It was a 42-minute nail biter that came down to a single team fight.

Narrowly prevailing over Team Liquid in the NA LCS Game of the Week, Team SoloMid’s captain Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg had plenty to say following the close match.

The Plan

Heading into the game, Bjergsen says TSM’s main priorities were not letting Diego “Quas” Ruiz, Alex “Xpecial” Chu, or Christian “IWDominate” Rivera roam, so as to deny Liquid any early leads.

“Xpecial has been doing a lot of roaming for them, and they’ve just been getting a lot of pressure through top lane. Almost every win they had a lot of pressure through Quas and Dominate in the early game. That’s something we wanted to stop.”

Except they didn’t. Team Liquid took an early lead in the bottom lane, taking a turret and Dragon before TSM were able to respond. The advantages soon transferred into the mid game, allowing Jae-hoon “FeniX” Kim’s poke on Jayce to start becoming an ever increasing threat for Bjergsen’s Azir. “I think getting behind early definitely hurt us a lot. I was constantly pressuring and winning my lane, but Jayce doesn’t have that much pressure early against Azir,” says TSM’s mid laner. “But once you get to mid game his poke becomes really strong and he can start taking objectives.”

Stop blasting me!

To deal with Jayce, Bjergsen opted to go for a Hextech Revolver before his defensive Zhonya’s Hourglass.

“I thought about getting Zhonya’s first, which is why I got the Seeker’s Armguard, because it could let me dodge the engage and make me stronger in team fights.” But Bjergsen quickly realized that TSM weren’t ever going to get successful team fights if he was always getting blasted down by Fenix. “So I quickly switched my priority into getting some sustain.”

“The only thing that was stopping us from getting team fights and objectives was I was constantly getting poked,” he says. All of his teammates had some way of sustaining or healing, so Fenix perpetually popped Bjergsen with Shock Blasts of doom. “Getting the Revolver, it gave me some more sustain and it let the Jayce poke be less useful overall.”

The Team Fights

The Revolver certainly helped until the team fight at Baron when Bjergsen was taken out immediately after Xpecial’s Tibbers gave him a bear hug in Quas‘ Equalizer. “The only thing I really needed to do was wait for my tanks to come up… But I was just a little too aggressive looking for poke and they got the engage on me. It was a pretty big mistake on my part.”

The opportunity to fix those mistakes came at 40 minutes near Team Liquid’s Red Buff. “Before the last team fight happened, I thought we were in a pretty bad spot,” Bjergsen admits. “They had four Dragons and I think Baron had just timed out. They had a lot of control and Jayce poke especially was starting to get really strong. I felt like the only way we would win is if we got an engage, and that’s what they ended up giving us.”

Heading up from Dragon, Gwang-jin “Piglet” Chae ran into Jang-sik “Lustboy” Ham, Lucas “Santorin” Larsen, and Jason “WildTurtle” Tran, forcing him to defensively Flash away. “I think it was definitely a mistake from Piglet. He had to blow his Flash early, but they still didn’t have to engage. At this point, we were both willing to fight — it was just who played it better and they felt like they got the proper engage.”

That engage was a three-man Annie ulimate from Xpecial. But thanks to quick zoning moves from Dyrus and WildTurtle, a missed Equalizer from Quas‘ Rumble, and fancy footwork from Bjergsen’s Azir, TSM were able to clean up the team fight and push into Liquid’s base.

The Win

After the fight, TSM’s adrenaline was pumping. “Santorin and Lustboy were like, ‘We can end the game!’ and I was like, ‘Really? Can we?’ I pressed tab and they had like 50 seconds on their death timers, or something ridiculous like that because it was so late in the game. So we pushed pretty much from mid all the way down.”

And while TSM were able to destroy Team Liquid’s Nexus and walk away with a win, Bjergsen left the game feeling impressed with his competitors. “I still think Team Liquid is a very good team. They played well early game. They got a lot of turrets on us, a lot of Dragons, their objective control was really good,” he says. “But we just outshined them in team fights. I wouldn’t say [our comp was] a lot better in team fights, but we just played the team fights mechanically better.”

Today Team SoloMid may have taken the victory, but Bjergsen knows there’s still a lot his team can improve on before they make their case for Worlds domination. “Honestly I don’t feel good after the game against Liquid, because in our practice we just play mid game a lot better. We have a lot better communication in the early game especially… They just got a lot of free advantages in the early game and in the mid. Late game we weren’t controlling objectives nearly as good as in scrims. When you’re just playing like, 60-70% of what you do off stage, it doesn’t really feel like a win.”

We’ll have to see if Bjergsen and TSM can unleash their full power as the 2015 Summer Split continues!