While it has become common in the NA LCS for teams to run single-use niche comps such as C9’s season-opening Teemo mid or Curse’s ill-fated fast push from this week, Team Coast stands out for their willingness to stick to their guns. They picked Varus in three of their four Super Week games, including in one of their two wins thus far, and also took a shine to the jungle Wukong Dignitas beat them with in their second Spring Split game. With the exception of WizFujiiN’s Varus, a comfort pick, key common themes in C’s trailblazing picks are significant damage and high carry potential. In keeping with this style, the linchpin of their drafting this week was one of the most voraciously damage-focused champions in the game - Katarina. Beginning with their Week 2 loss to TSM, Shiphtur has played The Sinister Blade in three consecutive games, and lost each time. The champion’s strong snowball potential, along with her rather binary tendency to succeed spectacularly or have a minimal impact, put a huge burden of execution on Coast and presents an ideal case study on how the team’s aggressive style is faring in a meta defined by the massive tanks in top lane.

Unfortunately, their first Week 3 game against C9 was a simple mismatch in general team skill. Even in that game, however, Shiphtur made a good case for picking Katarina with an effective roam bot and excellent teamfight damage that kept Coast in the game until C9 outplayed them at dragon 24 minutes into the game. C9 spiralled that victory into a 4k lead that eventually finished with Hai posting an 11-3 score on LeBlanc. Additionally worth noting is that LeBlanc is an extremely difficult matchup for Katarina, but Shiphtur was able to avoid being humbled in lane by roaming bot, taking the tower, and taking mid tower down from nearly full health with a four-man push. The lead was short lived due to C9 answering with a 3-2 trade and dragon, but it was clear that a better team than Coast might have been better able to utilize the tempo advantage gained from Katarina.

Katarina’s outstanding multitarget damage with successful resets makes her an excellent bot lane ganker, but her weak laning effectively requires players to maximize advantages from this strength. As she is nearly guaranteed to be at a minion deficit and have minimal lane presence in most matchups, Katarina is a high risk, high reward roamer whose limited play options force her into predictable patterns. CLG was clearly prepared to counter this gameplay, knowing that Shiphtur would feel pressured to make plays despite knowing that CLG was responding to his roams. Off of Shiphtur’s roam, Coast dove Doublelift and Aphromoo with full knowledge that Link’s Elise was nearby, and the countergank gave CLG a 3-1 trade. Subsequent attempts to make catch-up plays by Shiphtur were denied by good warding and careful positioning, allowing CLG to gradually suffocate Coast by rotating between objectives without letting C’s Wukong-Leona-Katarina combo ever pull off the comeback play.

Although C9’s dismantling of Coast actually proved to be an impressive showcase for how Katarina potentially carries a game, CLG’s ease at wilting the Death Lotus demonstrates the more likely result of a Katarina pick into prepared opponents. Unable to make an impact in lane, the Katarina player is required to pull off successful roams simply to stay even due to the inevitable CS gap. A good roam could feasibly be the catalyst for a win based on objectives taken off the kills, but that is true of roam by any champion, and Katarina’s strong roaming is probably not worth the assurance of losing mid lane. Her predictable playstyle is problematic, as shown by CLG, and though the teamfight potential of Death Lotus and reset chaining is enormous, it typically only turns winning games into shutouts but is unable to remedy a losing one. Katarina is the poor man’s Kassadin, with a lackluster laning phase, outstanding roam, and excellent teamfighting. However, her lack of unconditional mobility, flanking ability, and even any soft CC firmly places her in the category of ‘risky picks’ while Kassadin is revered as OP. There may not be many champions that can do what Katarina does, which is why Coast returns again and again to her, but the former Good Game University might be best off sheathing The Sinister Blade in favor of more standard picks.

League of Legends spectators generally develop a sense of the current competitive-level metagame - the trends in popular picks and strategies that define how the game is played by its top players. Whether it's the ADC triumvirate of Season 2, the development of the 1v2 sidelanes in Season 3, or the siege-oriented mid laners of Season 4, fans are accustomed to certain trends in games... as are players. As such, novel compositions and strategies in the professional scene are relatively rare and interesting, even when they fail. In Week 3 of the NA LCS, Curse Gaming employed a novel strategy against CLG: a powerful push composition designed to group up from 3:00 and eliminate the enemy structures. Unfortunately for Curse, their plans came to naught when CLG rallied and took the win. Despite the loss, there were many correct choices that Curse made in their execution. Their defeat also spells out a few lessons to be learned for teams attempting “innovative” comps.

