As the third week of the summer split ends, a loss to Counter Logic Gaming puts Golden Guardians into a 6-way tie for 1st place. A 4-2 record, easily their best start in the franchise’s short history, comes with a win against a strong team, but losses to teams that aren’t top teams on paper.

With a 5th place regular season in spring, things were looking up for GGS. Many picked them to beat 4th place FlyQuest in a best of 5. In a very close matchup, FlyQuest would take down Golden Guardians, taking all 5 games to do so. Expectations for summer was high, especially with how confident GGS’ coach Inero was in exposing top teams. No roster moves would be made in the offseason, putting trust into the 5 players who performed decently in spring.

To start week two, the 2-0 Golden Guardians would face Clutch Gaming. Clutch started the split 0-2, after losses against Optic and Cloud 9, two teams in the clump for first place. CG finished spring in 9th place, with only a game separating them and the basement dwelling 100 Thieves. The mid-split offseason would see Clutch swapping out their ADC (and midlaner?) Piglet for Cody Sun, previously of 100 Thieves and Immortals. On paper, GGS should be able to handle Clutch pretty easily. In practice, it was quite the opposite.

In just under 32 minutes, Clutch Gaming would take down Golden Guardians. Clutch would outkill GGS 12-4, control 4 of the 5 dragons, and destroy 10 towers to Golden Guardians’ 2. This game wasn’t necessarily close. A poor performance all around, with some focus put on the 1/6 bottom lane of Deftly and Olleh.

That focus isn’t anything new. When Golden Guardians are playing well, most of the attention goes to the solo laners in Froggen and Hauntzer. When the team plays poorly, blame gets shifted to the bottom lane. I wouldn’t place all the blame here on them though. Clutch had a 4-man dive bot lane at 5 minutes in, with the 5th member roaming down a bit late. The game would stagnate a bit from there, until a teamfight at about 19 minutes into the game. That would start from Olleh hooking Lira’s J4, and getting hooked by Vulcan’s Nautilus soon after. The game would snowball from there, with one small stand at GGS’ top inhibitor turret.

Following their loss to Clutch, GGS would play Cloud 9, who were 3-0 at the time. After a 2nd place regular split and an overall 3rd place, Cloud 9 came into the summer with hopes of improving and keeping their spot in the top three teams. No changes were made in the offseason for Cloud 9. This game could go either way, but was definitely C9 favored. A better showing all year round makes picking C9 a safe bet.

Despite being underdogs, Golden Guardians would win a hard fought game in 35 minutes. Everyone on the team played pretty well, with a lot of praise going to Froggen’s Anivia (of course), and Deftly’s Varus. The biggest difference in the game would be dragon control. GGS would secure all four dragons, including two mountains and an infernal. This helped their team comp scale, and overcome a 4 thousand gold deficit, which was seen just 15 minutes into the game. Another big difference would be the usage of Baron between both teams. Cloud 9 would kill Baron before the 25 minute mark, but would be wiped in a 3 vs 5 fight during/directly after their Baron take. Golden Guardians would win the game with a Baron Power Play which created a gold swing of almost 6000. A strong comeback win against a good team is a great turnaround after losing to a much worse team on paper.

Golden Guardians most recent loss to Counter Logic Gaming was a bit different than their loss against Clutch. GGS was able to gain a lead in the early and mid game. Issues arose in the mid/late game, as macro and decision making became very questionable. At 21 minutes they would overstay trying to destroy the bottom inhibitor of CLG. While they would get it, CLG would chase down two kills and immediately take Baron and get another kill on Contractz. Even after CLG’s Baron, GGS would slightly lead in gold.

At 31 minutes, Contractz would quite randomly use his Glacial Prison onto Wiggily’s Trundle, engaging a 3 vs 4 fight that GGS would immediately try and disengage from. Froggen would roam up just after Contractz dies, and Hauntzer would teleport to an immediate death. CLG would continue the chase using Ruin’s Realm Warp, which would lead to both Olleh and Deftly dying and CLG ending the game.

Golden Guardians is clearly a good team in the LCS, but have bizarre spikes in consistency. One game they can look like world beaters, the next they can drop a game without much resistance. Their macro can look extremely good or extremely sloppy. It’s not quite a coin flip with them, though. More times than not, Golden Guardians look pretty good. It just happens that they occasionally have games that leave fans of the LCS confused at what happened. They just kind of forget they’re good sometimes. Their random dips in performance creates a question around how good they really are. They’re definitely a playoff team, and many would argue that they’re currently a top four team. The debate seems to be around whether or not they can crack that top three spot and go to worlds.

I’d argue that they can, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a hot take. They’re a classic dark horse team in the LCS. They won’t be the favorites to go to Worlds. They won’t be favorites when playing TSM, Team Liquid, or Cloud 9, but they definitely have a chance of beating them. We’ve already seen them take down Cloud 9, but it wasn’t exactly in the most convincing manner. They CAN be a top three team. They CAN go to Worlds. I just wouldn’t bet on it. If you want to tell me this is a cop out answer, you’re absolutely right. I’m one to hedge my bets. A classic “They’ll win unless they lose” kinda guy.

Fine you want a hot take? Golden Guardians will finish 2nd, losing in the finals. They’ll go on to make a run through the regional qualifier and upset whichever top 3 team has to play in it. If they want to do so, they just have to clean up the mistakes they made. They could very easily be sitting at 5-1 right now had they not completely thrown against CLG. Patch up their macro play, and minimize Olleh’s mistakes. That’s really all there is to it. Prepare for the Golden Guardians deep Worlds run folks.