The North American League of Legends Championship Series concluded yesterday, with Team Liquid beating Cloud9 for the top position in a match that featured many surprising moments.
It has been a long tournament for the ten teams to compete in the LCS of 2018. Ever since June of this year, professional teams have been vying for the champion position in the League of Legends Championship in North America. Yesterday, that title went to Team Liquid after an intense series of games against the seemingly unstoppable Cloud9. Both teams fought long and hard throughout the tournament, but eventually Team Liquid come out on top. Prior to the Finals, the two competitors held a record of 11 wins to 6 losses, overcoming teams such as Team SoloMid, 100 Thieves and OpTic Gaming to reach this moment.
Finals Recap
Much to many people’s surprise, Cloud9 made some decisions during the Finals, that could only be described as questionable. To begin with, Cloud9 selected Hecarim and Twitch in the first game, two champions that have not seen play in the competitive scene for years. Furthermore, Jensen’s mid-lane pick as Malzahar also brought into question what Cloud9 was doing during that match. On the other hand, Team Liquid banked on much more reasonable picks, such as Xmithie with Olaf or Doublelift with Kai’Sa.
The first game progressed relatively well in Cloud9’s favor, however, after half-way through the game, Team Liquid managed to turn things around, winning a team fight and then picking up a Baron kill. Just like that Team Liquid turned the tide of the game and this advantage carried on till the end.
The second game was much more one-sided, ending with a 16,000 gold advantage and a second win for Team Liquid. This time we again saw Team Liquid preferring traditional champions, while Cloud9 tried to pull off a similar combination as last time, with Jensen on Malzahar and Sneaky on Twitch. However, it was not meant to be and Pobelter’s Irelia did some serious damage to Cloud9’s line up. In the end, Cloud9 had only taken down one Tower, while Team Liquid had done away with 10, in addition to 3 Dragon kills, 1 Baron and 27 player kills.
Things started to look grim for Cloud9 and the culminating final match was no different. In the third game, Jensen switched his Malzahar for a Cassiopeia, while Sneaky locked in Ezreal as the ADC. That, however, would not be enough to stop Team Liquid’s winning streak and the match ended with only 3 player kills for Cloud9 as opposed to the 15 of Team Liquid. Furthermore, Team Liquid managed to bring down 11 Towers and a Baron, while the maximum that Cloud9 was able to accomplish was to kill 2 Dragons.
Team Liquid is headed for greatness
All in all, Team Liquid dominated Cloud9 at almost every step of the way and deservedly won the championship. Of course, TL has been on fire this year, winning the North American LCS Spring against 100 Thieves and later coming in second in the Rift Rivals 2018: NA vs EU event. Furthermore, the NA LCS Summer 2018 also saw Doublelift win an MVP award for his performance. For their great efforts, Team Liquid got to bring in the major prize of $100,000 from the $200,000 prize pool.
