What an amazing day for League of Legends fans. Team Solomid played Echo Fox, which resulted in TSM losing to Froggen and his pals, that nobody want to scrim. Then, we got Flyquest against Cloud 9, a match that was already hyped up even before it started. Flyquest used to be Cloud 9 Academy, but after stomping their way through the NA Challenger Series, they ended up in the LCS. Not wanting to confuse anyone, they changed their title to Flyquest.
Game one was the Jensen and Contractz show, where the C9 mid laner and jungler did most of their team's damage. Impact proved that shutting down Camille in the early-game, isn’t enough to stop her from being strong in the late-game. A top laner that ends their laning phase 0/3 shouldn’t be able to carry team fights, I’m so glad she got nerfed in patch 7.3.
Game two was where things started to heat up. Hai showed off some inventive ways to use Corki’s Package, ganking bot lane and cutting off whoever he could find. Flyquest managed to pull ahead after some major mid-game team fights, beating C9. The series was tied up, in one of the most hyped matchups in recent LoL history. You could feel the tension through your monitor.
Game three is where everything jumped straight to ludicrous speed. During a bot lane skirmish at the 10-minute mark, a bug stopped all of Altec’s Bullet Time. A minion took all of Miss Fortune’s damage, leaving Lemonnation’s Malzahar just healthy enough to walk away. Flyquest requested a remake and Riot Games got to show off one of their new toys. Called the Deterministic Disaster Recovery Tool, it allows Riot to remake any game up to a specific point. Riot has their own Chrono Break for LCS games now; technology has come along way since League started.
The rest of the game was one epic team fight, followed by another. Altec’s amazing MF play won Flyquest a few of those fights; his Bullet Times are perfect. At least twice in this game, four C9 members got caught in a Bullet Time with no escape. Comboed with Hai’s Zed, which is still as sharp as ever, it seemed that Flyquest would pull a win out of this series.
Then, one decision caused the game to turn. During a late game teamfight at the Elder Dragon, Impact on Nautilus managed to land a stray hook on Altec. This caused the game to snowball for Cloud9; Flyquest lost an inhibitor, followed by a Baron and eventually lost their base. Cloud9 won the series 2-1 and are still undefeated after week four, but both sides put up one hell of a fight.
Cloud9 and Flyquest were already two of the best teams in the North American LCS, this is only the second time Flyquest has lost a series this split. They just played, and I already can’t wait for them to play again.
