The first day back in the ESL studio after back-to-back weeks of travel saw a string of upsets as the top four teams in the standings all lost to teams from the bottom half. Ninjas in Pyjamas served up the first upset, taking down Meet Your Makers in the debut of NiP's heavily rearranged roster. New AD Carry Freeze added an aggressive dimension to the bottom lane with his 4/1/4 Draven but the teams on the whole looked pretty even for much of the match. Czaru threw the game away for MYM when he tried to leap into the NiP team to assassinate Freeze, but he was caught by Delficio's Aqua Prison and killed. Ninjas in Pyjamas took a free middle inhibitor off of it and never relinquished the lead, taking Baron and finishing the game before the 30 minute mark. Lemondogs knocked off Fnatic after that, but the most surprising upset of the day was bottom of the table SK stopping 7-1 Alternate. For a day, Alternate seemed to regress to the team that we had seen for the months prior to the summer – they looked uncoordinated at times and made careless positioning mistakes. The mistakes culminated in a Baron bait from ATN that went horribly awry. Jree got stuck in the SK jungle and failed his Flash to escape over a wall, and ATN chose to fight over leaving him to die. SK mopped up 4-0 and then took an inhibitor and Baron, finishing Alternate's worst LCS game to date with ease. Evil Geniuses defeated their old nemesis Gambit (competing with LCS veteran Spontexx as a sub for a sick Darien) using a sneaky two man Baron to get themselves far enough in the lead to seize victory.

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Bans:       

17        Fnatic        76.9K
vs.
23        Lemondogs        79.2K

Bans:       

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The match between Fnatic and Lemondogs started out as a very quiet affair. Lemondogs went in with a plan to shut xPeke down by committing their top laner Zorozero to 3v1 or even 4v1 ganks in mid, and the Dogs built up a slight early lead over the first twenty minutes with two Dragons taken uncontested during a relatively uneventful and passive laning phase. The fireworks erupted at the 23 minute mark as Nukeduck ambushed and assassinated xPeke as Peke went to farm the bottom lane. While Fnatic sent Cyanide and sOAZ top to kill the splitpushing Zorozero for an immediate counter, the rest of Lemondogs pressed in the mid lane and took the middle turret after killing nRated. Lemondogs took the inner middle turret afterward, doing well to ignore sOAZ as they focused on the tower despite Malphite futilely beating on them. Fnatic bounced back from the 5k gold deficit and took the next Dragon, winning the fight over it 3-0 as Tabzz was caught in the deadly Unstoppable Force/Shockwave combo from sOAZ and xPeke. Fnatic turned that win into a Baron and another kill, cutting a 5000 gold lead to nothing in just over a minute.

Fnatic built a lead on the back of that play, using the length of the Baron buff to take multiple towers. Nukeduck had one of the most tense moments of the season when he infiltrated behind enemy lines hiding in a bush with the enemy team incredibly close to discovering him. Nukeduck's daring assassination attempt was sadly a suicide mission as Fnatic won the ensuing fight 2-1 and claimed the last turret outside of LD's base. At 35:45 another set of crazy skirmishes broke out as the Dogs catch Fnatic in a 5v4 fight, killing xPeke. The teams fought back and forth but the victor was never strong enough to complete Baron afterward, the advantage see-sawing back and forth for a couple minutes. The major break for Lemondogs came 40 minutes in when they got a strong engagement on Fnatic while Fnatic sieged their bottom inhibitor. The Dogs won the fight decisively, tracking down all but Cyanide before rushing to Fnatic's base to take the middle inhibitor. Fnatic took a huge gamble by trying to take Baron with everyone for both teams alive but it backfired as Lemondogs contested and won the fight 3-1, taking the 2nd Baron of the match while Fnatic had to defend their base from the super minions. The Dogs sieged the exposed bottom inhibitor of Fnatic with their Baron time, ending in a dramatic fight in the 47th minute that left just the supports standing. Wewillfailer saw his time to shine, fending of nRated's Thresh while he killed both the bottom inhibitor and the respawned middle inhibitor. Fnatic fought a last desperate engagement outside their top inhibitor, but Yell0wStaR died questionably, jumping into the bulk of the Lemondogs team to escape Fizz coming from behind. Lemondogs cleaned up, destroyed the Nexus and claimed their upset victory over the Spring champions.

