Photo Credit: Daily Dot
TSM were the top seeded team coming into the playoffs due to their impressive 17-1 record in the regular season. Their only blip on their record was a loss to Phoenix1 in an otherwise perfect season. TSM received a bye to the semifinals due to their seed and took out CLG to move on to the finals. Their opponents for the grand finals, Cloud9, had to go through Team Envy and upset Immortals.
Grand Finals
Photo Credit: LoL Esports
Game 1 was a bit of an eye-opener for the TSM team as Cloud9 came out strong. Jensen grabbed first blood on Bjergsen just 5 minutes into the game and Cloud9 never looked back. They piled on objective after objective and kill after kill to easily take the game in just under 40 minutes. In particular, Impact, Jensen, and Sneaky from Cloud9 had a good performance.
Game 2 was a reversal of Game 1 as Bjergsen took the first blood on Jensen this time with a bit of help from TSM’s jungler, Svenskeren. The game quickly snowballed in TSM’s favor as they were able to capitalize on Bjergsen’s advantage and unleash their carries on Cloud9. In the end, it was Doublelift from TSM who ended up with the most kills of the game while also remaining deathless throughout.
Cloud9’s fortunes did not improve much in the next game as they lost first blood even faster this time at 3:33 when a successful gank on the top lane resulted in Impact dying. Meteos and Jensen were able to turn the advantage in Cloud9’s favor with two kills of their own, but TSM were quick to retaliate and move ahead with two kills traded back. From there, a series of successful skirmishes allowed TSM to push to victory slowly, but surely at just under 30 minutes.
Game 4 was the most exciting game of the series to watch because the game rocked back and forth between both teams for the first 40 minutes, and it wasn’t until the very end that TSM took the victory. For the early part of the game, TSM held a small margin of a gold lead, but a poor team fight led to Cloud9 getting a Baron and pushing the gold lead to over 5k. However, a triple kill by Hauntzer coupled with a double kill from Doublelift allowed TSM to ace Cloud9 and pick up the Elder Dragon to buff the 4 elemental dragons they took already. From there it was a simple task of pushing down the Cloud9 inhibitors and nexus turrents to end the game.
Congratulations to TSM for winning the North American LCS Summer Split and making it to Worlds as the top NA seed.