* Courtesy of Riot Games

TSM had quite the opening debut as they played in a 54-minute macro-intensive thriller of a game against Flash Wolves. The game started quite slow, as was evident with Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell buying a Cull on his first recall. FW were in control of the early game, making a lot of the beginning plays with securing the Cloud Drake and using their pressure bot lane to secure first turret, although TSM were quick to adapt and grab top tier 1 turret shortly after.

During the Rift Herald fight around 14:45, Yau “MMD” Li-Hung gets a great teleport flank onto TSM and FW are able to grab a kill onto Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen, but FW show patience and restart Rift Herald around 17:10 where they’re able to catch out Svenskeren at the start of the team fight and get a nice 3 for 0, with also grabbing mid tier 1 and tier 2 towers.

* Courtesy of Riot Games

Hauntzer played fantastic this game, with the 2v1 in the bottom lane around 20:45 and his 5-man Gnar ultimate and TSM all-but finishing the game off that single play, although MMD landed a great rupture during this to cc the carries of TSM so that FW suffered minimal casualties.

The game concluded with TSM getting Elder Drake due to FW being indecisive and Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng chasing down Lu “Betty” Yuhung and the rest of FW, securing the game thereafter. TSM showed that they had patience to scale up and faith in Doublelift to carry them through the later parts of the game, but it also shows weakness for initiative during the early game.

* Courtesy of Riot Games

Immortals versus Fnatic was also a nail-biter for NA fans as the game hinged on one final play towards the late game.

Both teams had different ideas on how they wanted to play the game, with FNC focusing towards the bottom lane and IMT putting attention on the top lane with Lee “Flame” Ho-Jong on the Jayce pick. Martin “Rekkles” Larsson ended up getting so far ahead in the early game that wherever he was on the map, IMT almost certainly had to cede that objective. Rekkles would get a lot of catches onto unsuspecting IMT members in the early game, resulting in him having 4 kills early on but a quick baron decision around 23:20 while part of FNC chase Flame around proved beneficial for IMT. They were able to secure baron against Paul “sOAZ” Boyer’s Cho’Gath ultimate and then push out the minion waves to get multiple turrets.

Fast-forward to the late-game, around 38:00, IMT are knocking onto the mid inhibitor turret of FNC, but it’s within Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen hands to stop this with a flank, as he fails to ward hop over the thick part of the wall next to the destroyed FNC mid tier 2 turret. With this misplay, IMT are able to grab mid inhibitor and prepare for the ensuing dragon fight, where FNC gets anyway due to indecisiveness from the IMT squad to stay for another wave in the bottom lane.

Then of course, there’s the ending play, with Rekkles stepping too far forward without his team and getting caught by IMT resulting in FNC’s loss. I think it was largely due to IMT playing cautiously around Rekkles’ ultimate towards the later part of the game and Broxah not being able to pull the trigger during the ladder half of the game. Both teams didn’t play cleanly, with a terrible early game from the IMT bot lane but the nerves seemed to get to FNC much more during the late game.

* Courtesy of Riot Games

The Cloud 9 game was much more one-sided as both Juan “Contractz” Garcia and Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen maintained control of AHQ’s jungle, contesting AHQ’s red buff repeatedly, and most importantly, Jensen’s Ryze ultimate being used to the utmost effectiveness throughout the game. The game was secured through C9 trying baron two times within the span of Chen “Ziv” Yi’s teleport, to then allow the map to be stretched out and Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong drawing out Ziv in the bottom lane at 23:50, to then allow C9 to take baron cleanly and uncontested due to superior vision control.

The North American teams still have hope as they continue to battle for top spots within their respective groups. We’ll have to sit tight and hope they can patch up early game issues in order to progress against constantly improving opponents.