EU LCS playoff recap

Everyone came to EU LCS playoffs expecting big things after the incredibly close regular season and boy did they deliver. Underdogs rose to the challenge, old powerhouses were toppled, and surprising trends continued, and I've got it all in one enormous recap.

\Day One:

Copenhagen Wolves vs Alliance:
Alliance were the heavy favorites coming into this game. They had been on a strong up turn as the season rounded out and Copenhagen Wolves were still struggling with closing out their games.

It's safe to say everyone sat up and took notice when game 1 saw Copenhagen Wolves take command from the beginning and never let go. The 4 man stack lane swap initiated by Alliance did not work out for them as they wound up falling far behind the tower pushing might of Jax and Xin Zhao allowing CW to take an inhibitor turret in under 5 minutes compared to Alliances 2 towers. The constant threat of teleport Jax taking the exposed inhibitor was too much for Alliance and they simply never recovered. Game 1 went in strong fashion to Copenhagen Wolves.

Games two and three fell more in line with everyone's predictions, Alliance banned away the Jax and picked dual late game monsters Karthus and Ryze. Alliance's late game focused, wave clear heavy, composition simply out farmed and out scaled Copenhagen Wolves. Alliance's starvation tactics worked and they were able to take the series 2-1 and advance to face Fnatic in the semi-finals.

Roccat vs Gambit Gaming:
Gambit seems to always be a favorite heading into any tournament. Regardless of how poorly Gambit might be performing leading into an event talk of Gambit's legendary boot camps will come up and the phrase "You can never count Gambit out" will be used. After their performance this week we might see the end of that sentiment.

Roccat played their strategy perfectly, with Jankos applying tremendous jungle pressure in the early game and the late game allowing Xaxus on Jax to split push. Gambit in comparison simply fell apart, terrible vision control, poor rotations, mispositioned fights, and worst of all they completely failed to adapt to Roccat's composition in champion select. Game two would see Roccat allowed all but one of their champions from the previous game, and another complete domination of Gambit sending Roccat to face SK in the semi-finals.

Day Two:

Fnatic vs Alliance:
Thanks to their 2nd place finish in the regular season Fnatic had a first bye and it was clear they made strong use of it preparing for Alliance. The result was a phenomenal slugfest between the two teams.

Game one saw Fnatic demonstrating a powerful understanding of the late game scaling composition Alliance had used against Copenhagen Wolves the day before. Fnatic let Karthus and Ryze both go to Alliance and picked themselves up a shields and heals composition with Soraka, Kayle, and Janna. The mass of extra survivability in Fnatic's team overwhelmed the sustained damage focused Alliance team making it impossible for Ryze and Karthus to be the carrying factors they had been against Cophenhagen Wolves.

After Fnatic's game one victory Alliance adapted fast banning out the linchpin of the survival comp Soraka, and bringing an AoE burst team with Ziggs and Twitch. Fnatic attempted to revive the mid lane Zed coupled with a top lane lulu to bring a heavy split push composition. Zed would falter to the heavily buffed Exhaust and Fnatic simply could not hold up to Alliance's incredible AoE burst resulting in the series being tied up at one game apiece.

Alliance lost a ban due to making a champion trade too late in game 2 as a result the Nidalee that had seen purple side bans in both previous games slipped through. Alliance secured themselves Jax and attempted to put together a pick/split push team but their primarily melee champions were no match for the long range poke and disengage heavy Fnatic composition. Fnatic would ride xPeke's Nidalee spears to a 2-1 victory over Alliance and a ticket to the grand finals.

SK Gaming vs Roccat:
Despite Roccat's strong performance the day before SK remained the favorite for this face-off due to their hefty 3-1 record over Roccat in the regular season as well as SK's first place regular season finish.

Despite their favored status SK did not seem as together for their first game as Fnatic had, they allowed Roccat to get the entire trio of Jax, Elise, and Thresh that had carried Roccat to dominant victory over Gambit on day one. The game played out very similarly to the Gambit games as Jankos' Elise put heavy pressure on the lanes, Xaxus laid down heavy split push pressure with Jax, and Vander continued to make incredible plays with his Thresh.

