stand at 0-3 against the top competition. On the flip side however Roccat have yet to lose against any non-top three team while UOL slipped up to the Wolves last week. In terms of skill and potential I’d have these two at the same. Being arguably the two most hyped teams going into the split, this will surely be a hotly contested match.

Day 2- Copenhagen Wolves (3-3) vs Fnatic (5-1)

Of all the matches in day two I picked this one because the Wolves have recently shown a sturdy resilience and a refusal to be defeated early. Soren in particular has had a really good time in some of the Wolves’ games. The matchups of Freeze vs Steeelback will be interesting to watch as well as seeing who can leave a bigger map-wide impact between Reignover and Airwaks. This game can go the way of the Wolves if the right conditions come into play, a victory here could also really help turn some heads to them being a dark horse for the playoffs. But Fnatic will be looking to shut out any more surprises after their loss to the Unicorns last week.

Fantasy Forecast:

If you have any SK or Fnatic members it’s in your best interest to slot them into your team with high scoring games on the outlook for both. Elements owners should also be rather happy with what should be fairly easier games on the cards for them too. While a shock result for the Wolves against Fnatic could happen, their week also starts against SK so be mindful. Unicorn and Roccat owners will be hesitant as both heavily impact the other’s weeks. Giants owners should also be mindful as while SK seems like a sure loss, Gambit might go either way. Any H2K and MYM owners should avoid fielding those players/teams as it looks to be fantasy drought for them this week, hard games as well as lineup changes and internal conflict come to mind.

Reminder- KaSing is now H2k’s starting support over Voidle.

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by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos 

EU LCS Expansion Tournament: H2k vs Giants Gaming

By Reece "Sabrewolf" Dos-Santos 

With the demons of past failed LCS attempts behind them, H2k took to the stage against Giants Gaming; both teams coming off back-to-back 3-0 sweeps against their first round opponents.

Pick/ban phase

Interestingly, because of how the teams chose to be set up, Giants remained on red side for the whole series. What they aimed to get out of this strategy, however, will remain an enigma.

H2k was relentless in their ban strategy of taking out the threat of xPepii by removing Xerath, Leblanc and Syndra in all three games. Giants, on the other hand, opted to try and adapt their banning to remove one key component of what dismantled them in the previous game: banning Febiven’s game one Jayce in game two and Voidle’s game one and two Janna in game three.

Pick-wise, both teams displayed good variety of picks and compositions. H2k played a poke strategy with Corki and Jayce in game one before moving on to more team fight orientated compositions in games two and three. The only person that played the same champion in all three games was Rydle on Thresh, a champion that worked quite well for him in the series, especially in game three.

Into the Games

One thing that was noticeable to me across this series was the performance of the bottom lane of Giants. While the action in the bottom lane was often overshadowed by the standout performances of H2k’s top half, Adryh and Rydle put up a very good laning phase in all 3 games. Adryh’s Sivir in game one had a 20 minute CS lead six minutes in, in game three they also heavily bullied out the bottom lane of H2k to the point where Hjarnan’s Sivir only managed to get back into the game off the back off the performance of the rest of his team. Despite the consistent lead in Giants’ bottom lane, there was simply nothing the pair could do when faced with the absolute demolition that Loulex, Odoamne and Febiven put up.

Game one saw three consecutive counter ganks from Loulex on the middle lane as Fr3deric tried his hardest to shut down Febiven but subsequently he ended up just pushing himself and xPepii further behind. Giants made a little comeback with 4 kills and the first dragon but the next three went to H2k and Febiven and Loulex slowly choked the Giants out. 

Game two saw a similar story of Giants’ falling behind on a solo lane early on. Odoamne took complete control of the game on Irelia getting a huge cs lead and 4 kills early on. Febiven’s Orianna also played a heavy part in their team fight presence in backing Odoamne who went nuts decimating the Giants in any way possible. One thing that was a slight let down for H2k was Loulex’s tendency to over commit and go in to deep without the proper protection in order to set things up for his team.

While these attempts proved non detrimental in any way, a team in a better position than Giants would have been able to easily pick on these small positional missteps. The biggest error for H2k in game two was over chasing a good fight they could have used to push into the base, gifting two unnecessary kills to xPepii’s Ahri.

