In a full five game series, Cloud9 bested Team Liquid to end their incredible Spring Split and crown themselves the first Mid-Season Showdown Champions.
In an incredibly long and arduous series that went the full five games, Cloud9 ultimately prevailed to raise their 4th LCS title and represent NA for the first time at the Mid-Season Invitational.
The series initially looked promising for Team Liquid however, with Santorin still out for health reasons many believe jungle would continue to be a weaker side for the squad but game one proved quite the opposite. With two incredible dragon steals, Armao propped up the two scaling carries, Jensen and Tactical to efficiently take game one.
In game two, Cloud9 fired back with pick composition primarily facilitated around Vulcan’s Rakan. Though stumbling in the midgame as a baron power play briefly put Team Liquid in the driver seat of this game, the jungle/support synergy on the side of Cloud9 overwhelmed their opponents with a quick series of 4 picks in the span of one minute.
Seemingly a mixture of miscommunications from Team Liquid and opportunistic engages by Blaber and Vulcan, Cloud9 equalized the series.
Team Liquid brought the momentum back on their side in game 3. CoreJJ directly countered Blaber’s jungle Nocturne by opting for Thresh, providing an escape route for TL’s hard carries via his lantern and essentially wasting all of Blaber’s paranoia ults. Despite this, Team Liquid had little engage threat and required fights around neutral objectives to find advantageous positions.
Though this often didn’t pan out exactly the way Team Liquid hoped, a final fight around the dragon pit saw Vulcan miss a crucial Magnet Storm on TL’s carries, allowing Alphari and Tactical to easily mop up the fight and once again claim Team Liquid a lead.
Very few punches were thrown in game four, but the ones that landed were meaningful. Going 20 minutes without a kill on the rift, an extended teamfight won by Cloud9 broke the standoff and firmly put themselves ahead in this do-or-die matchup. Team Liquid managed to extend the game in hopes of bringing their scaling Viktor to fruition, however their hand was forced to challenge C9 around the Elder dragon.
With two late game accelerating objectives, Elder and baron, C9 eventually broke Team Liquid’s nexus for a second time.
Both teams had their entire seasons on the line in game five, but it appeared like only Cloud9 had a plan. An incredible early game set C9 up perfectly, a laneswap to put their botlane duo top got first blood onto Alphari for the 5th game in a row while Fudge’s Sion intentionally executed himself in TL’s jungle to put Armao behind.
Perkz only continued their hot streak from here, his roams snowballing Cloud9’s lead. An initially winning play for Team Liquid saw them use the classic strategy of putting Herald mid to gain priority over the dragon. Thought getting two inital kills, Fudge’s Sion ult completely split the fight and rendered Jensen useless while Tactical separated himself from his team by diving in the backline. Perkz easily cleaned up the fight and set Cloud9 on their inevitable path to victory.
In the fastest game of the series, Cloud9 claimed Spring split for their second year in a row. Whereas Cloud9 missed their opportunity to compete at MSI last year, this tight 3-2 finally punched their ticket to international competition.
Also read:
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- Rekkles crowned 2021 LEC Spring Split MVP
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Image credit: Riot Games