Cloud9 Smash Week 1 Of LCS - The Benefits Of A Long Lock In Run
The League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) gave teams an ample amount of time to practice, get acclimated with their new teammates, and get a feel of playing on stage again, or if you are a new player, you get to experience stage play for the first time. This “warm-up” tournament benefitted all sorts of teams, some more than others. For teams like Cloud9, this was the best prize any team could get, apart from winning the Lock In tournament itself which they were one game away from.
This tournament awarded strong play in two different ways. Firstly, there was of course, if you win and keep winning you get to better your chances of finishing with the LCS Lock In trophy — nice little bragging rights to begin the LCS season. Secondly, the more you win, the more you get to play. Something that — depending on who you ask — is more valuable than any LCS Lock In trophy, a trophy that many might not view as important - unless you’re an uber-competitive player.
If a team was performing well in the LCS Lock In, they were rewarded with more games — giving a team more experience moving into the Spring Split. The absolute peak of this was Cloud9; although they fell to Team Liquid in the finals — after failing to accomplish what would’ve been their second reverse sweep of the playoffs — they still got to reap another reward: experience.
Cloud9 played the maximum amount of games that one team could have played in the Lock In tournament. They first played all of their round-robin matches, finishing at 3-1 after four games, qualifying them for playoffs. Once in the first round of the playoffs, they beat their old rivals, Team SoloMid 2-1 — the only team to not sweep their opponents in the quarterfinals. Moving on to to the semifinals, Cloud9 dug themselves in an early 0-2 hole to start the series only to bring it all the way back with a reverse sweep.
Once finished with the reverse sweep, they moved on to face Team Liquid in the Lock In finals. The storied organisation already had one reverse sweep in the Lock In playoffs and were on pace to make LCS Lock In history, after they nearly achieved another reverse sweep until Team Liquid took them out in a dominant game five. This totals out to 17 games, to put it into perspective, they played a whole split — minus playoffs — in three weeks.
Cloud9 made it to the finals and played an exuberant amount of games, the round-robin, and once in the playoffs, they played three series that went the full distance. Compare this to teams like Counter Logic Gaming and Dignitas who failed to qualify to playoffs after being eliminated early in the round-robin; the gap is very noticeable.
The experience they reaped as a reward has already paid dividends for this Cloud9 squad. A 3-0 start to the first week of the LCS tied alongside 100 Thieves, and an MVP frontrunner in Robert “Blaber” Huang emerged — someone that was already looking strong alongside the other Cloud9 mainstays. Lock In was a more serious practice; there were a number of games that if it were a normal scrim, the team getting losing would’ve asked for a restart. Cloud9 were actually one of the teams to experience this when they faced Team Liquid in the finals. Team Liquid’s Barney “Alphari” Morris completely wiped the floor with Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami in several games.
But again, even though they didn’t win the LCS Lock In title, Fudge — who was having a poor LCS Lock In after talking a lot of trash — got more experience. This experience helped him perform better versus enemy top laners in Week 1. Add some ganking from a well-performing Blaber who was pitching a tent in his lane, plus enemy top laners picking Ignite and Teleport three consecutive times and you got yourself a lane that is no longer as weak as it was. One could make the argument that enemy teams’ handling of picking Camille with Ignite and Teleport elevated his play, but the thought still remains — this was and is a better Cloud9.
Putting aside the fact that teams absolutely loved picking Camille with Ignite even though Cloud9 proved they could handle it, Cloud9 did get better comparing their play now versus their play during the Lock In tournament. They look like the strongest team after the first week of the LCS. Yes, 100 Thieves is tied with them at first place, but those wins were not pretty or at least they weren’t as pretty as their ones in Lock In.
Although Team Liquid is surely waiting on the wings to get back in the standings after their one surprising loss to Immortals, this bodes well for Cloud9 moving forward in the season.
Images via Riot Games
