Team Fight Breakdown League NA LCS Week 1 (TSM vs C9)

May 27, 2016; Atlanta, GA, USA; Team Cloud 9 during the group A final at Turner Studios. Mandatory Credit: John Nowak/Turner Sports via USA TODAY Sports
May 27, 2016; Atlanta, GA, USA; Team Cloud 9 during the group A final at Turner Studios. Mandatory Credit: John Nowak/Turner Sports via USA TODAY Sports /
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League of Legends is in full swing of their NA LCS Spring Split with the classic matchup of TSM going up against C9.

On January 20th, in the Battle Theatre located in Los Angeles, California, the NA LCS came roaring back to life in a very convincing fashion. Capping at 210k viewers on the stream, the TSM vs C9, (El Classico) went down in League of Legends. And TSM went down very very hard.

Throughout the series, TSM looked like they would win, by taking a commanding hold in the early game, but then falling short and not making plays or getting catches. This game between two of the powerhouses in North American eSports, TSM and C9 was the first NA game on the new 10 ban system.

This new system forces all the pros to have a deeper champion pool so that they can’t be effectively banned out and made useless. The three champs that were not seen during the series were Rengar, Camille, and Leblanc. These three are off the charts in terms of raw power and mobility.

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Coming into this series, there were a couple changes to C9, Meteos, their superstar jungler from Season 3 and good friend of Sneaky, had stepped down and had been replaced by Contractz, a rookie jungler from the NA CS. Contractz had very large shoes to fill but most C9 fans believed in him due to his performances in NA CS.

Even though he is a rookie, he has a whole lot of experience from playing on C9C with Hai, Balls and LemonNation, veterans of the LCS who took a little detour to the NA CS. Now that the scene is set, you know the players, you know the meta and now a fight is going down. It’s 34 minutes into a tense Game 1 where TSM starts on Baron due to their great vision.

They’re fighting the Baron when all of a sudden, their backline, WildTurtle and Biofrost are below half HP from Smoothie’s Miss Fortune Ult!

WildTurtle uses Kalista’s Ult, Fate’s Call to pull Biofrost out of danger, while running up towards the top lane, Cloud 9 use this to advance onto the Baron pit, while Contractz flies in on Kha zix, attempting to kill the now attackable BioFrost. BioFrost gets DELETED but Kha zix and Sneaky lays on the damage with his Ashe. TSM escapes with only three members alive.

Two minutes later, they’re on the Baron again, this time, Hauntzer on Maokai, is teleporting into the fight on a ward behind the Baron pit, as to cut off C9 from advancing. Mainly because there’s no way you’re killing a 35-minute maokai, quickly that is.

While he’s channeling his teleport, Sneaky snipes BioFrost with an Ashe Ult, stunning him and making him take a huge amount of damage from the Baron. TSM move off of the Baron and onto the advancing Cloud 9, Haunzter goes to tank the front line while Bjergsen hits a beautiful double stun, looking good for TSM.

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But then out of nowhere, comes Smoothie on the MF Support! Gets a HUGE bullet time and just absolutely deletes Bjergsen, WildTurtle, and Biofrost, leaving the two mega tanks of Hauntzer and Svenskeren to do NO damage. And with that, Cloud 9 take the Baron and swarm into TSM’s base to win the match, and later on the series, in a convicting 2-0 fashion.