Similarly in game three, Loulex’s presence across the map in the early stages was heavy and the H2k solo lanes quickly took control of the map. Odoamne’s Irelia had Werelyb’s Maokai in his back pocket for the whole game and Febiven’s Ahri was a huge threat; however due to H2k’s tendency to make missteps and positional errors, particularly on Loulex’s front, the game took a lot longer to close out than it  should have. H2k’s dragon control was also very lax allowing Giant’s to pick up three, but the fact that this simply did not matter at all proved how far ahead and how oppressive the solo lanes of H2k were throughout this series.

If I had to pick an MVP throughout this series I’d have to give my vote to Febiven, he had a super commanding series knocking xPepii down and keeping him down across all three games. He remained a constant deadly threat and made team fighting very difficult for the Giants.

With this H2k finally live up to their growing hype since the days being Cloud 9 Eclipse and earn their way into the EU LCS as its 9^th team.

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos

EU Expansion Tournament Day One Recap

By Reece "Sabrewolf" Dos-Santos 

EU kicked off their double elimination expansion bracket with Giants Gaming, who eliminated the hyped up Millenium, vs Reason Gaming who are made up of previous LCS players.

Giants executed their pick/ban strategy flawlessly removing Zed and Irelia in all 3 of the games rotating the third ban each time. For games one and two they stuck to the solid 4 champ combo of Pantheon, Jax, Jinx and Thresh while using Leblanc in game one and Azir in game two. The true key to this composition was the sheer dominance that their Pantheon pick displayed in controlling the early game and moving the game to his pace.

First bloods went to Giants in both games and Reason’s Lulu jungle pick in game one was completely steamrolled in its attempts to be relevant, often being blown up before even able to execute an ultimate on a teammate. It was particularly interesting to watch how much Kubon struggled against Werelyb at top and how much extra effort Giants invested into ganking and keeping him down. Most people expected that the giveaway of Gnar to Reason would spell trouble for Giants but they proved this doubt wrong many times throughout the course of games one and two.

Game three of the series showed a bit more life from Reason Gaming who secure first blood on Fr3deric, Kubon on Jax even manages to take a 1v1 kill on Werelyb. However the game once again snowballed out of Reason’s control as Kubon again struggled to maintain any kind of relevance.

The MVP of the series in my opinion is Giants Gaming’s Fr3deric who really set his team’s strangleholds into motion and demonstrated a map wide presence that simply couldn’t be handled by their opposition.

If the series against Millennium wasn’t enough to turn some heads towards Giants as favourites to qualify, I’m sure there will be some heads turning now.

H2K vs FAC

The second series of H2K vs N Faculty displayed the same result of a clean 3-0 crushing any hope of a reverse sweep like seen we’ve commonly in the NA expansion bracket. Unlike Reason Gaming, N Faculty had next to no sign of any kind of life during the series, LCS veteran Xaxus was unable to do anything about his team’s systematic take-down.

H2K went into the series with no particular pick/ban strategy other than removing Syndra and Leblanc from every game. N Faculty banned Xerath, Jayce and Lee in games one and two and Jayce, Ahri, Zed in game three.

The games themselves weren’t kill filled thrill rides and didn’t show off anything too flashy or special, the whole series gave off the impression that N Faculty were playing not to lose rather than to win. Barring game three with dragons, H2K displayed a heavy objective control and slowly drained out N Faculty in all areas before taking the series. There was one point where H2K took two completely uncontested towers in middle in game two, N Faculty were simply nowhere to be seen. Soz Purefect had next to no impact and paled in comparison to Febiven who took the carry seat across the series for H2K.

At times it seemed like H2K were taking the games too slow as they never really made any dynamic decisions or rushed plays. The chessboard takedown of N Faculty showed that H2K never really felt any pressure.

As mentioned above, the MVP of the series would have to go to Febiven who lived up to his hype and completely obliterated his opponent.

Giants vs H2K in the winners match looks to be an exciting series but N Faculty and Reason have a lot to work on in their series if they want to stand a chance against the loser of the winner bracket for the second LCS spot. 

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos