Counter Logic Gaming played their first match in thirteen days against the 0–5 Vulcun Command. After CLG's solid play in Week 1 and Vulcun's previous lackluster performance, odds were heavily in CLG’s favor. CLG, drafting Syndra for LiNk and the newly-buffed Nasus for HotshotGG, indicated their intention to continue their impressive and innovative play from Week 1. Yet it was Xmithie on Hecarim, after early ganks in Top lane, who secured a double-kill first blood and obtained the lead. Chauster paid another visit Top to strike back at Vulcun, but Zuna and Muffinqt disengaged and retaliated, allowing Mancloud the easy clean up in a three-for-one exchange. Vulcun built upon this lead for the rest of the game by taking every Dragon, catching and killing out-of-position CLG members, and forcing CLG to abandon their turrets. Vulcun looked invincible as they demolished CLG in fight after fight. Finally, Vulcun finished off CLG's Nexus at 37:00 without CLG taking more than one Vulcun tower. After five losses, Vulcun finally looked focused and prepared in an impressive Week 3 victory over veteran favorites CLG.


In Curse and GGU's Week 1 match, GGU had an early leg up on Curse, but Curse managed to turn the game around with their superior late game experience and execution. Their rematch began with a strange team composition from GGU, including a Jungle Leona for NintendudeX and a Top lane Fizz for ZionSpartan. Curse pulled ahead early by giving Cop first blood with a four-man gank on Bot lane, but GGU fought back by taking Dragons and turrets. At 20:50, GGU took another Dragon and engaged on to Nyjacky, but Curse collapsed on their opponents and traded one death for an ace. Two and a half minutes later, Curse turned a Red buff steal into another ace and a lead that GGU could no longer contest. A Baron, three inhibitors, and many ineffective GGU ultimates later, Curse destroyed the GGU Nexus to extend their undefeated streak to 6-0. GGU's unorthodox strategies attempted to unbalance their opponents, but Curse’s standard and powerful play prevailed once more.


Still seeking a Week 3 victory, CLG's next match was a far greater challenge: the on-fire Dignitas. The early game was an all-out brawl between the veteran teams with each trading kills, turrets, and objectives. CLG maintained a slight gold and kill lead overall in the first twenty minutes, at least partially due to some silly mistakes by dig. However, the strength of Dignitas' skill and composition was brought to fruition at 27:00 when scarra and imaqtpie combined their damage and utility to great effect, helping their team to ace CLG and take CLG’s Mid inhibitor turret. At 30:30, Dignitas executed the same salvo in another teamfight after taking Baron to once again ace CLG and eventually win the match. The Season 2 Troika teams proved to be close in skill through most of the game, but Dignitas' superior composition was too strong to deny. With this loss, CLG ended their first LCS day in two weeks with an 0-2 record while Dignitas continued their winning streak.


Vulcun's second match of the day was against compLexity and after their victory over CLG, the lesser challenge of coL seemed easily surmountable. Sure enough, Vulcun gained a huge lead at 2:10 when brunch U and M eye A were annihilated by Zuna and Muffinqt. The advantages continued to pile up for Vulcun, resulting in a 4K gold lead at only 13:00 and a whopping 13K lead at 27:00. coL could do nothing as Vulcun slowly but surely picked them apart using a similar strategy as they used against CLG. Vulcun finally struck the killing blow around 32:50 without losing a single turret or champion. They utterly dominated coL, leaving spectators to wonder how Vulcun went from punching bag to gladiator in just one week.



