The 2015 NA LCS started with a bang as reigning champs Team SoloMid (TSM) took on their fiercest rivals, Cloud9 (C9). While the Bay Life boys were ultimately able to topple the best friend club, there were several key points throughout the action packed 40 minute match worth breaking down. Here to walk us through the first NA LCS match of the 2015 season is TSM captain and dominating mid laner, Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg.

Picks and Bans

From the start, Bjergsen explains the pick and ban phase went in TSM’s favor. He and his team banned away power picks in Kassadin and Lissandra in favor of a stronger jungle matchup, while also taking away Rumble, one of An “BalIs” Van Le’s strongest champions.

C9’s bans of Tristana, LeBlanc, and Nidalee were targeted more towards TSM’s comfort champions, according to Bjergsen, since he and his teammates have been having success with them in Solo Queue. “Personally I was very surprised to see Nidalee banned since it’s more of a niche pick, and they didn’t pick a team composition that has a hard time dealing with her,” he said.

He goes on to explain that if Cloud9 had picked Morgana and Jarvan IV instead of Elise and Thresh, it would have been a much more difficult game for TSM. “Morgana and Sivir’s spellshields are great against assassins like Ahri and bruisers with instant crowd control like Irelia and Rek’Sai,” he says, also detailing how Jarvan is a much more powerful pick than Elise in their current state, while also synergizing well with Fizz and Gnar.

As for his own team, their composition was pick-based and meant to hit a great mid game power spike. He explains the choice to go with the crazy blue-haired AD carry Jinx was because she’s the second best hyper carry after Tristana and brings consistent damage, allowing for quick turret trades and rotations, especially once she grabs an Infinity Edge and Statikk Shiv. “With the peel from Janna and crowd control from Irelia, Ahri, and Rek’Sai, it lets Jinx stay alive and deal a ton of damage.”

Early Game

When you’re looking for an opening to get ahead, you always need to be playing around lanes that are doing well or winning 1 vs. 1, explains Bjergsen. He also says that the mid matchup between Ahri and Fizz is very dependent on Junglers. So during the early game when he lands a hit on Hai “Hai” Du Lam in lane, he immediately calls for the slithering Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen on Rek’Sai to sit behind him, as only two things can happen: either Elise shows up or she doesn’t. “If Elise ganks me we’ll come out with 1-2 kills depending on how the fight plays out,” he says confidently. “Either way we’ll gain overall since I am higher on health and Rek’Sai is the stronger duelist. If Elise doesn’t show, I’ll continue to bully Hai until I can kill him or force him to recall, which opens up the map for roams, towers, or Dragon.”

The early matchup in mid went smoother than expected for Bjergsen, as it can often be difficult for Ahri to hold her own against Fizz. Fizz has a stronger all-in fight since he wriggles around, dodging Ahri’s spells, but Ahri can control the lane with her charming long-ranged poke. “If Fizz and his jungler are on even grounds and can get a good engage, they can easily win and snowball from there,” says Bjergsen. “But if Ahri maintains her control and pokes from afar until Fizz can’t engage on her (because he’s got low health) she’ll win. So even if he’s stronger, he can’t fight me because of the health disparity.” Not to mention the ever-lingering presence of an underground Void Queen.

The rest of his team didn’t have such a favorable start, with Cloud9 opting for a lane swap that gave Balls’ Gnar time to free farm, something much harder for Marcus “Dyrus” Hill’s’ Irelia to do 2 vs 1. “Regarding the 2 vs. 1, we needed to either catch the wave top lane with three people so Dyrus could get the farm or we needed to use four people to deny Gnar or potentially dive him. In this game we failed to do either,” said Bjergsen. “We didn’t react accordingly.”

Mid Game

TSM started making big moves in the mid game, winning teamfights and successfully trading objectives that mattered more to them in the long run.

They took C9’s tier two top tower while C9 was heading towards Dragon, and according to Bjergsen, TSM was happy to trade the turret for a second Dragon as he feels the Dragon’s turret damage buff wasn’t relevant at that point in the game. Additionally, the move forced C9 to have to choose whether to go for the Dragon or come back to their base to defend their Inhibitor turret. “After C9 comes back to defend, we set sails for Dragon. Since they all went back to save their inhibitor, we could easily go back to dragon.” Yet C9 still had plenty of wards watching Dragon that TSM didn’t manage to clear out, causing a fight to break loose that ultimately went in TSM’s favor.

But they made a mistake soon after. Rather than controlling the bottom wave that was building and later coming back to contest dragon, they went for a sneaky two-man Dragon that C9 definitely saw coming. “We essentially gave them a free dragon after a smart play,” Bjergsen said.

