It must feel a bit like Groundhog Day for five of the six teams in the LCS Summer Playoffs bracket at Gamescom this week. They just went through the longest Super Week in League history, playing a series of tie-breaker games to set their finishing order and, for Team Alternate, to decide whether they made the playoffs at all. Now, less than a week after the regular season became a fight to the death, they have to do it one more time with feeling, and with a $50,000 first place prize on the line.

The team with the greatest cause for confidence in this playoff is Europe’s unquestioned leader, the dominant Lemondogs squad that emerged from a tied-field to go 18-10 in the last split. What set them apart from their slew of 15-13 rivals was their consistency: there was no Dr. Lemondog and Mr. Hyde situation where they went from triumph to tragedy and back again. They simply played well every week, winning more than they lost.

Consistency is a huge advantage in the best of three series Lemondogs will be playing this weekend. But they have to be concerned about their rivals’ ability to surprise them with sudden intensity and skill. This past weekend, when both Team Alternate and Evil Geniuses were playing with their seasons on the line, Lemondogs looked far from dominant. Alternate put their backs squarely against the wall, and Evil Geniuses gave them a sound beating that belied their disparate records. Lemondogs turned their game against Alternate around thanks to daring play and an inspired Baron steal from jungler Dexter.

MYSTERY BOXES

For two of the other five teams in the summer playoffs, it really comes down to who decides to show up. Fnatic managed to defend their second place finish in the regular season, but it should never have come to that. Fnatic limped through the final week of the summer split, blowing a lead before rallying at the last possible moment to finish in second.

Gambit had the opposite arc. They ran hot-and-cold throughout the summer before showing dominant form in the final week that brought them within a game of taking an uncontested second-place. But with their destiny in their own hands at last, Gambit fumbled it. They lost to Fnatic, and then dropped two games to EG in the tiebreakers, finally finishing in fourth place.

Inconsistency could kill these teams in the playoffs. Gambit need more than a dominant performance in one game, they have to be reliable in their execution. They also need to be able to come back: their best games are the ones where they have effectively broken their opponents by the end of the laning phase. But when they’ve been unable to secure those early advantages, Gambit have not shown championship-winning play. Meanwhile, Fnatic have at times struggled to recognize the dangers of their opponents’ compositions, and can find themselves in near-unwinnable situations simply because they misplaced their efforts at the start.

FROM BEHIND

Evil Geniuses, on the other hand, seem to have located their consistency after a difficult summer campaign. Team captain Stephen “Snoopeh” Ellis flirted with benching himself while the team worked out their issues, and that soul-searching looks like it paid off. The team looked great with Snoopeh back in the jungle this week, battling their way into third place ahead of Gambit.

Alternate and Ninjas in Pyjamas are the long shots for the championship match. Alternate barely scraped into the playoffs over SK Gaming in a sixth-place tiebreaker match, and they haven’t had a great summer. They don’t always look like they know how to handle a lead when they have one, and that’s fatal against veteran teams.

Ninjas in Pyjamas were also part of the second-place tie, but did not look like a second-place in the matches against Fnatic and Gambit that sent them to fifth-place. Their performance is tied to how well mid laner Bjergsen can do, which means that unless Bjergsen is having a terrific game, NIP are in for trouble. That paints a giant target on Bjergsen’s back for these playoffs, and nobody can shut a player down like NIP’s quarterfinal opponent, Gambit.