In GGU's second match of the week they faced off against the winless Team MRN. After getting utterly crushed in their first two LCS games, Team MRN was under a lot of scrutiny. Luckily, they were able to win back a little bit of their fans' faith with a victory over GGU. To say this game started slowly is a bit of an understatement. First blood didn't occur until 25 minutes into the game. Despite the lack of kills up until that point, Team MRN had secured a 6K gold lead through a one turret advantage as well as picking up three Dragons to GGU's zero. This gold lead was more then apparent in the first major team fight as Team MRN rolled over GGU with MegaZero picking up a triple kill as Renekton. GGU tried to turn the situation around by barreling down Mid lane as five and engaging on Team MRN, but all this resulted in for them was a 0-3 team fight for their troubles. Sitting at a 12K gold deficit there wasn't much GGU could do to stay in the game. Team MRN stayed in complete control of the game pushing into GGU's base with impunity and picking up the win without a single death.


Going into this game 0-2 for the week certainly wasn't how CLG envision their Week 3. Just the day before, compLexity received a disappointing defeat at the hands of Vulcun, despite their solid debut against Curse in Week 2. This game gave us our first pro look at Thresh in the hands of coL M eye A. While it was refreshing to finally see a Thresh walk onto Summoner’s Rift, M eye A didn’t maximize Thresh’s potential in his debut match. The game started fairly even with both teams trading fairly even in kills. CLG eked out a gold lead by taking a turret advantage, but the game equalized after an incredibly extended fight. HotshotGG would start things off with a Teleport+Homeguard combo to quickly rush behind behind compLexity's inner Bot turret, but would only land Unstoppable Force on Chuuper's Cassiopeia. Chauster followed up on the engage and the teams traded 2-2. Not content with going even, compLexity continued to chase down CLG and turned the entire skirmish into a 5-3 trade. However, this still wasn't enough to keep compLexity in the game as they were still behind in terms of gold and map pressure. A single wiffed Petrifying Gaze by Chuuper lead to a 4-0 trade for CLG and compLexity never recovered. From there CLG was able to win a few more skirmishes and eventually takedown the Nexus.


If Vulcun could pull off a victory against Team MRN, they would complete the week with an impressive 3-0 record, which was crucial after 0-5 start. The game got off to a frantic start with Vulcun successfully invading Team MRN's Blue buff and stealing it, but ClakeyD retaliated and stole Vulcun's Blue for himself. Team MRN struck first by picking up the first tower of the game, despite Vulcun initiating the lane switch. ecco continued the momentem by picking up first blood on Mancloud. Xmithie was there for the revenge kill but Team MRN had already secured a 1.5K gold lead at five minutes into the game. Team MRN continued to control the mid game smiting an uncontested Dragon and avoided any unnecessary deaths. The next time Dragon came up Team MRN boldly placed themselves inside the Dragon pit, slayed the Dragon, and engaged on Vulcun picking up three kills for one. Team MRN continued to stay in control of the game until the next Dragon came up. This time things went wrong for them and with superior positioning Vulcun was able to clean up the fight 3-1. Vulcun used this momentum to manuever around the map and apply pressure by taking down a couple more of Team MRN's towers as well as Baron. Vulcun's siege proved too much for Team MRN as Vulcun picked up kill after kill to further expand their gold lead. While trying to fend off Vulcun from their inner Bot turret, Team MRN couldn't stack up in the team fight and were promptly aced, leading to a Vulcun victory.


This game turned into somewhat of a consolation match for both teams. They both played three games this week and came into this match 0-2. At least one of them would come out with a win once all was said and done. compLexity initiated an impressive level one roam, not picking up any kills but burned DontMashMe's Cleanse and Flash and Bloodwater's Flash. Despite this, first blood was netted by GGU as NintendudeX pulled off a level two jungle invade on Lautemortis. Xin Zhao's incredible early burst damage in combination with a Lee Sin Resonating Strike from ZionSpartan was enough to secure the kill despite Lautemortis attempting to Flash away. GGU continued to roam around the map taking Bot tower and picking up two kills Top lane, including yet another amazing Resonating Strike from ZionSpartan. GGU was in control of the game until a terrible team fight at Dragon led to their team’s demise. They would still stay close overall but a questionable Baron call put them in another bad spot. While successfully conquering Baron Nashor, GGU lost four members for compLexity's one. Through turrets and free Dragons, compLexity established a 6K gold lead over GGU. GGU over committed on brunch ü while trying to defend their base but he would be saved by Stand United from Shen. From there, compLexity cleaned up the straggling members of GGU and finished the game.

