Day 3: North America at Worlds

by John Jaskot

Day 3 of the play in stage is in the books. Lets see how our North American (NA) teams did in game one with C9 vs KaBuM! (KBM):

2018 World Championship Play-In Day 3 #Worlds2018 KaBuM! e-Sports vs. Cloud9 Kabum! Esports Lineup: Zantins- Top Urgot Ranger - Jungle Sejuani DyNquedo - Mid Leblanc Titan- Bot Tristana Riyev - Support Braum Cloud9 Lineup: Licorice - Top Lissandra Blaber - Jungle Nocturne Jensen - Mid Galio Sneaky - Bot Kaisa Zeyzal - Support Thresh Watch all matches of the split here from all of our leagues: NA LCS, EU LCS, LCK Champions Korea, LPL.

The pick and ban phase went very well for C9 with Licorice back on the Lissandra that he did so well with in the first day. and Sneaky onto a comfort pick with Kai’ sa. The only worry I had at the start was the Galio pick for Jensen as I rarely see him on a tanky play making champion.

The early game started off rocky for C9 when Zeyzal almost got killed at level 1. It settled down a bit as the teams farmed out their lanes and we see Blaber roaming the top lane with Licorice, to help him get first blood.

In the mid game KBM ended up taking the first turret and winning a few team fights to even out the kills. Poor map rotation allowed C9 to pick off a few members of KBM and get the Baron. C9 used this baron power play to push KBM all the way into their base. KBM tried to protect their remaining structures but this lead to a team fight and an ace for C9 to win them the game.

For our next match-up we have Detonation FocusMe (DFM) vs C9:

2018 World Championship Play-In Day 3 #Worlds2018 Cloud9 vs. DetonatioN FocusMe Cloud9 Lineup: Licorice - Top Urgot Blaber - Jungle Xin Zhao Jensen - Mid Leblanc Sneaky - Bot Draven Zeyzal - Support Thresh Detonation FocusMe Lineup: Evi - Top Camille Steal - Jungle Nocturne Ceros - Mid Syndra Yutapon - Bot Ezreal viviD - Support Tahm Kench Watch all matches of the split here from all of our leagues: NA LCS, EU LCS, LCK Champions Korea, LPL.

In this pick and ban phase, Jensen got put onto Lablanc which is a champion he is known for playing really well. However, it also put Sneaky onto Draven which I’ve seen him play very little of, making me very uncomfortable with the stakes being so high.

The early game went very similar to C9’s first game with the only difference being Blaber assisting Jensen in mid lane with first blood.

The mid game started strong for C9 with them finding another kill in the bot lane and getting the first tower. Jensen then began to worry me as he got caught over and over, handing kills to DFM. Then things took a turn for the worst when DFM stole the baron fom C9!

With the power play in DFM’s favor they are actually almost completely shut down with this buff. C9 chose fights at the right moments to hinder DFM from doing hardly anything. Then Bam! In typical C9 fashion they find one really good team fight, kill off all but one of the opposing team and storm down mid lane to end the game.

C9 now has to play a best of five series against Gambit Gaming on October 6th at 12am EST. The winner of this series go to worlds group stage.

What are your thoughts on the final two play in games by North America? Comment below or continue the discussion in the MOBA channel on our Discord .