Photo Credit: Riot Games
One of the most exciting series this weekend was the match between Cloud 9 and FlyQuest. Cloud 9’s current team consists of only Sneaky from their old Season 3 iteration while FlyQuest contains 3 of his old teammates, hence their nickname as old or OG C9. Even before the match was underway, the amount of hype and anticipation as Hai took on the organization he built had the entire League of Legends community on the edge of their seats. And the series certainly did not disappoint.
Game 1
Most people had the matchup pegged as a Cloud 9 win due to their current flawless record. However, FlyQuest opened up the series by quashing those thoughts with Moon grabbing first blood. FlyQuest used this to snowball their lead into more kills and a 5k gold lead during the middle of the game. The first signs of anxiety began to show when a team fight that looked to be in FlyQuest’s favor turned sour and ended up as an even trade. A Baron attempt allowed FlyQuest to take that objective, but the cost was too high as they lost four of their members while only taking down Contractz, the C9 jungler. As the bad decisions began piling up, Cloud 9 forced FlyQuest to take a bad team fight resulting in the entire FlyQuest team being ace’d. Despite still being down in gold after destroying the nexus, Cloud 9 completed their miraculous comeback to take the first game.
Game 2
Game 2 began similarly to the first game with FlyQuest utilizing better rotations and ganks to secure for themselves and early lead. However, unlike the first game, FlyQuest continued the pressure and extended their lead to almost 8k. A desperate last minute team fight by Cloud 9 netted them 2 kills, but with the nexus exposed, FlyQuest focused on chipping down its health bar and as a result closed out the second game convincingly.
Game 3
The stage was set for an epic final game and surprisingly it looked as though Cloud 9 was on the back foot as they have been throughout the series so far. FlyQuest once again secured the first blood off of a gank by Moon and the game became a tug-of-war to establish an early game lead. The game was delayed by several technical pauses before resuming at the deadlock once more. The tides began to shift in Cloud 9’s favor when they managed to get four kills at the Baron pit as well as taking down the Baron in a close team fight. FlyQuest defended valiantly with several scrappy skirmishes that allowed them to almost even up the kill count. A big ultimate from Altec’s Miss Fortune gave FlyQuest a much needed ace which they used to transition into taking the Baron. At 38 minutes the gold was dead even and FlyQuest moved to take the Elder Dragon. Cloud 9 forced an engage to deny FlyQuest the free objective and took down 3 FlyQuest members as well as the Elder Dragon to push their lead slightly ahead. They also grabbed the third Baron of the game off of the Elder Dragon and began sieging the FlyQuest base. Fatal positioning by LemonNation resulted in a huge team fight that ended in Cloud 9’s favor. Despite Hai’s last minute hero antics, he was not able to stop the three remaining Cloud 9 members from winning the game.