The Pre-Game
After a thrilling start to the Summer Split, Cloud9 took on the boys in black and green FlyQuest. Back in the Spring Split Cloud9 managed to sweep the season series with a 2-0 over FlyQuest. FlyQuest were looking to even those odds and bite first this summer.
The featured matchup for this game was between Eric “Licorice” Ritchie and Omran “V1per” Shoura. Would V1per, Rookie Of The Split be able to continue where he left off in spring and bring the game to Licorice? Or would Licorice continue his tyranny and remain the undisputed number 1 top laner in the LCS? Here is what went down.
Draft Phase
As the draft came into play Cloud9 paid a lot of respect to Jason ”WildTurtle” Tran with a Draven ban, while FlyQuest retaliated with a Sona ban to break up the infamous potential Sona Taric Bot Lane. The brand new champion in Yuumi was also taken off the board by FlyQuest. She’s something that’s come into the meta strongly making funnel composition a viable strategy again.
In the end, it was a relatively standard draft across the board. Sylas and Aatrox in the hands of Cloud9 while FlyQuest received Irelia and Ryze flex picks.
The clear-cut win condition for FlyQuest here was to go forward, blow up the enemy carry, while dancing with the deadly dive of Aatrox, Hecarim, and Sylas.
Early Game
Early into the game Licorice and V1per were constantly trading blows. At level 5 Licorice made a mistake of stepping back into V1per’s stun resulting in a dive and a one for one with first blood of the Split going over to V1per.
After this V1per continued to push the advantage he was garnering for himself, solo killing his opponent again. The Cloud9 duo of Licorice and Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen were able to claw their way back into an advantage by using strong wave manipulation. They took this advantage and invaded Lucas “Santorin” Larsen’s jungle, scoring two early kills and stealing multiple camps.
As for the Mid Lane, Eugene “Pobelter” Park was building a small farm advantage, but Sylas’s early wave clear exceeds the likes of Ryze. With this wave clear advantage Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer was able to assist in establishing a strong early vision game to keep himself, and his team safe. Bottom Lane in this game ended up just being known as a “Farm Fest” where neither bot lane had any real action. This played more into Cloud9’s favor, with how it synergized with their solo laners as they power spiked at two items, whereas Wildturtle spiked at three.
Late(r) Game
As the game state moved into the 13:30 mark, Svenskeren managed to secure the Rift Herald uninterrupted, as Nisqy had unrelenting pressure in the mid lane keeping Pobelter in check. After a reset, and quickness of pushing side lanes, Cloud9 managed to converge mid lane for the first turret of the game using the Rift Herald. FlyQuest received a Cloud Drake for their troubles.
For a few minutes, the game fell into a lull, while the next Dragon was looking to spawn, a prized, and rarely uncontested, Infernal Dragon. As the Infernal Dragon spawned Cloud9 went on the offensive around the pit with Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi missing his Varus ultimate. In order to avoid forfeiting the Dragon, Nisqy stole Santorin’s Vi Ultimate and looked for an engage combo with David “Zeyzal” Bérubé‘s Galio ultimate. A quick-witted play came from Juan “JayJ” Guibert managing to weave in a Braum Glacial Fissure in order to prevent the deadly combo. This resulted in FlyQuest running over the fight for two kills and an Infernal Dragon.
Unrelenting, Cloud9 swiftly struck back picking up three unanswered kills in the top lane while seiging the FlyQuest tier one tower. They turned for the Baron with relatively low health bars but backed off respecting WildTurtle’s damage output and ability to clean up a fight. After resetting, and spending their large gold sacks, Cloud9 converged on the Infernal Dragon where FlyQuest also raced towards. Svenskeren won the smite fight then hit a 5 man Hecarim ult, and an ace along with Baron for Cloud9.
Cloud9 with a 9k gold lead smashed their way through the FlyQuest bot lane resulting in a Cloud9 35-minute victory.
Final Comments
Though Cloud9 walked away with a victory, there were plenty of very good looks for the FlyQuest squad. V1per put the peddle to the metal against Licorice, showing that last Split wasn’t a fluke. Santorin looked shaky in the first game of the Split but managed to find a few key Vi Ultimates to keep them in the game. Pobelter was back and forth, from solo killing Nisqy in a side lane, to getting caught when he was needed most. Time will tell if he has improved since Spring or not. In the bottom lane JayJ is fighting for his job and had a solid performance to help his case overall. WildTurtle looked, well, like WildTurtle, making high DPS characters do what they do best. But as he historically has shown, he still needs to work on his positioning.
Tomorrow FlyQuest will play against Golden Guardians in a rematch of the Spring Playoff Quarterfinals. A win if definitely possible. Especially If Santorin has a higher priority pick and manages to get on the map earlier then he did today. Also if Pobelter manages to translate his lane leads to the mid-game.
You can ‘Like’ The Game Haus on Facebook and ‘Follow’ us on Twitter for more sports and Esports articles
For more from Justin make sure to follow him on Twitter!
“From Our Haus to Yours”
Images Courtesy of Riot Games.