SK didn't take the loss lying down they came back with a clear plan in champion select banning away Thresh and Jax in both subsequent games. With comfort champions removed Roccat seemed to fall apart, making awkward calls to chase for kills giving up objectives in the process. Jankos especially failed to live up to his previous performance as he strayed away from the still free Elise onto Kha'Zix and Xin Zhao, neither of whom gave him the play making power he'd had with the spider queen. The series went 2-1 to SK and meant we'd get an "El Classico" Fnatic vs SK grand finals.

Gambit Gaming vs Copenhagen Wolves:
Due to the length of the previous two Bo3 series this fight to avoid relegation went late into the evening and it seemed to weigh heavily on both teams.

All three games were filled with poor decision making, terrible vision control, awkward rotations, and incredibly obvious mistakes. By the time Gambit finally closed out the series 2-1 we had witnessed the worst display of professional League of Legends this entire split and both teams seemed deserving of relegation. CW will have to work fast if they want to defeat Denial Esports to stay in the LCS next split, and Gambit desperately needs to sort out their recent problems if they want any hope of attending the World Championship in Korea this season.

Day Three

Roccat vs Alliance:
This series was the fight for 3rd place but sadly it seemed that after their loss to Fnatic the day before Alliance had checked out for this series, a thought later confirmed by some of the Alliance players on twitter.

The games were nowhere near bad, but Alliance made a few poor decisions each game allowing Roccat to take firm control including giving Jankos his Elise, trying to counter Trundle with damage heavy Renekton build, and reacting to Roccat's picks in game two by giving Vander back his Thresh comfort pick. All in all Roccat simply played both games better securing themselves the 3rd place title for the EU LCS spring split.

El Classico, Fnatic vs SK Gaming:
This matchup has been dubbed "El Classico" due to it being one of the oldest rivalries in esports spanning several years and numerous esport titles so everyone was sure we were in for a treat and boy did it deliver.

Game one Fnatic brought Leblanc, Kha'Zix, and Lee Sin for a strong pick composition that allowed them to dominate the early game. Fnatic would snowball the early lead into 3 barons and a slow but definitive game one victory. SK did a good job of slowing Fnatic down holding out against 2 barons with their wave clear before finally falling. During the match I took the time to point out once again how an Ohmwrecker for Fnatic would have been an optimal purchase and due to their sizable gold lead could have allowed them to close out the game a good 10 minutes earlier than what they ended up doing.

Game two SK brought a heavy team fight composition against Fnatic's favored Nidalee centric poke team. It seemed to go well for SK as they took advantage of an early mistake by Fnatic to control the game and exploited the fact that poke comps struggle when they fall behind. Unfortunately for SK they were never runaway with the game ahead of Fnatic, and as a result we all learned a valuable lesson about picking your battles. SK engaged a fight over the wight wall top lane. Disasterously both Jesiz and Candypanda, SK's two carries, could not follow the rest of the team over the wall and the fight went horribly for SK. Fnatic not only turned around that fight but immediately secured Baron and a gold lead off the back of it. A single bad engage from SK gave the game away and Fnatic went 2-0 up in the best of five series.

Game three Fnatic were back to purple side and banned out the Nidalee themselves as they'd been doing all playoffs long. Instead they tried again for the shield heavy comp, but SK's burst heavy Orianna Twitch combination and a poor level 1 lane swap call from Fnatic spelled doom for Fnatic. SK out rotated Fnatic at every turn and methodically worked their way to the nexus to force a game 4.

Game four Fnatic again secured their poke disengage team comp they'd been so successful with. This time they avoided the early mistake they'd made before. Strong mechanical play from Fnatic secured them an early lead and again we saw just how hard it is to deal with a poke comp once it was ahead. Fnatic would again ride xPeke's spears to a series victory securing their third straight 1st place finish in the EU LCS and a ticket to the Paris All Star invitational.

With Fnatic's playoff victory secured yet again they proved they really do have what it takes to perform when it counts. They also had the bonus side effect of now ensuring all 3 World Champion franchises would participate in the Paris All Star invitational as both TPA and SKT T1 K were already confirmed to attend.