Showing posts with label IEM San Jose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IEM San Jose. Show all posts

Monday, December 8, 2014

Cloud 9 Take Home Intel Extreme Masters Title With Dominating Performance


Congratulations to Cloud 9 as they clinch a spot in the Intel Extreme Masters World Finals in Katowice to take place in March with a 3-0 series defeat of the Unicorns of Love in the finals of IEM San Jose!

Next up for the Intel Extreme Masters series is IEM Cologne which will take place from December 18th-21st. The ESL will also be hosting the EU Expansion Tournament bracket stage at this event.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Unicorns of Love Rout Team SoloMid to Reach IEM San Jose Finals

By Matt “It’sPure Luck” Lee
           

When the lineup for the Intel Extreme Masters San Jose was originally announced some people seemed to feel that the fans voted in Unicorns of Love simply for their name. Or maybe it was because of the Poppy pick in a do or die games versus Millenium in the EU LCS Spring Promotion Tournament. It simply didn’t seem to fit that a team who recently rose up from the Challenger Series should be voted in to a tournament as prestigious as IEM over a long time standout such as SK Gaming.
            
Yet in the end it was UoL who proved all doubters wrong as they managed to 2-0 tournament favorite Team SoloMid. The victory earns them a berth in the Intel Extreme Masters Grand Finals to take place later today where they await the winner of Cloud 9 versus Alliance. Using a combination of off-meta picks to catch Team SoloMid by surprise and seemingly impeccable team fighting, Unicorns of Love looked much sharper in this set than they did in their previous series against Lyon Gaming.
            

It didn’t take long for the mind games by UoL to begin. They caught TSM unaware in the pick and ban phase of game one by baiting Bjergsen into a Xerath pick when Twisted Fate had been taken the previous turn by UoL. The only problem was that it wasn’t Twisted Fate mid; it was going to Kikis in the jungle.  Power of Evil responded by last picking LeBlanc and it was a selection that worked out brilliantly for UoL. Only three minutes into the game, Bjergsen was caught pushed out a bit too far and we saw the first successful Twisted Fate jungle gank off a flash plus gold card combo. The game would calm down for a few minutes until the first Destiny attempt from Kikis came with an attempt to catch Dyrus out in the top lane. It was unsuccessful but it put more pressure on Dyrus who already had a tough matchup as Rumble against Gnar.
            
Kikis would try his luck top lane again a few minutes later but Dyrus escaped with a sliver of health. However, while this was going on, we saw something that seems to be incredibly rare as Power of Evil was able to pick up a solo kill on Bjergsen. UoL was able to pick up their first dragon a bit after this and they had control of it almost the entire game. TSM was able to pick up a kill on Vizicsacsi in the top lane off of a gank by Santorin, but Power of Evil responded by grabbing a solo kill on Bjergsen again in middle.  Kikis was also able to answer back for UoL in the top lane with a pick on Dyrus with a use of Destiny.
           
From there the game seemed to snowball out of control for Team SoloMid. UoL would make a few mistakes; including an over aggressive play by Power of Evil trying to zone Baron. But the gold difference was simply too much to overcome and the Unicorns would close the game out in 38 minutes.
           
Game two would start off slightly better for TSM, but Bjergsen continued to have trouble with Power of Evil in the mid lane. The UoL mid laner was able to pick up yet another solo kill just after the sixth minute mark as Syndra on Bjersen’s Azir. Power of Evil wasn’t shy about using his ultimate whenever he wanted to. Even if he was not picking up kills, he was forcing Bjergsen to return to base constantly.

            
UoL simply seemed to be one step ahead of TSM the entire way. The gold deficit didn’t grow as fast as it did in game one, but SoloMid just could not cut the gap as much as they needed to. It was Santorin’s steals of dragon that helped ensure they were in this game at all as it progressed. TSM did a better job this game of trading objectives with UoL, but team fighting from the Unicorns was a notch higher than that of the North American Summer champions. The gold lead slowly grew to just shy of 10k after the thirty minute mark and it seemed as if TSM could see the writing on the wall. In a desperation play they opted to try and base race UoL but it didn’t work out in their favor and the Unicorns would take the game in thirty-three minutes and the series two games to none.


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Unicorns of Love Take Down Lyon Gaming




By Reece "Sabrewolf" Dos-Santos


With their first appearance in an international event coming just before their LCS debut, some people were initially sceptical on how the Unicorns of Love would face up to the competition of IEM San Jose. But the team came out to play and play hard.

Pick/Ban phase:

Unicorns of Love stayed adamant on removing Jayce and Zed from the series along with Warwick in game 1 and Pantheon in game 2. Meanwhile Lyon saw to remove Thresh in both games but targeted Pantheon and Vizicsacsi’s odd ball pick Poppy in game 1, then opted to his Gnar instead and remove Warwick.

Lucian and Corki premiered as the only ADC’s picked across the two games played but every other role saw a range of variety, the biggest surprise factor being Kikis’s decision to bring out a Jungle Kayle which in the end worked out rather nicely for him as his team. Generally Unicorns Of Love opted for a “stun and destroy” theme across their team comps focussing on having Braum in both games as well as picking up Syndra and Gnar in game 1 and Irelia in game 2. Meanwhile Lyon Gaming clearly had the idea of picking comps designed to make plays across the map employing a roaming Alistar support in game 1 with Lee Sin and Leblanc. This was attempted again with Orianna, Sion and Evelyn in game 2. The fault in Lyon Gaming’s team comp set ups and playstyle choice however was that they required Lyon to not fall behind and still maintain the ability to actually set up all the plays that the champions enabled, unfortunately for them they simply weren’t ever allowed. 

