The North American League Championship Series (NA LCS) playoffs started with a bang, as Cloud9 (C9) took on Team Envy in the first series of the quarterfinals. C9 was arguably the hottest team entering the playoffs and showed off plenty of brilliant moments during the last weeks of the split, while Team Envy stumbled into the postseason.
In short, the series went as expected. C9 made short work of Team Envy, much as it did with lesser teams all throughout the summer split. The series would end in a 3-1 C9 victory, as Team Envy never quite played with the same consistency after it took Game 1. C9 will move on to play in the semifinals against Immortals.
Game 1 was the lone highlight for Team Envy. They played a strong macro game and prioritized the correct targets and objective control. C9 kept up with the pace and attempted to bully its opponents back, but it was a stalemate for the majority of the game. The star of Team Envy, Benjamin "LOD" deMunck, played immaculately. He was the leader leaving the lane phase and continued to punish C9 in team fights with perfect positioning and incredible damage output. Despite the strong carry play, it was a coin flip entering the late game. Team Envy made just enough correct plays to take control of the map and bulldoze into the C9 base.
From then on, it was the Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen show on the C9 channel. He never played a poor game and willed his team to three straight and destructive one-sided victories. The gem of the bunch, a 20-kill game with Leblanc, demonstrated picture-perfect League of Legends. Jensen was a monster throughout, win or lose, and the rest of the lineup never faltered. Add to Jensen's efforts the steadiness and power of secondary carry Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi and no team will look forward to seeing C9 as their next matchup.
