Current standings

Setting the trends

Diamondprox

Breaking the habit

HosaN’s Nidalee

Who said supports can’t carry

EdWard

Rising star

Bjergsen

Biggest upset

Fnatic’s loss to Copenhagen Wolves

Room to improve

Snoopeh

Player of the Month

Alex Ich

Kev1n

xPeke

A month has passed since the European League of Legends Championship Series started and what a month it was! The 8 teams played a total of 44 games in which we saw everything – old rivalries, new strategies, big upsets and so much more.After the first four weeks were played out, the scoreboard looks like that:The standings changed a bit from week to week with EG taking the lead by Week 2, Fnatic becoming #1 in Week 3 and GG taking the spot from them after the Super Week 4. The top 4 teams, though, remained pretty much the same at all times as the well-known squads (GG, EG, Fnatic, SK) didn’t allow the newly formed to threaten their positions.If you want to blame someone for all the bears and dogs running around the jungle in solo queue, the person you’re looking for is. The guy who’s been setting the trends for his role since Shyvana in the beginning of Season 2 chose Volibear, a champion which probably hasn’t seen any competitive play before that, for Gambit’s second game in the League back in Week 1. By Week 3, the armored bear was picked in 7 out of the 8 games in the league. As soon as the other teams started picking it against the Russians, he just went for the next ace up his sleeve – Nasus. He’s already been played by some of the other European teams and who knows how many more will showcase him this weekend. One thing’s for sure – it won’t be long until Diamond throws another unorthodox pick at us and his opponents and surprises everyone all yet again.While xPeke playing Caitlyn in the mid lane before it became a thing at IEM World Championship and sOAZ rocking the Blitzcrank at top, were certainly some of the most impressive things we’ve seen till now in the LCS EU, there is hardly any doubt what was the bravest pick yet – yes,instead of a standard AD Carry pulled against not just any team but Evil Geniuses. He not only played very well, not to mention killing Froggen 1v1, but DragonBorns even won that game (one of the big upsets till now according to many). While that strategy may not work a second time as we saw in DB’s next game (they pulled the same comp vs SK and lost without even scoring a kill), HosaN may only be applauded for going out of his comfort zone and proving that there’s not only one right way to play League of Legends.For anyone who has followed Gambit Gaming (former Moscow 5) even remotely, it’s not a secret that their support playerloves early (and not only) aggression and thus takes a lot of kills away from his teammates, especially the AD carry Genja. His recent performances in the LCS though took his fame to a whole new level. EdWard was never known for playing Blitzcrank but he has definitely mastered the new hook champion Thresh, having a combined 9/6/40 KDA from his three games with him till now. His out of this world hooks even earned him the nickname “Thresh Prince of Armenia” and anyone who doesn’t want to have a bad time should definitely ban the champion when going against Gambit. But that’s not all. In one of the last games of GG, EdWard was playing Lulu and by minute 12 he had a 5/0/2 score and 4,8K gold, which was more than anyone else on the map, and you can bet that’s not going to be the last time he goes hyper-carry-support mode.We all know that Europe has a big cut of the most impressive mid laners in League of Legends and we found another proof of that –. The Danish youngster who rejoined his team in Week 3 after finally turning 17 couldn’t impress in his first two matches possibly because he was out of sync with the rest of the Wolves but as soon as Week 4 started it was a totally different story. He secured his team’s first win with the first penta kill in the whole LCS while playing Syndra and that, of course, turned her into an instaban against him. That only allowed him to start using the next weapon in his arsenal, namely Kassadin, with whom Bjergsen scored two quadra kills already – one against Fnatic and one against Giants. In both of these games his play was instrumental to the Wolves’ victories and while it’s too early for him to be the new Froggen, the young Dane definitely has the raw potential and skills to achieve that.While there were a couple of highly unexpected results till now, probably the one that surprised most people wasin Week 4, Day 2. Considering the fact that the European powerhouse came into the match as the leader of the scoreboard while the Danish team was at the bottom and had only just secured their first win the previous day, no one expected this game to be much of a challenge for Fnatic. With this said though they made some unusual mistakes and the Wolves, lead by Bjergsen’s quadra kill Kassadin, didn’t hesitate to snatch the victory away. Besides ending in an unexpected fashion the game was also very entertaining to watch and many people refer to it as the best yet in LCS due to all the teleport and backdoor action that took place in it.While EG started the league pretty convincingly going 5-1 by Week 2 and showing the dominant performance we are used to seeing from them during a lot of Season 2 in these 5 wins, things didn’t look so well for them in the next two weeks. The way they play doesn’t seem to work anymore and a lot of that falls onand his support junglers who don’t fit the current aggressive meta. He did have a good performance on Kayle with which he has 3 wins out of 3 games but that made EG’s opponents constantly ban her against them thus forcing him to play the likes of Volibear and Vi and those attempts weren’t very successful. Since the team has a very big fanbase and their expectations are never low, it will be up to him to quickly find new champions that he’s comfortable on and change his playstyle to a more aggressive one.While this is a very subjective topic as some focus on the wins a player has, others on his KDA, third on the big plays he did and fourth on how consistent he is in his performance, the SK editorial team did a little poll in order to determine the player that most impressed us during the first month of LCS EU. Of course it was really hard to pick just one out of all the star players there are in the league so we went for top 3 and based on a point system here are the results:1., Gambit Gaming2., SK Gaming2., Fnatic*Note: Both Kev1n and xPeke had equal amount of points.We can probably all agree that these 3 players have been instrumental for their teams’ victories and showcased insane amount of skill in almost if not all of their matches. If they will be able to maintain their strong performances is something we’ll be able to find out in only a day as Saturday and Week 5 are approaching fast and things are going to get even more heated up as the playoffs draw closer.