Curse decisively takes week 4 of the Solomid Series

After an outstanding 2-0 victory over FeaR in the grand finals, Curse is really starting to show their strength and versatility as a team.

Though a fairly short finals by most tournament standards, it was not a boring one by any stretch of imagination. Firstly, we got to see the strength of the 1v1 tournament winner,, taking over for Elementz and showing fantastic play in the support role this tournament.Then, we see Voyboy settle in with the team going back to his roots of hyper-aggressive play with an unconventional pool of champions, and Saint assisting lanes a lot more than his reputation of "farming and taxing" would lead you to believe. On FeaR's side, we see them getting far in the tournament and Aphromoo also using his diverse library of carries throughout that practically no other AD on a professional level utilizes. Without further adieu, let's kick things off and go into game 1.





Click on image for draft breakdown





Game 1 kicks off action-packed straight away with Curse and Fear engaging straightaway in a level 1 teamfight with the gruesome blow to FeaR's early game. Curse pull way ahead initially and get gold on the champions you really don't want to get gold on. Voyboy and Karthus pick up the first blood, setting the preemptive snowball early on for them.



Saintvicious starts this game at his red, while NyJacky assists Voyboy in taking blue at level 1 to assist him top. Though the blue resets and more damage is taken than needed, Gragas still lands it and carries the advantage with him in the laning phase.



Saint has improved a lot in his early ganks and this game is undeniable proof. He heads in the bottom brush for a lane gank, and though all 3 players bottom had to blow their flash for the set up, it was definitely worthy of the sacrificed summoners as they put Cop way ahead on Kog'maw, a late scaling machine which will undeniably be tough for FeaR to handle as the game progresses. Muffinqt falls and hands the first blood gold to Cop.



The aforementioned gank would, then, lead to Varus being almost double CS behind and under the complete whim of Curse's bottom lane control. As the game progresses, Saintvicious gets a bit cocky in enemy territory and gets picked off, but Voyboy and Nyjacky come to save the day by picking up the kills on the aggressors with an impressive mechanical showing.



Proceeding onward, a gank goes down onto Zuna top, but Xmithie follows up with a well timed and executed Twisted Advance and picks himself up a double kill off the back of the tower dive, the exact thing you want to do to punish the enemy team in that event.



Fear's bottom tower falls, but Curse doesn't feel any less safe. They know they are ahead and abuse it by continuing to pressure the Aphromoo and Muffinqt duo by pushing into their second tower, leaving Aphro vulnerable whenever he wishes to farm.



Moving on, though Cop does get picked off and singled out by FeaR, Curse follows up to slay some foes themselves. Xmithie manages to pick up a double as Maokai, making him one scary, fed tree and nearly helping his team narrowly escape, but Voyboy once again shows a godly display of accuracy, landing extremely clutch and necessary barrels to clean up, bringing himself to an astounding 7-2-3 score.



With such a gigantic lead, Curse pushes straight down the middle and FeaR tries to defend their inhibitor in desperation, but becomes swiftly aced, as Curse brings home a decisive first victory with a whopping 18-9 score just prior to the 22 minute mark.



Click on image for draft breakdown





Game 2: Before the game had even commenced, FeaR was definitely living up to their name in the draft phase as they banned out Voyboy's top lane Gragas, a typically unconventional pick, due to the complete and utter terror and chaos he brought to FeaR in game 1. Unfortunately, he would prove to be a worthy adversary regardless of the ban.



The game launches with Curse invading aggressively on the red buff but do not go unseen. Fear shows they are very much aware of it with Aphromoo plucking off a few hits onto Curse. Vlad comes to scout their top region near wraiths and gets chunked, being forced to back, allowing Curse to pursue dominance and force a flash out of Xmithie. This allows them to ravage Fear's jungle by taking the wolves and ancient golem no contest.



Knowing the threat of Voyboy in the previous game, it would appear that he is Xmithie's target for this game. Voyboy shows some astonishing play top in response to the ganks and his jukes were nothing short of beautiful. What one would assume to be inevitably fatal, he manages to juke it, surviving. Meanwhile, various brawls go down bottom, trading evenly...that is until Nyjacky gets involved on a level 6 Karthus.



Having not learned their lesson from the first game, FeaR applies pressure to Voyboy once again, blowing summoners to try and kill him under tower, and though they succeed it most definitely wasn't for free. Voyboy puts on his juke shoes once again and nails Malphite in a 1v2, trading in an unsuspecting 1 for 1.



FeaR knows they have to make something happen and commit to aggressive plays with constant dives to some success, taking out Nyjacky in the midgame.



Not going to sit back and let it happen, Curse picks up the aggression themselves with a heavy focus down bottom, having Saint dive with his team to put Cop ahead once again. With an 8-4 kill lead at the 10 minute mark, Curse seizes their advantages and applies deep wards to keep the pressure and the lead. Voyboy still isn't left alone and is just repeatedly hammered and bullied with gank after gank, but nothing seems to substantially prevail.



With the game pulling into late, FeaR were making arguably the best decision they could have, but Curse capitalized on the strategy's weakpoint. FeaR were trying to stall it out and get their Vladimir and Kog'Maw to have substantial builds, but to no avail. Curse understands very well how to end turtling and takes free dragons as well as a game-ending baron, throwing FeaR into a demoralizing defeat after the ace following baron. Curse ends up handily taking the series in a crushing 2-0.









With week 4 coming to a close and Curse seizing the victory, it's time to discuss the MvP which I proudly hand off to Voyboy in this series.



Make no mistake that the rest of the team did extremely well, but Voyboy's play was superb and has once again shown his reign when allowed to play into his niche. With a beautiful display amongst a rather erratic library of champions, he shows what he can do when left to his own devices.



Racking up kills and carrying for your team as non-traditional tops are no easy feat, but Voyboy relishes in his expertise and shows the true strength he had held inside for the longest time just waiting to be unleashed.



Having only been in the team for a short while, he's already proven himself worthy and viable and will only prove to be stronger as time goes on with him himself believing to be one of the top laners in the world.









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