Today’s LCS match between TSM and Dignitas could have easily been mistaken for a game of solo queue if nameplates had been disabled in the League of Legends spectator client. The two teams role-swapped their entire starting lineups for the match, with each player in the contest playing an utterly unfamiliar position in their professional careers.
Both teams had already locked in their respective playoff slots coming into the game. TSM couldn’t fall out of first place regardless of today’s results, and Dignitas would not climb past sixth place no matter what happened across the rest of the league. Since neither team had anything to lose, the two teams swapped positions between their rosters.
The resulting chaos was a 26-minute slugfest that featured 47 kills between both teams. For reference, the average LCS game this summer only features about 25 kills per game, while the ceiling for kills in a single game this split, 52, was set in a week six match between FlyQuest and Cloud9.
During today’s circus act of a regular-season finale, TSM featured Spica in the top lane, Huni in the jungle, Lost playing mid lane, and a combination of SwordArt and PowerOfEvil playing in the bottom lane together. As for Dignitas, Yusui took to the top lane, while Neo moved into the jungle and Akaadian manned the mid lane. Aphromoo and FakeGod combined their efforts in the bottom lane.
“For both of us, we were locked into first and sixth, and we knew the match had no standings [impact],” Dignitas’ starting top laner (and temporary support player) FakeGod said on the LCS broadcast after the game. “It didn’t matter for anything, so we just both decided to kind of have fun with it.”
The game’s top performer was Dignitas’ ADC-turned-jungler Neo, who posted a stunning scoreline of 3/1/18 on Gragas, a champion that he had never played in his professional career before today. In fact, every player in the game was playing their respective champion for the first time on stage this season except for TSM’s Huni. After putting on a stellar performance on Viego in the top lane last week, Huni ran back his selection today, although to the tune of a far more lackluster showing on the champion in the jungle position.
The remainder of games on today’s should have far more weight since every other team in the LCS (except for CLG) still has something to play for—whether it be playoff seeding or a trip to the postseason in general.
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