Game 1:
Game one started off slowly but it was evident that the Unicorns were clawing ahead slowly, by the 6 minute mark both solo lanes were ahead by over 10 cs and Dodo on Alistar had begun to start roaming in order to try and get a 3 man catch with their jungler Thyak. Unfortunately for Lyon this led to unsuccessful gank attempts on Power of Evil and eventually led to Dodo being pink ward baited and killed seven and a half minutes in.

The situation then only began to get worse for Lyon as the solo lane cs lead had doubled to 20 in favour of UOL by 10 minutes and Dodo became more desperate to land another attempt on ganking Power of Evil. By the time they finally succeeded, it only left Maplestreet to get return killed in the bottom lane and put further behind. Thyak managed to land a dream steal on dragon at 13 minutes meanwhile Vizicsacsi increased his cs lead to 50 while taking a tower moments later.
The pressure on Lyon Gaming was evident as Dodo remained fixated on using his Alistar to roam and make plays but they simply never fell into place, instead Maplestreet on Lucian remained a sitting duck to ganks and eventually got pushed out of relevance entirely.

Things looked like they might change as UOL made a sloppy play in topside in an attempt to take an inhibitor tower and gifted away 4 unnecessary kills but the chokehold they had amassed up until this point was simply too much to handle for Lyon Gaming. With 3 dragons, 1 baron and a 14k gold lead, Unicorns of Love took game 1.

Game 2:

Game two in my opinion played out like a mirror image of game one. By the 5 minute mark Vizicsacsi was 10 cs up ahead of Porky again. The clear difference in his impact to Porky’s was so big he was able to teleport bottom lane for the first blood on Dodo, not get the assist for it and still go back to being dominant on his lane. Meanwhile Power of Evil was picking up easy kills on Seeiya.

Lyon however made good use of their Evelyn pick by flanking bottom lane and synergizing the surprise with another surprise appearance of Sion as well. Lyon had also learnt from the mistake of leaving Maple alone and he was provided with more support from Dodo and his team this time around. However by the same point of near 14 minutes Vizicsacsi had once again amassed a 50 cs lead and was fast becoming a monster. This was backed up the sudden 4 slaughter that occurred around 19 minutes lead by Vizicsacsi’s first picked Irelia.

Going into 20 minutes Lyon Gaming had however managed to take 2 dragons but on the flipside they only had 3 kills which were all on Thyak’s lessening impact Evelynn.

In almost an exact repeat of their first game mistake, Unicorns of Love go in big for an inner turret and Vizicsacsi manages to hard dive the team for a kill. But things appear to go south for the Unicorns in the 3rd dragon dance as they once again over aggress and fall prey to a 4 man shockwave, into Sion Q, into Corki rockets that removes 4 Unicorns from the map instantly. However like in game 1, 4 kills for Lyon appear to mean absolutely nothing as they simply cannot find the resources to hold off the Unicorn’s relentless aggression.

Outlook:

Overall the Unicorns looked impressed throughout this series; they appeared to ramp up as time went on and they got more into the flow of the games but the biggest worry throughout this was their clear over aggression in the mid game period which could be attributed to over-confidence. If Lyon were more able to grab hold of momentum swings they could have heavily punished the Unicorns in both games but once put behind they struggled to have any kind of late game presence. The overall series MVP in my eyes was Vizicsacsi, his top lane dominance was outstanding and entertaining to watch.

GG 2-0 to the Unicorns of Love


by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos

Monday, November 17, 2014

Curse, CLG & Gambit joins Fnatic for IEM Cologne

By Anel “Musinlol“ Musinovic


The European team that is going to join Fnatic will be Gambit Gaming, who has a long history with Intel Extreme Masters.

Every other team in this poll doesn't have a full roster, which could have led to more votes if they had. (In Copenhagen Wolves case, they have no players at all, hence the 3% vote.)

Gambit will be going head-to-head with the recently qualified 'new' Moscow 5, who are going to represent the CIS region; the previous organisation for some long-standing Gambit members such as Diamond and Edward. It will be interesting to see Gambit playing with their newly signed top laner, Cabochard, and ADC, P1noy (previously known as Krislund), as they try to qualify for IEM Katowice through IEM Cologne.


Going across the Atlantic and looking at the NA poll, it will be Curse and CLG joining Fnatic and Gambit. 

No surprises here. CLG and Curse are both loved by the community and Curse probably clinched the higher percentage of votes since signing Korean superstar, Piglet, who previously played for the Season 3 World Championship Winner, SKT T1 K.

IEM Cologne will be taking place in Cologne, Germany from December 18th to the 22nd. Team SoloMid, Cloud 9, Alliance and Unicorns of Love were not participating in this poll as these teams are already fighting it out at Intel Extreme Masters San Jose on December 6th and 7th.

Poll graphics via intelextrememasters.com