The NorthAmerican LCS starts back up January 17th with a super week of games
so it seems only fitting that we take a moment to preview what we’re in for.
The teams certainly haven’t made things easy for us, some like Evil Geniuses
and Dignitas have only made it to the stage during the Battle of the Atlantic(BotA)/Spring Promotion Tournament back in December since the LCS regular season ended.
Complicating things even more are the rash of roster changes, only Cloud 9 and
XDG have the same returning roster, and Evil Geniuses is an entirely new team
of reasonably known players taking over for the defunct Velocity.
First
up is the Cloud 9 HyperX- train, the undisputed kings of the NA LCS during the
Season 3 Summer Split. Cloud 9 won over hordes of fans, after seemingly coming
from nowhere, by going a mind boggling 25-3 in the regular season, undefeated
in the NA playoffs, and earing themselves the first place birth into the Season
3 World Championships. After their underwhelming 1-2 loss to Fnatic in their
only match at Worlds, and a poor 0-2 loss to Gambit at IEM Cologne some began
to question if Cloud 9 had been figured out. At Battle of the Atlantic Cloud 9
gave us the clear answer, in a stunning 2-0 sweep they took revenge against the
Fnatic team and made it very clear that C9 would be just as fearsome as ever in
the 2014 season.
Match to Watch: Jan 17th C9 vs TSM. Cloud 9 have
been friends and rivals to Team Solo Mid since C9 first arrive in the LCS, in
large part thanks to C9’s Manager/owner Jack Eteinne, and now their newly acquired Coach
Dan Dinh, former participation in the TSM organization. This rivalry has a
whole new face thanks to TSM’s new powerhouse mid laner Bjergsen, who has made
the team appear even stronger than when they finished 2nd in the NA
playoffs and took games off top teams from other regions during Worlds. TSM’s
new strength will be the first real test of Cloud 9 since BotA; it could set
the stage for another epic win streak or tell the tale of a far more
competitive NA LCS.
TeamSolo Mid has long been a powerhouse team in NA, and despite being dethroned by
Cloud 9 they’ve remained a serious threat and fan favorites. After a somewhat
rocky Summer split TSM finished 2nd in the Playoffs, took a game off
Lemondogs during the Worlds group stage, and even forced a surprisingly close
game against SKT T1, the Season 3 World Champions, during groups at Worlds. All
of that was before the Acquisition of the star mid laner Bjergsen who’d made a
name for himself in the European LCS as part of Ninjas in Pyjamas. Since Bjergsen joined the whole of TSM has
talked about how much of an improvement he’s made, and the team swept Lemondogs
new lineup 2-0 during BotA.
Match to Watch: Jan 17th C9 vs TSM, as mentioned
earlier these two teams have been friends and rivals since Cloud 9 joined the
LCS. This match will show if the new TSM has what it takes to rival Cloud 9, or
if they will again sit in second place.
XDG is the team formerly known as Vulcun, and the only team apart from Cloud
9 to retain the same roster they had during the Summer split of NA LCS. XDG is
a bit of a wild card team, and has always been hard to read. In the Spring
split of season 3 they narrowly avoided relegation with a last minute pickup of
support Bloodwater. In the Summer split XDG finished a firm 2nd in
the regular season, including being the only team apart from CLG to take a game
off of Cloud 9, but an underwhelming display during playoffs left them third
place. During the group stages at Worlds and BotA XDG showed they still
retained the problems closing out games they’ve had since the LCS started; a
problem that has earned them the nickname “throwbargains” (a play on their name
sponsor techbargains) among LCS fans on Reddit and twitter. The late game
problems that still plague XDG make them a difficult to predict team, they
could perform well this coming split or they could falter under the longer game
times that have seemed prevalent in the new season.
Match to Watch: Jan 17th XDG vs C9, XDG was one
of only two teams to take a game against Cloud 9 in the Summer split. The star
players and volatile record of XDG makes every one of their games hard to
predict, but the fact they’ve actually beaten Cloud 9 means this match will be
especially telling as to XDG’s ability to replicate past success.
Where
XDG is unpredictable, Counter Logic Gaming is anything but. Despite a roster of
incredibly talented players, and a reputation as Kingslayers for their track
record against top performing teams, CLG has routinely faltered at public
events and against teams who’re clearly performing worse than themselves.