Warmup
The Draft

Curse’s draft for this strategy was well-planned and well-informed, a rarity in NA LoL where Champions tend to be picked if they are popular or preferred rather than part of a plan. While the loss of their third ban makes Curse’s initial draft plan more opaque, both Annie and Elise are Champions that are extremely powerful in the early game and are particularly deadly under allied turrets. Annie’s frequent CC and Elise’s range and resilience make them powerful turret and objective defenders, ones that could halt a push composition in its tracks. Curse also hid their strategy very well with their picks. A first pick Ziggs and second/third of Mundo and Jinx are fairly typical in the current metagame, but each choice was integral in the composition. Furthermore, Curse left popular picks Renekton and Shyvana on the board, taking advantage of the likelihood that CLG would scoop up the strong but CC-lite Champions. Only with the fourth and fifth picks, Nunu and Janna, did Curse reveal that their strategy for the game would be likely be centered around fast objective securing. This sequence also made the Curse draft flexible: if they had seen picks that could’ve countered their planned composition, they could’ve easily transitioned to a more “standard” set of Champions. However, after seeing the slow-starters in Vayne and Yasuo, Curse went ahead with their plan, surprising analysts and spectators alike.

Sprint
Early Game

The differences between Curse’s strategy and typical NA LCS play became apparently almost immediately. Upon hitting the Rift, Curse ran straight for CLG’s Blue buff. Most teams now eschew risky level 1 plays because they tend to be more dangerous than they are worth after the early-game bounty reductions. However, Curse’s intent was not to steal (since a buff steal would only be mirrored by CLG), but to set up vision. Zekent started with a Season 3-style “wards only” load out to give Curse early insight into LinK’s juggling. Even IWillDominate began with a pink ward, a luxury that only Nunu, with his incredible jungle sustain, can afford. As such, Curse already possessed vision of potential incoming threats when their unorthodox 3v1 top lane push began. These early turret pushes are hardly new to NA, but the combination of Nunu’s Bloodboil and Janna’s Eye of the Storm on top of Jinx’s turret-massacring Pow-Pow was. With this setup, even the newly-reinforced top turret fell long before CLG managed to do the same in bot lane. Then, when LinK arrived top to help Nien force Curse’s pushing trio away from the turret, they immediately went mid to do the same push after Voyboy forced Chauster back to base. When mid became impossible to push, the trio then rotated bot and took Dragon with assistance from Quas. Curse’s movements became an effective pattern: use Janna, Nunu, and Jinx as the pushing core and supplement it with Ziggs’ powerful sieging kit or Mundo’s Infected Cleavers. CLG found no answer to this early on. Their attempts to teamfight were either rebuffed by Monsoon and Absolute Zero or Quas would teleport in and, with Voyboy and Cop, would pile on enough damage to beat down CLG. If CLG didn’t group up and remained in lane to farm or push themselves, they’d either fail to push as quickly as Curse, be completely stymied by Quas, or simply fall to sudden four-man ganks. In 19:30, Curse took a 6K lead with 2 of 3 Dragons, 7 turrets, and 5 unanswered kills. With the map control and objective lead accrued with this perfect push composition, Curse gained what looked like an unassailable lead.