Only a few minutes later, William “Meteos” Hartman was able to steal TSM’s Blue Buff and another huge, unnecessary teamfight for C9 went down in TSM’s favor. Dyrus started things off, forcing Hai to back off and use both his ultimate and playful trickster, his most important spell for fighting. At this point, Jinx is doing more damage than Sivir, so Bjergsen and Jang-sik “Lustboy” Ham on Janna do their best to peel so Jason “WildTurtle” Tran can dish out maximum damage.
Janna also does a good job of zoning Gnar throughout the teamfight, making him unable to get a game-changing ult off. Meanwhile, Dyrus was positioned behind the team throughout the fight in order to soak up as much damage as possible, while zoning Sneaky.

“Since their main damage dealers were pushed out or were focusing Dyrus, it was easy for Ahri, Rek’Sai, and Jinx to coordinate burst on a target and obliterate someone,” Bjergsen explains. But it was really Hai’s misplay that got things going here. “Fizz’s ult missing was a big factor in the fight and C9 didn’t need to pick the fight after such a start. It was almost too easy for Turtle to deal consistent damage in that fight.”

Then why, after such a coordinated teamfight, did TSM subsequently give up both Baron and Dragon only minutes following the engagement? Greed.

After getting C9’s middle inhibitor, TSM got greedy and went for C9’s bottom tower rather than backing up to obtain full vision control around Baron while Balls was dead. C9 took advantage of the situation and made a move towards Baron.

“We were careless going for the bottom tower and didn’t think C9 was ballsy enough to go straight for the Baron,” Bjergsen admits. “After that, C9 goes straight to Dragon and get positional advantage while Dyrus is respawning from the Baron fight. We were unable to fight them since Dyrus didn’t have his teleport up and wouldn’t be there for the fight. Balls is dead as well, but in the 4 vs. 4 teamfight they have Baron and we need our frontline top laner more than C9 does. We decided not to take the risk and fight the 4 vs. 4, since we’d still be in the driving seat as soon as Baron buff ran out, and we were still feeling confident we’d win the game.”

Late Game

Heading into the late game, TSM still didn’t have the best vision on C9. But it didn’t matter too much, as C9 chose to push straight down mid, opening up a great flanking opportunity for TSM. Bjergsen was able to start the fight off by landing a Charm on Meteos and dodging Hai’s ultimate, putting his team in a great position. “Hai jumped me which let Turtle do free damage to the enemy team, while Janna was with him in case Gnar tried to get onto him,” Bjergsen explains. “We also fought in the middle of the lane so Gnar couldn’t get a good ultimate on any of our carries.”

Following the fight, TSM felt confident enough to siege C9’s middle inhibitor and finally take their first Dragon. “At this point in the game, the first dragon is extremely important,” says Bjergsen. “In the current meta it’s fine to trade Dragon for other objectives like we did in this game, but around the 25-30 minute mark you still want to have the first. The 6% AP and AD becomes very relevant at this point in the game when your carries start picking up big items.”

The nail in C9’s coffin was the subsequent teamfight that broke out after C9 tried to sneakily kill Baron. Despite poor vision, TSM caught them red handed. Yet instead of trying to regain good positioning, C9 charged ahead with Sivir’s ultimate and Daerek “LemonNation” Hart’s Righteous Glory to try and trap Turtle and Lustboy, but Jinx’s Flame Chompers kept them safe.

C9 didn’t let up there, a mistake that basically ended up costing them the match. They flashed to try and take out Dyrus, failing to do so while the rest of TSM repositioned in the river. “They blew everything trying to engage and ended up losing a lot more HP than we did,” said Bjergsen. “Our composition was overall stronger at this point as well, since Irelia is practically unkillable and Jinx does a ton of damage from the back. Then I Flashed and missed Charm like a noob, but at least we won!”

The Big Win

While TSM did manage to walk away with a win in the first game of the 2015 season, there were still plenty of lessons to be learned. One of the key takeaways was how they played the 2 vs. 1 game. “We’ve since gone a lot more in-depth about how to play the 2 vs. 1 with different champions, which will make sure we don’t get behind from the get-go like in this game,” explains Bjergsen. He also mentions how his team could have pressed their mid advantage faster, in order to look for plays around the map. “It’s important to be able to translate one winning lane into controlling an entire side of the map or at least another lane. We did it eventually, but it could have been done much faster.”

As for TSM’s lackluster warding, Bjergsen thinks it’s okay they didn’t constantly have vision, as they traded it in favor of sieging C9’s base or taking another buff. “I think being earlier on objectives like Dragon, and setting up vision would have helped us get more early objectives or kills,” he says. “C9 was good at being early on Dragons, which forced us into looking for other trades.”

Looking back on the game, Bjergsen seems proud to come away victorious over Cloud9. “Beating C9 always feels like a huge accomplishment,” he said. “We had a tough week of scrims, and not as much practice as some of the other teams, and we weren’t feeling confident facing C9 after their dominant performance at IEM. Winning the first game of the season in the new studio was an amazing feeling. And it was nice to get back at C9 from the beginning of 2014 Summer Split!”

Team SoloMid will face off against Cloud9 once more this split, on March 29. Until then, you can catch all of TSM’s and C9’s games every Saturday and Sunday right here on Lolesports.