Vulcun came out of nowhere this week. After five straight losses, it was difficult to imagine their lineup accomplishing anything without far more practice against their LCS opponents. Yet this week Vulcun was the showstopper, surprising viewers with their well-executed strategies and joining Curse and Dignitas as the only teams to go 3-0 in an LCS week. This amazing turnaround was only made possible by the incredible play of Vulcun's lineup, who adroitly adapted to bans and picks in such a way as to get a comfortable, specific, and powerful team composition in each of their games. Vulcun's entire lineup was at the top of their game this week and each player deserves commendation. However, our NA Player of the Week could only be the AP Mid that crushed his laning opponents and consistently pushed enemy teams away from their turrets, mandatorycloud.

Though Xmithie's persistent ganks on Zuna and Muffinqt's laning opponents kept the camera on Vulcun's bot lane pair, Mancloud destroyed his opponents from behind the scenes. In Vulcun's game against CLG, all eyes were up top when Vulcun took first blood and a follow-up kill, but when the camera returns to mid, Mancloud had just finished railing on LiNk's Syndra. The fact that Mancloud could exert so much pressure on a level 6 Syndra, an extremely high burst champion in the capable hands of CLG's Mid laner, is a testament to his aptitude in his lane and with Nidalee. His next move on the map was even more impressive, running top to clean up the low health members of CLG after their dive onto Zuna and muffinqt. The coordination, communication, and map awareness required to execute these countergank illustrates Mancloud's ability to quickly respond to the ever-changing scenarios of the game, a skill whose importance cannot be underestimated.

In spite of his laning prowess, his ability to exert pressure and deal terrible, terrible damage in the late game is what impressed us the most. In all three of Vulcun's Week 3 games, Mancloud controlled his team's opponents, forcing them into unfavorable decisions at best and massacres at worst. The long-range, high damage dealing Mids were his comfort zone in last week's games. With Nidalee, Mancloud was always in the right place at the right time, easily avoided his opponents' efforts to shut him down, and his spears were practically magnetic. As Kobe observed, "So basically mandatorycloud's spears are gonna zone the entire team of CLG..." When his Nidalee was finally banned out by MRN, Mancloud's Lux fulfilled the same zoning and sniping role, initiating teamfights by wiping Heartbeat off the map. Vulcun's marvelous Week 3 comeback would be a mere fantasy without the arcane dominion exerted upon Summoner's Rift by Vulcun Mancloud, earning him our praise and respect as NA Player of the Week.

Week 4 is incredibly important, being the first of two Super Weeks in the Spring Season. Each team plays five games — potential for drastic changes to occur in the standings. It will also indicate as to how these teams stack up against one another. While we can compare teams’ overall records, some head-to-head matches have yet to occur, such as the highly anticipated Curse vs TSM match.

One of the biggest surprises of Week 3 was Vulcun going 3–0, including a huge upset over CLG. The question remains if they can maintain their momentum and further increase their position in the standings. Likewise, Team Dignitas, 4–0 over the last two weeks, looks to continue their win streak. On the other hand, CLG looks for redemption: they fell to 4th place during their bye week and failed to reclaim their position with a 1–2 performance in Week 3. This also marks the return of TSM after their bye week. All eyes will be on them to see if they used their off days effectively in preparation of their upcoming matches. Finally, we have the current LCS leader, Curse. This might be the week that Curse finally drops a game, as they have an incredibly difficult schedule playing top top teams, TSM, CLG, and dig. As last week showed, upsets can happen at any time so expect plenty of action and a few surprises going into Week 4 of the NA LCS.

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