Crash
Late Game

Like most niche strategies, Curse’s demolition composition had a severe drawback: the late game. By ignoring lane farm, remaining grouped up through the early game, and picking two high-utility Champions with low late-game damage, Curse set a timer on their victory. With each moment that passed and each CS that CLG picked up, Curse’s chances at victory grew smaller and smaller. CLG’s own composition, while lacking in the ability to stop Curse early on, also had a massive amount of teamfighting potential through the Shyvana/Lulu Displacement and Yasuo Last Breath damage and wombo-combo. When added to the juggernaut Renekton and the hypercarry deadliness of Doublelift’s Vayne, Curse’s Champions had no chance scaling into the late game. As Curse approached CLG’s base, CLG found angles from which Curse could be flanked, giving them assured engages that led to decisive victories. Chauster’s Yasuo pick was also extremely good at preventing Curse’s pushes later in the game when Wind Wall was larger and on a shorter cooldown. Additionally, Curse focused on early game items that complimented their pushing rather than ideal late-game damage items. Voyboy, for example, started with three Doran’s Rings for extreme early power, then transitioned to Tear of the Goddess and Zhonya’s for extra mana in turret sieges and stasis to avoid engage attempts. More typical Ziggs builds have more AP and CDR providing far more destructive power in later stages of the game. With only two Doran’s Rings, a Sightstone, and a Giant’s Belt, IWillDominate resigned himself to being little more than a slow-and-Bloodboil bot. Most importantly, a critical error resulted in Curse’s first teamfight loss: continuing to push when key disengage abilities were used. At 21:30, both Monsoon and Absolute Zero were used to keep CLG from flanking, yet Curse persisted in attacking the top lane inhibitor. That tunnel vision on the inhibitor gave CLG an opportunity to fight, which they used to get their first three kills and a Baron, halving Curse’s gold lead. This was the beginning of the end for Curse, whose momentum was stopped short by CLG’s ascendant strength. Even when Curse got the objectives they needed in later fights, they had trouble killing off CLG’s more powerful Champions. Shortly afterwards, they couldn’t do so at all, and were forced to hopelessly defend their base as CLG reached towards their inevitable victory. While Curse’s fast-push strategy was a breath of fresh air to the stagnant NA meta, their failure to fully capitalize on its strengths and avoid its flaws led to their opponent’s victory.

Team SoloMid were the undisputed kings of North America in Season 2. With their legion of fans behind them, they looked to recreate this success in Season 3. With the rise of Cloud 9, history would not repeat itself. After qualifying for the Season 3 Summer Split, Cloud 9 took the LCS by storm turning in an impressive 25-3 regular season record. Try as they might, TSM were not able to beat the rising stars of Cloud 9 a single time during this period.

Their first ever meeting during Week 1 was highly anticipated as many fans saw this match-up as a true test of C9's strength. Strictly looking at the gold count, TSM kept the game close for quite awhile. That said, the map told a different story. C9 put constant pressure on TSM by taking down turret after turret and establishing superior map and objective control. Eventually, C9 was able to capitalize on a botched engage from TSM and win the game. With this loss, TSM got their first real taste of what it felt like to not be on top. In their next three regular season meetings of Season 3, C9 proved to be the stronger team, establishing early leads and never giving TSM a chance to come back. The two teams met again in the Summer Playoffs Finals. The results were no different as C9 continued their dominant streak going 3-0 against the veteran team. It seemed a new master reigned over NA.

Fast forward to Week 3 of the 2014 Season and the most hyped match of the week, the season’s second meeting of TSM and C9. TSM were unable break the losing streak in Week 1 as they lost the first match of the season to C9, but this match was important as these teams look to be the two best in NA and their head-to-head record will be critical, both in the official standings and the minds of fans alike

Much like their prior meetings, C9 were the ones to establish an early lead. Unlike other times though, TSM didn't roll over and die. After grabbing a kill on Hai while he stuck around to finish off a turret, TSM made some smart maneuvers around Baron pit to capitalize on C9's lack of vision and were able pick up two more kills. They then turned these kills into a risky Baron attempt that allowed them to get the buff onto four members of their team. Throughout the game C9 tried to engage on TSM, but severely underestimated their opponent’s damage as they lost several fights they initiated themselves. Both Bjergsen and WildTurtle steadily became too big for C9 to handle as TSM steamrolled to victory in the final fight.



TSM finally broke its C9 curse. With the team looking like they can once again top the NA scene, it was imperative this finally occurred. With the implosion of XDG, it seems as though TSM stands to give C9 the biggest challenge in maintaining their NA dominance. We certainly have a rivalry brewing.

Week 4 marks the return of the red-hot Dignitas, who will attempt to continue their 5-game winning streak throughout their three-game weekend. With games against XDG and Coast, over whom Dignitas was previously victorious, and the declining Curse, it's a strong possibility that we'll see an 8-2 Dignitas at the end of the weekend. If Dignitas can pull this off, then they are likely to be tied with Cloud9, who face XDG and Coast themselves. Facing two of the strongest teams on NA right now will not make for an easy week for either of the last place teams and may drive more nails into their LCS coffins. CLG will get a break after their Week 3 performance, only facing EG. However, that match gives EG a chance to tie CLG in victories, which will be critical after their tough match against TSM. The current leaders of the pack are likely to continue their lead through Week 4's games, and its up to Curse or EG to hit them into a potential three-way tie. No matter what happens, it'll be a weekend you won't want to miss.