Lemondogs used one of Fnatic’s signature moves against them.

Day 2 of the EU LCS saw a string of very slow matches where the fastest victory was achieved in 40 minutes. The first game between SK and Fnatic had SK continuing their tradition of taking the early advantage and throwing it away. However, SK recovered from their mistake and bounced back with the help of Twisted Fate and multiple Barons. It was a nerve-racking 66 minutes for SK since they knew they had a history of breaking down in extended games. The second game showcased the subs of the EU LCS facing off against each other with Spontexx on one side and NiP’s new players on the other. It was another back-and-forth slugfest but it was apparent that Spontexx did not have the same level of coordination with Gambit as Freeze, Extinkt, and Malunoo had with Bjergsen and Deficio. The last two games of the day had aTn and MYM crushing EG and Lemondogs, respectively. The victors were never in question once the laning phase was over but neither team could take advantage of their lead and bulldoze all the way to the nexus to finish the game decisively.

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Bans:       

25        SK        107.6K
vs.
19        Fnatic        92.7K

Bans:       

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The first match of Day 2 really set the tone for the rest of the day. It was a hard-fought fight between two of the oldest teams in the European LoL scene and it went the distance. The teams surprised everyone during the bans when they allowed Twisted Fate and Blitzcrank to go through to the picks and both played critical roles that determined the outcome of the game. SK picked TF for ocelote and he played exceptionally well early in the early game to help his team secure an early lead. He accomplished this mainly by ganking sOAZ to shut him down as well as applying pressure to Bot side objectives to force sOAZ away from lane and allow Kev1n to farm freely with Ryze. On the other hand, Blitzcrank went to nRated and his performance on the Steam Golem was very much lacking with poor positioning and many missed Hooks throughout the game. The one thing that kept Fnatic in the game was xPeke’s prowess as a Mid player. He had 100 CS above the next best farmer on the map and never missed a chance to take down over 90% TF, Ezreal, or Sona in one Xerath combo.

With the strength of Xerath and the fear of repeatedly throwing against Fnatic on their minds, SK played very scared even while in the lead. This led to a moment where SK almost threw away everything they built up when they lost four and Baron at the same time after a poor engagement in Mid. However, SK slowly played their cards right and utilized TF’s skills fully by keeping up in gold with his passive and constantly split pushing to prevent Fnatic from successfully sieging into their base. Eventually the game dragged out until it was time for Fnatic to get caught and lose Baron but SK kept playing passively so they could never take out Fnatic’s base in one fell swoop. SK was finally able to finish off the nexus at 66 minutes after multiple Barons and break their 19-game losing streak against Fnatic.

The European LCS roadshow continues in Week 4 as the teams travel to Tenerife, Spain to play 12 matches over Saturday and Sunday. Mid-week roster moves are once again the big story as two more Supports have bitten the dust: Spring champions Fnatic have parted ways with nRated and Lemondogs have dismissed wewillfailer. Fnatic's AD Carry Yell0wStaR will move to the support role for the team as Fnatic brings in Puszu as a temporary measure for this Split until IPL 5 star Rekkles is old enough to join the team in September. nRated was considered one of the stronger supports in the EU and had not been performing terribly in the LCS matches, but according to Cyanide the move was sparked in part by a lack of practice commitment. Wewillfailer was cut from Lemondogs and will be replaced by Mithy, who becomes the 4th member of the now defunct Heimerdinger’s Colossi to work his way into the LCS this Split. Rounding out the changes, Alternate’s mid lane star ForellenLord is unable to play this weekend and will replaced by EU-W Challenger tier player WhiteKnight108.

All signs point to this Split being far more competitive in the standings than the Spring was. Gambit Gaming will lend some definition to the top 3 on Saturday when they take on 8-2 Alternate and fellow 2nd place team Meet Your Makers. Gambit handed both teams losses on home turf in Russia in Week 2, stopping Alternate's undefeated 5-0 run at the start of the season. As for the logjam for the other 5 teams tied at 4-6, Fnatic will have the hardest looking schedule of the lot for their new roster with matches against MYM, Alternate and Lemondogs. Evil Geniuses get the softest seeming schedule with matches against Lemondogs and SK before they close the week out against the newly reorganized Ninjas in Pyjamas.