EPT
It was the perfect streak with twelve wins, offering their enemies nothing and taking from them everything. They looked unbeatable and perfect. For six weeks Immortals held the glory of an undefeated season. It seemed that a loss was a far away dream and one that would never be achieved, at the very least in the regular season.
But then Week 7, Day 1 came around. Immortals faced Counter Logic Gaming in the third match of the day. Immortals respected Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes’ Kalista, Choi “Huhi” Jae-hyun’s Lulu, and Corki enough to ban it away, while CLG banned away Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin’s Nidalee, Eugene “Pobelter” Park’s Twisted Fate, and Jason “WildTurtle” Tran’s Kog’maw.
Immortals ran Quinn for Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon, Gragas for Reignover, Lux for Pobelter, Lucian for WildTurtle, and Soraka for Adrian “Adrian” Ma. CLG faced off against them with Darshan “Darshan” Upadhyaha on Fiora, Jake “Xmithie” Puchero on Udyr, Huhi on Leblanc, Stixxay on Ezreal, and Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black on Bard.
The game started with Darshan and Xmithie finding Huni top lane and bringing out the lane swap for the duo lanes top lane. Aphromoo and Stixxay took krugs to start their laning phase, with a fairly passive early game. With CLG’s bot lane freezing near their tower, Immortals’ bot lane moved to take a late gromp. Since Aphromoo’s play style is very aggressive, when he saw Wildturtle and Adrian going for gromp he showed up to attempt to steal. He showed up again to harass Reignover at his blue, which set the jungler behind and gave vision to the jungle path for CLG.
Ward control was deep and aggressive from CLG and this allowed for a 5-minute dive from Xmithie and Darshan to turn into first blood on Huni, with Darshan picking up a double kill after Reignover attempted to clean up after Huni had fallen.
Darshan picks up another kill on Reignover shortly after the double kill because of good rotations from Huhi and Xmithie. Because of how mobile, and safe the bot and mid laners were, Xmithie was free to camp Darshan’s lane, giving Darshan a huge lead against Immortals, while the team keeps up pressure in other lanes.
Stixxay was picked off after a poor decision on his part, getting caught off guard by Wildturtle and lost both his summoners and his life. Titanic Hydra was Darshan’s first buy, and that proved huge as he solo engaged on Huni in an attempt to extend his lead. Immortals rotated four members top lane against the duo from CLG while Xmithie soloed dragon for the first dragon in the game. This was a teleport play that went awry for CLG as Immortals followed up to protect their bot lane duo, and Huhi did not follow Lux up to top lane to assist his team
Once lanes swapped back, Darshan immediately engaged back onto Huni, and that was followed up by Xmithie while Huhi and Aphromoo engaged and picked up the kill onto Pobelter.
Five members of Immortals rotate to mid lane to try and brute force their way down the lane. Because of the lack of gold lead, and unusual lack of jungle pressure, they were forced to back off, with Xmithie came in behind Immortals to harass, and pulled out two important ultimates from Immortals and made it out without an issue. Huhi demonstrated the power of Leblanc without a qualm as he deleted Wildturtle, who stepped up a little too close to him, and tried to fight him.
The second Dragon goes over to CLG, as Huhi gets caught by Reignover, as well as Adrian’s silence. CLG played the long game, with any time that Darshan was split pushing, CLG played completely safe, and didn’t get engaged on. Xmithie got engaged on with a flash body slam, and ultimate from Reignover, but with no silence to stop him, he was allowed to just flash over the wall, and get away. At 25 minutes, gold was near even, kills close, but CLG was ahead in towers, and pressure. But the ward control was solid, and Immortals was forced to play around Wildturtle. After once again picking off Stixxay, Immortals tried to force Baron to stop Darshan’s relentless split pushing. Although Huhi fell to Wildturtle in the ensuing fight, CLG were still able to stop the Baron while Darshan picked up an inhibitor in the bot lane.
For the next few minutes, Darshan kept Huni bot lane clearing super minions while CLG looked to siege in the other lanes eventually forcing Immortals to use Adrian’s Last Wish and Locket of the Iron Solari. Darshan dove with a hard engage on Huni through double nexus turrets while getting the Tower kill, and forcing Huni’s Quicksilver Sash.
Huhi gets picked in the mid lane after a slight misplay, double tapping distortion to come back to his own demise. This starts a Baron call on Immortal’s side with CLG managing to slow down the Baron play long enough to allow Darshan to pick up the bot inhibitor again.
Immortals pick up their first dragon at 35 minutes, and Darshan switches his pressure to the top lane. Once again, Aphromoo finds a catch on Huni with Xmithie and Darshan following it up with another inner turret. The game slows down a little bit after this catch, as CLG sets up a 1-3-1 split with Xmithie top lane, Stixxay, Aphromoo, and Huhi mid, and Darshan bot. The Zz’rot from Udyr made for substantial pressure in all lanes and forced Wildturtle to go and defend against it.
Both teams awaited the impending Baron as the potential final fight for victory. At forty minutes, Huhi and Darshan brute forced the Immortals base, as they picked up the Nexus towers and Adrian, but failed to end the game as Immortals managed to retreat quickly enough to save their Nexus.
Another dragon goes over to Immortals as Wildturtle starts Baron with barely any time left on the respawn for Darshan. Immortals rotate over to Baron with Wildturtle, and Xmithie is hovering around looking for the steal, something he missed out on the last time Immortals took baron. This time, however, Xmithie is a level up on Reignover, and he manages to steal Baron for CLG.
Immediately Darshan starts to teleport into bottom lane and runs towards the open nexus with homeguard empowerments. He flashed forward and started to attack the Nexus, running around the final objective, getting exhausted, and still managing to finish off the game with style.
It took a very solo queue-esque play style from CLG to topple Immortals. The Darshan split push, accompanied by the Xmithie plays. Between his camping for Darshan, his ZZ’Rot portal, and his Baron steal, Xmithie managed to outperform Reignover and bring in the win for CLG and stop the Immortals perfect Season. The dream was shattered.
To be completely fair, with only one potentially difficult game left in the final two weeks of the NA LCS regular season, we may only see this single loss in the Immortals history for the NA LCS Spring split, and CLG would claim the title as the only team capable of beating the Immortals.
