June 1st 2019 has been a day marked on the calendar for the fans of the LCS. It was the day the Summer Split would start and one where NA fans were excited to see their teams on Summoners Rift once again. The first match-up of the split was Cloud9 vs FlyQuest.
draft phase
In the draft phase, Cloud9 first picked Galio. A champion that is good on engage and one that has peel with his taunt. For the rest of the draft phase, FlyQuest picked Irelia, Vi, Ryze, Xayah and Braum while Cloud9 finished off their composition with Aatrox, Hecarim, Sylas and Varus for the other four roles on the team.
Cloud9’s composition had good engage from all of their champions. This is a staple to what Cloud9 while also keeping up with their team-fighting identity. The one way the comp could backfire is if the engages were way off. FlyQuest’s composition had almost the same goal, but it was more of a lock-down.
Back and forth
Around at the start of the match, it started with a back and forth in kills between Licorice & V1per. V1per was able to get first blood onto Licorice but a trade kill came in a few seconds later for Licorice as his tower killed V1per. A few minutes later there was another kill for V1per as he killed Licorice for the second time in laning phase.
Fortunately for Licorice, he managed to rebound after a lack of laning phase by being essential in the team-fights later on. This was especially true in a team-fight around the 24: 45-minute mark as he flanked from the sides towards FlyQuest’s backline. This allowed Zeyzal’s Galio to ult in to keep FlyQuest in place, helping Cloud9 to win the fight while also taking the Infernal dragon prior to the fight.
While Cloud9 did end up taking most of FlyQuest’s base, there was still some fighting breath left from them. FlyQuest barely won a teamfight around the midlane and tried to transition to the Baron. But, a kill from Licorice onto V1per prompted FlyQuest to retreat from such attempt. The very next fight ended up being the last. It was looking like to be a won fight for FlyQuest but Cloud9 clawed back hard as they managed to take down WildTurtle and the rest of the team. This left Pobelter as the only man to fend off a three-man Cloud9 team. But he was unable to do so and Cloud9 walked into the base, killing Pobelter and winning the game.
ConclusionÂ
Overall, Cloud9 played well in this game despite losing a bit of momentum for a few minutes due to the raw power of Xayah and Ryze. It was crucial for Cloud9 to have won that last team-fight since Aatrox and Sylas were getting to the point in the game where holding the Ryze would’ve been a bit harder.
One of the biggest factors was Licorice on the Aatrox, his healing and crucial engages onto the FlyQuest back-line was important for Cloud9 to gain control of the game and take the necessary objectives. The MVP of this game would definitely go to Licorice for this one. He had a good game one despite the laning phase but it will be interesting to see if he can keep it up and have a better laning phase.
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