Team Impulse

CMM 215: Riot Dropping the Hammer

Posted on by SonOfJan

Last night I was excited, and surprised, to see my favorite title to a thread on Reddit: “Competitive Ruling”. This thread came up not once, but twice.  Riot laid down some serious punishment to two LCS teams, Renegades and Team Impulse.

Like I said, I was excited to see these threads, but one i got deep into them, the punishments were insane.  Renegades owners were banned, and forced to sell their team. And Team Impulse was also forced to sell their LCS spot.

We wont get into the allegations, because Riot gave no evidence to prove they were true (at least in the case of Renegades), and I have no evidence whether or not they weren’t true either.  But the punishments seem rather extreme.  It’s one thing to force ownership to sell their teams, it’s another to mandate this to happen within 10 days.  This short amount of time is its own punishment, as it will surely heavily lower the price of the potential sale. We’re in a buyers market for LCS teams right now. (So if anyone wants to pool their money together and buy one with me, I’ve got like 100 bucks.)

The problem with these rulings, is that there’s no third party investigations, and no appeal process.  It’s basically just the word of a game developer, against the word of an alleged “wrong doer”.  I can understand these rulings being blind justice when someone is cheating or affecting the actual game negatively.  But when something this big happens, there needs to be some checks and balances, or else esports will never truly be as legitimate as traditional sports.

 

NA LCS Playoff Preview/Predictions

Posted on by SonOfJan

COUNTER LOGIC GAMING VS. TEAM LIQUID

CLG wins 3-1

This is a battle between two trash talking AD carries. Liquid comes into this match-up holding a 2-0 record over CLG this split, but Piglet didn’t play in either of those two games. Both teams need to win this series, but Doublelift has the most to prove.  A CLG loss concludes another late season collapse, as well as another failed split.

The duel between the AD carries might be the most highlighted match-up in this series, but it may very well come down to the two top laners.  Quas is looking to get out of a stretch of poor form, while ZIonSpartan is proving to be the best top laner CLG has ever had play for them. Zion can carry this series, but Quas playing at his best can shut him down. If Quas isn’t a factor, Liquid is going to get run out of the building.

CLG is simply better than Piglet’s Team Liquid on paper. However, CLG certainly has the tendency to freeze in these situations.  In my opinion, the break tradition and advanced to the semi finals. But unless they’ve drastically improved, that’s as far as they’re going in these playoffs. C9 and TSM are too strong.

TEAM IMPULSE VS. GRAVITY 

Team Impulse wins 3-2

Team Impulse is a better team than Gravity. But in a best of five series, Gravity has way too many unpredictable champion picks to be slept on. This may very well be a trap series for impulse, as they’ve played like a top 3 team at the end split. If they overlook Gravity, they’re going to be brought down to Earth extremely fast.

While Gravity may have some secret strategies in their back pocket during picks and bans, what Impulse has is Rush. Rush is the second best jungler in NA right now, and would be the best if it wasn’t for the current meta.  Rush wants to play a high impact carry champion, hell the man is doing whatever it takes to keep Lee Sin alive and kicking. But this current meta of tank junglers does not suit him well. On PTL this week, Jatt said that Rush’s solo queue record with Sejuani is something along the lines of 1-9.  That’s bad. Very bad. If Gravity can force Rush onto one of these tanks he’s uncomfortable with, they may be able to steal this series.

While I do think Gravity has the potential to win this series, I don’t think they’re going to be able to pull of three wins via cheeky shenanigans. Impulse has been on fire lately (The dig game was a trap game so we’re not talking about that).I expect them to take this series, but I don’t think it’s going to be a clean sweep. Expect a fun, five game battle, that may be the most entertaining series of the playoffs.