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The New Age of CIS
2015 was a relatively successful year for the CIS scene in the professional League of Legends environment. A top-4 finish at IWCI in Turkey, followed by a disappointing performance at IWC in Chile and victory at Melbourne All-Stars exhibition have broken the CIS’s reputation as one of the weakest wildcard regions. To seek new heights, Riot Games have taken over the domestic premier league and LoL Continental League, the heir to SLTV, has just concluded its inaugural regular season.
The most dominant team in 2015, Hard Random took the first place in the regular season, after rebuilding their roster around their star solo lanes, Smurf and Kira. The storied regional organisations, Natus Vincere and Team Empire, took two more spots in the playoffs, and Vega Squadron snatched the last slot by winning hard-fought tiebreakers over Vaevictis Esports and Just.MSI. Some of the favourites before the season, Tornado ROX and Flashinthenight-led Team Differential are headed into relegations after not showing any signs of their early brilliance.
The Playoffs Picture
In the battle for 1.5 million Rubles (~$22,000 USD) and a spot at the International Wild Card Invitational in Mexico City, the top four teams will play in a single-elimination best-of-five bracket.
Semifinal #1 - Hard Random vs. Vega Squadron - 27/03 - 1PM GMT
Three-time Starladder champions, Hard Random, has rebuilt drastically in the off-season. Former ADC LeX has joined Gambit, and support Dimonko transitioned into the coaching role. Just.MSI and underperforming jungler Symphony was let go to Vaevictis Esports. Instead, they took the ROX ADC aMiracle and former #1 EUW Challenger support Likkrit and completed the roster with PvPStejos, who switched from the top lane into the jungle.
While these three have performed admirably in the regular season, the solo laners are what define this team. Smurf has developed into an immortal wall in the top lane, accruing a mind-boggling 9.4 KDA. He hasn't stuck to a specific playstyle either, as he's been able to play the entire spectrum of the top laners, from split push focused champions like Quinn and Fiora to unkillable tanks in Trundle, Poppy, and Malphite. Despite taking a step back from being the primary carry of the team, Kira still leads the league in gold-per-minute due to the amount of pressure he’s able to create in the mid lane while playing champions like Anivia and Lulu.
Hard Random are decisive, strong and ready to pounce at you at any time due to their double teleport usage which allows them to overwhelm almost any team in the mid-game and cover for their mediocre laning and any minor losses in the early game. This results in relatively clean finishes -- their game time is less than 31 minutes on average against LAN finals opponents.
The former Carpe Diem roster which is now known as Vega Squadron struggled throughout in the regular season. After beating Hard Random in their Week 1 matchup, the Sharks weren’t able to get any victories against other top-4 teams and were forced to play long tiebreakers. Partly due to coin toss luck they were able to get a bye into the second round of tiebreakers, and Vega prevailed and got into the playoffs.
Jungler Zanzarah is the true star of this team, holding it together in the early game and pushing their advantages, sometimes too eagerly, leading to Squadron getting shut out like their games against Empire or Natus Vincere.
Interestingly enough, despite looking by far the weakest team in playoffs, Vega looked pretty good against HR in the regular season. They took a dominant 26-minute victory in Week 1, utilizing Poppy jungle and pre-rework Shen to defeat Hard Random. In the rematch in Week 4, they again looked solid for 20 minutes before deciding to trade inhibitors and then getting caught by the Likkrit’s Bard and lost the game shortly after.
Looking at Kira’s solo queue match history, we might see his signature Azir/Viktor/Vladimir in the playoffs which doesn’t look good for Drobovik, who usually opts for the passive laners like Lux, Morgana or Zilean. Vega’s best shot will be at getting standard lanes and following Zanzarah blindly in all his endeavors because there is no way they’re going to out team fight the cohesive unit HR is.
Semifinal #2 - Team Empire vs. Natus Vincere 27/03 - 5PM GMT
Before the season, Empire wasn’t considered as a strong team. Even the most optimistic predictions had them dodging relegations. Instead, Empire ran rampant over the league, averaging 17 kills and 43 assists per game against top squads, defeating the likes of Na’Vi, Vega, and a role swapping Hard Random. While the CIS core of the team isn’t surpassing expectations (well, besides the BULBAZABP, who for some reason looks like a solid CIS ADC now), the imported top side are going wild.
Former Enigma Esports jungler, Memento, reminds me a lot of the EUCS jungle prodigies in 2014. Constant invading, working in tag-team with his solo lanes and snowballing everyone, he has the highest gold share of every jungler at more than 20% and secures more than 24% of the team kills. Rek’Sai, Nidalee, Elise, Kindred - everything was insanely scary for his opponents. Hungarian top laner Mumus is rock solid, mainly playing tanks. He plays lane swaps well, and won’t save an ultimate if he sees a free kill and leads the charge with Memento in Empire’s engages, resulting in over 70% kill participation for the both of them.
The key to defeating Empire seems to be shutting down the mid lane. Paranoia’s champions after LeBlanc and Ahri are mostly ignorable and putting him behind forces Memento to spend more time in the mid lane to negate the influence of the enemy mid laner. It leads to less pressure on the bot side and removes Empire's ability to 4v2 dive the enemy bot lane with Memento and Mumus.
Natus Vincere.CIS is the polar opposite of Empire. With the core of the second place CIS team, Dolphins, accompanied by Saulius joining in the mid lane and Genesis as coach - the team was expected to be the one and only worthy challenger to Hard Random. But patch 6.2 saw the team struggle to adapt to the meta and Na’Vi ended the regular season only in third place. Saulius is still in search for his effective champion pool, playing eight champions throughout the regular season.
While being the best AD Carry in the region, Vincent struggles to put up consistent numbers and has by far the lowest kill participation number from any ADC at 57.8%. That’s why Na’Vi were dependent on Zvene playing peel champions like Lulu, the champion they had the most success with. But with Lasagna stepping up again in the past few weeks, Zvene was able to move to the split push champions like Fiora, Trundle, and Quinn, while Lasagna and Skash are playing frontline and peel for Vincent, which allows him to shine.
Natus Vincere and Empire have played each other twice in the regular season. In Week 2 Na’vi prevailed due to a series of Heroic Charges from Lasagna’s Poppy. However, in Week 4 Na’vi's composition centered around Ryze got brutally shut down by Empire’s run-and-gun Malphite/Kindred/Tristana squad, losing the game at 21:36, less than 2 minutes after Ryze had completed his Rod of Ages.
History says that Lasagna’s teams usually step up in playoffs, and one of the most intelligent CIS junglers can surely tailor a plan on how to shut down the impudent Empire. With overall better laners, the former Dolphins quartet are looking to seek revenge against Hard Random for the last year’s grand final loss, and Team Empire won't be the ones to stop them.
Come on in!
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