LCS Recap: Cloud9 vs Golden Guardians

Heading into the second day of Week 2 of the Summer Split, Cloud9 faced off against the Golden Guardians. Cloud9 looked to continue to add onto their undefeated record so far in the LCS while the Golden Guardians tried to end that 3-0 start right on their doorstep.

draft phase

During the draft phase, the Golden Guardians first picked Olaf. Cloud9 snagged Neeko while grabbing the Xayah for their 2nd pick, and rounded that off with Lux. The goal of the Cloud9 Bot-lane was to lock-down  their lane opponents with high kill potential. In response to this, the Golden Guardians picked up a rather safe Bot-lane with Varus and Tahm Kench and made the chance of a kill threat from Cloud9’s bot-lane a bit less of a threat.

game phase

Just a few minutes into the game, Cloud9 secured First Blood on the top side of the map with Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen’s Rek’Sai killing Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell’s Kennen. From there the game swung back and forth for the next several minutes. As they moved into the mid game, the Golden Guardians began to build a small lead despite Cloud9’s claw-backs.

Cloud9 picked two members of the Golden Guardians around the mid game and made the transition towards Baron. Despite securing it, the Golden Guardians were able to kill some of the Cloud9 members making the Baron for Cloud9 essentially useless. The flanks from Licorice on the Neeko didn’t work out for C9 as the Golden Guardians were just too powerful at that point of the game. Despite those few difficulties, the Golden Guardians fended off well and marched into the enemy base and secured the win, taking down the undefeated Cloud9.

summary

Cloud9 looked sloppy this week, going 1-1. They didn’t look that clean in their win against Echo Fox and definitely looked worse here in their game against Golden Guardians. The errors were more so on the mechanical and macro decisions than it was on the Champion picks for Cloud9 this week, although one can argue the picks played a factor as well.

Next week, Cloud9 take on the last undefeated team in the LCS with Optic Gaming before facing their long time rivals TSM on Sunday. Cloud9 need to pick up the slack and fix the errors that plagued them this week, otherwise OPT & TSM will take advantage and make it another tough week for Cloud9.

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