During the Summer split CLG was the only team to take two games off Cloud 9 and
beat TSM in all four of their regular season matches, they were also the only
team to give up two games against the 5-23 Velocity. After losing to TSM in the
playoffs and failing to make Worlds CLG picked up a new jungler and brought
back former support Aphromoo. At IEM Cologne the team had an incredibly close
series against Fnatic but ultimately lost despite one of the best performances
of mid laner Link’s career. Another jungler change would bring former Lemondogs
member Dexter over from Europe. Dexter made his best attempt to carry the games
during BotA but the rest of CLG would fall into bad habits and CLG ended up
losing 0-2 against Alternate. Some CLG fans like myself still cling to the hope
that Montecristo’s in house training with CLG will turn things around, but for
now the safe bet is to predict CLG to do well against top teams and underperform
against lower rated teams.
Match to Watch: Jan 17th CLG vs DIG, This really
is the biggest match to watch for CLG fans and anyone trying to get a read on
how effective Montecristo’s coaching has been. Dignitas has been notably underperforming.
If CLG can’t win this game and DIG don’t go on a C9-esque winning spree it will
be pretty clear that nothing has changed in the CLG house.
Dignitas
finished season 3 in 5th place after a very rough Summer split. The
team had been on a very clear down turn ever since the end of the Spring split
of Season 3 LCS and things have simply not gotten better. In the off season DIG
moved top laner Kiwikid to support and picked up Cruzer as their new top laner
in hopes of promoting more team synergy and turning things around for the team.
Their 0-2 display against Alliance at BotA leaves much to be desired.
Match
to Watch: Jan 18th CST vs DIG, Dignitas faces an unfortunately tough
opening week for the LCS with matches against top teams. Their best hope for
success outside of CLG’s typical faltering will be the game against Coast.
Coast was forced to fight for relegation and was the only team in NA to go all
5 games against a Challenger team. If Dignitas has made progress on their
problems since BotA this game against Coast will be the best chance to show
they’re back on track.
Curse
is the first on our list of the teams fighting for relegation after their sixth
place finish at summer playoffs. The team went through a massive overhaul in
preparation for relegation that eventually settled on only Voyboy and Cop
remaining from their Summer split roster, and only Cop retaining his position
as Voyboy was switched to mid to make way for new comer Quas. The team
performed well in the relegation matches defeating COGnitive 3-1. New comers
Quas and Zekent showed exactly why they deserved to be on an LCS team, and Cop
has continued to buck the formerly widely held notion of him as the “worst”
Marksman in NA by out picking and outperforming the competition.
Match to Watch: Jan 17th CRS vs CST, The Curse
lineup’s main weakness is Voyboy, between the promotion tournament and his own
soloqueue stream it’s clear that Voyboy is still adjusting to his new role in
mid lane. Going up against a star mid laner like Coast’s Shiphtur will be a
real test for Voyboy and Curse will struggle if he can’t manage to hold his own
in lane.
Coast
has always been an inconsistent team, barely avoiding relegation in the inaugural
split of the LCS, then landing in seventh place in Summer split only ahead of the
abysmal Velocity. They hoped to fix their problems by replacing former Marksman
DontMashMe, who had the lowest KDA in the summer split, with the relatively
unknown Wizfujion. Despite requalifying for the LCS the intensely close 3-2
series against The Walking Zed makes it difficult to tell just how improved
Coast really is.
Match to Watch: Jan 19th XDG vs CST, the match
against XDG is probably the toughest matchup for Coast in week 1, and it could
go a long way to seeing what Coast has learned during their time in the North
American Challenger League during the LCS break. If they can convincingly
defeat XDG there’s a good chance Coast will be a highly competitive team in the
Spring split.
EvilGeniuses is probably the hardest team to predict on this list. Their spot was
held by Velocity during the Summer split but that entire roster was dissolved.
In its place the new Evil Geniuses was formed, their name sponsor EG had
previously held a team in the European LCS with three members of this roster,
Snoopeh, Yellowpete, and Krepo. The team rounded out the roster with the
somewhat known Challenger player Pobelter in mid and new comer Innox in the top
lane. The roster performed well in the promotion tournament, successfully
holding the LCS spot against DTG, but it’s impossible to tell how the roster
will match up against the top teams in NA until we see them play.
Match to Watch: Jan 17th EG vs XDG, the very
first match of the Spring split will tell us a lot about how competitive EG
will be in the NA LCS. If EG can convincingly beat XDG it will likely herald
the NA LCS being an all-out brawl between all the teams. If however EG is
unable to perform against XDG it will be difficult for EG to break into the top
4 NA teams.
On
paper the Spring split of the NA LCS 2014 season looks more competitive than
either split was last season. Thankfully we don’t have long to wait to see for
ourselves as the action kicks off at noon Pacific Time January 17th from
Riot’s new studio.
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