Hello everyone, I am Sneaky from Cloud 9. I’m basically just going to go over my thoughts on our games versus Fnatic, what I’ve been doing and what I will be doing for the next few weeks.

So for our first game against Fnatic they kind of surprised us with the three bans specifically aimed at Hai. It was something we didn’t really account for in our planning so we ended up keeping our cools and looking for other options. Gragas being one of the few choices left for Hai to play was our pick, which didn’t pan out too bad for us. It didn’t destroy Kassadin or do really well against it, but I felt like it was okay. Other than the Gragas our team comp felt good. We ended up with Shen, Ashe, Sona, Elise, and Gragas. The only scary part about their team was the two teleports from sOAZ and xPeke, which was actually a huge amount of pressure. In bottom lane, Lemon and I did not to engage when there was a ward in the bush on our side. Even with a Shen ult any fight bot could turn into a 5v3 in an instant so we just chose to play extremely safe not even pushing our level 6 advantage. Overall I felt like it was a really good game. We had pretty good momentum throughout the game and kept a good lead for a while. Even with the Kassadin and Lissandra teleports. I think the major turning point was when we got split up at a dragon fight and got picked off near 2nd tier turret. Losing us dragon, a 2nd tier turret, and 4 of us for nothing. That really got xPeke snowballing hard and pretty much ended it.

The second game went a whole lot better for us. They changed up their bans and left Fizz open for us so we picked that up instantly, then they picked Twisted Fate which was really questionable. Maybe he didn’t have any champions left but he counter picked himself on top of Twisted Fate just being weak in general after all the nerfs. Our early game went immensely better for us and we started up a snowball when Fnatic initiated onto us at mid lane at about 21 min. This led us to get better and better trades against them which ultimately got us a bigger lead. We cleaned it out after taking their bottom inhib and baron after xPeke chased us down to stall.

Our mindset after each game in a best of 3 or 5 series is to just take it one game at a time. Whatever happened in the last game doesn’t matter now and we just move on. Harping on anything that anyone did badly or things we should have done in that game isn’t to be talked about. It always has to be us looking forward for us to perform well. Keeping a clear mind is a pretty vital asset to victory, as raging about something would create distractions or cause us to go on tilt the next game. This can be applied to any competitive game or match and be applied especially to solo queue.

The third game in our series was essentially a stomp because of our level 1 strategy which was just getting wards down and ended up getting me and Lemon killed. Our picks went a lot better than game one since they ended up leaving Kennen open for Hai and we got the Vlad vs Shen matchup and Corki. There’s not too much to talk about here other than not being greedy level 1. With the level 1 we basically lost all dragon control early and that snowballed the game for them into getting every objective on the map.

Almost all of our losses so far have been a result of bad or greedy level 1‘s: We sit on a ward, we walk through wards, we just don’t play safe a lot of the times or go for too much vision. It’s something we need to completely stop doing because, like what happened here, we end up losing an entire series because of it. Fnatic overall played really well in this series and deserved the win. I’m glad we were able to get some international LAN experience playing versus them and hopefully we can perform better for you guys in the future!

Since we’ve lost in the quarters I’ve been hanging out with my family and friends including my mom, two sisters, my girlfriend and my best friend who traveled out to see me play for quarter finals. I hung out a lot with the players and press in the VIP lounge during semi’s. I came out occasionally to look at stuff, sign things, take pictures, and sit in the audience to get the real experience. I’ll be at finals as well in the crowd somewhere so hopefully I will able to see some of you guys ^_^. After worlds ends I’ll be staying over at my girlfriend Jena’s house for two or three weeks. I might end up going back home to Florida for a week as well to see my family and friends before I get back into things in San Jose.

Thanks for reading and be sure to follow me on Twitter @C9Sneaky, and like my Facebook page facebook.com/C9Sneaky.