This week in North America
The Return of the Count
After MonteCristo officially announced his position as a coach for Counter Logic Gaming late last week, CLG went 2-1 dropping only one game against Team Curse and picking up a surprising late game win over Vulcun Techbargains. From these results, we know one thing for sure: MonteCristo was serious when he made this hilarious Tumblr post about getting down to business, and under his wings CLG could be molded into a prime force to reckon with come time for Worlds if they qualify in the playoffs. As a team perennially known for its high win potential, it is definitely possible for CLG to go on a run of wins under the helm of MonteCristo.
A Tough week for Velocity
After shocking the world last week with their win over Vulcun, Velocity eSports‘s hot streak has finally come to an end. In their game against Curse they had an early lead but a few mistakes at the Dragon pit put the game back into the hands of Curse. Check out this game summary by LCSRecap for more!
Unable to pick up a win against the unstoppable Cloud 9 Hyper X or the reeling Team Coast, Velocity is no longer capable of qualifying for the NA LCS playoffs this split. Hopefully Velocity will learn much from this and come out strong in their last few matches in spite of their situation.
NA LCS Season 4 Qualifiers
On July 26th, 16 teams at the top of the NA ranked 5’s ladder fought their way into the PAX Spring Promotional Qualifier. The Round of 16 and the Round of 8 will be streamed this August 1st-4th by WellPlayed Productions following the NA LCS. The final four teams will be flown out to PAX to fight for a spot to make it into next season’s NA LCS Qualifiers. These games should be some of the most exciting games in the amateur circuit this week, so be sure to tune in. There are several promising teams playing that have a fighting chance to enter LCS in the spring, and the single elimination best-of-three format will make for some exciting games!
Across the Pond in Europe
As teams began to take note of the season rapidly closing in, Lemondogs took this momentum and ran ahead of the pack in the standings, picking up the only 2-0 this week and leaving behind a three-way tie for second place between Team Alternate, Fnatic and Gambit BenQ. As SK Gaming plummets to the bottom, they meet the Meet Your Makers squad who managed to take another victory (and unfortunately, a loss) this week, hopefully signalling a possible comeback in their season for their desperate fans.
On a lighter note, thanks to EG Raidcall’s Krepo and the Min Stora Dag Organization, Martin Berg, a Swedish LCS fan suffering from leukimia, was able to travel to the studio where all of the professional gaming happens. Interested in his day with the best players in Europe? Check out the feature Riot did with Martin.
Be sure to also pass by the Min Stora Dag and the Make-A-Wish to learn more about opportunities like this.
And in Korea
Last week was the final week of this Champions Summer season’s Group Stage, where eight teams qualified for the summer play-offs, in which the winner receives 400 circuit points for the ladder-point system that automatically qualifies the top two teams for Riot’s World Championship and from 4th through 6th qualify for the Korean Regional Finals for the remaining spot of Korean representation at worlds.
During this week’s day 1 of competition, we saw SK Telecom T1 cleaning up MVP Blue 2-0 achieving the only perfect 6-0 (3-0-0) score during the Group Stage. We also had the chance to see an InSec-less KT Rolster Bullets secure the 2nd place for group D while going 1-1, giving LG IM #1 their only win this season even if they were already eliminated from playoffs.
As for Friday night, we saw Jin Air Falcons go 2-0 for the second time this season against a Xenics Blast, securing their playoff spot as 2nd in Group A behind reigning champions, MVP Ozone. As a result, both Xenics teams were eliminated from playoff contention from group A. For the second set of the day, CJE Blaze and CTU had a 1-1 draw on a very tight series that lead to them being tied for first spot of Group B, both of them with a 4-2 record, forcing a tie breaker to be played on next Wednesday, July 31.
The third and last day of the week featured two promising sets, Najin White Shield vs LG IM #2 in Group C, and CJE Frost vs Maximum Impact Gaming Blitz in Group D, with all four teams having a chance of qualifying for the playoffs.
For the first set, both teams needed at least one win to secure a three way tie for 2nd place with MVP Blue. Najin White Shield was able to take both games from a struggling Incredible Miracle, securing their playoff spot and killing all chances for MVP Blue and the last of LG-IM teams. On the second set, featuring Woong’s old team against Woong’s new team (as coach), Frost had the upper hand, needing only one win to secure a play-off spot, while Blitz needed a 2-0 sweep. Things would end up going in Frost’s favor as they won both games and earned first place in the group with a 5-1 record.
And in LPL
During IEM Season VIII, 4 top teams from China battled it out for the prize of $18,000 USD in the great city of Shanghai. The first day of the event kicks off with Invictus Gaming going head to head against Royal Club HZ in a best of 3. In the first game Whit3zZ’s Fizz along with Uzi on Vayne dominate Invictus Gaming during the early and mid phases, but IG managed to drag the game out to 57:01 minutes to take the win. In game 2, Whit3zZ was allowed to play his legendary Kassadin and proceeded to destroy IG during all stages of the game, ending the game with the impressive KDA of 13/4/6 and tying the series. On the last game of the day IG closes out the series under 30 minutes with Zz1Tai on a fed Orianna and Kid on Vayne.
On the second day of IEM, the first set of the day is between the winner of IEM VII GuangZhou, WE and the current first place in the LPL team OMG. In the first game WE takes control the game with early kills and objectives, but OMG was able to drag out the game. After almost 50 minutes, WeiXiao gets a quadra on Twitch and earning a victory for WE. In the game 2 OMG started off with a bang and ended the game under 30 minutes with GoGoing ending the game with the KDA of 10/1/5 tieing up the series. In the last game of the series, Misaya manages to get one of his favorite champions, karthus. Misaya got massively fed with the help of Troll on Evelynn and wins World Elite the series with the KDA 10/2/9.
This is the classic finals in the LPL history, IG versus WE. In the first game WeiXiao gets 3 early kills on Vayne which snowballed him the bane of IG. WE takes the game in 33:45 minutes with WeiXiao having the KDA of 8/0/5 on Vayne, perfect game for WeiXiao. World Elite continues to absolutely dominate IG in game 2 with Misya’s Ahri going 11/1/15 and WE takes the series 2-0.
