Cloud 9 continued their dominance over Curse Gaming in the League Championship Series, taking a 2-0 victory in the semifinals of the Spring Split playoffs.
The victory saw the top-seeded Cloud 9 improve their all-time record against Curse in the LCS to a dominant 10-0.
Curse showed they could at least keep it close.
“We had slow starts in all of our games, but we were able to bring it back pretty well,” said Cloud 9’s all star jungler, William “Meteos” Hartman.
In the first game, Curse used the powerful tank Mundo to initiate some advantageous fights for his team, highlighted by a 4-for-1 team fight at Dragon around the 14 minute mark. Diego “Quas” Ruiz followed it up with a near solo kill on his Cloud 9 counterpart An “Balls” Le.
Cloud 9 turned things around at the 24 minute mark with their prowess in team fights. As they pushed middle, Curse engaged behind them with Mundo’s teleport. Cloud 9 turned the fight in their favor, taking four kills to pull themselves into the lead.
The game showed off Cloud 9’s strengths as a team. Their jungler Hartman showed off his top champion, Elise, posting a 8/1/6 KDA despite using an innovative support build featuring a Locket of the Iron Solari. The team’s ADC, Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi, showed why he’s one of the league’s most underrated marksmen. His Lucian finished with a 1/0/15 KDA and 92 percent kill participation.
Curse put up another fight in game two. The teams traded objectives, but Cloud 9 eked out an advantage with better trades. An uncharacteristic mistake by mid laner Hai Lam at the 19 minute mark—overextending to try for a kill—led to Curse securing three kills and Baron.
Cloud 9 fought back, thanks to their late game monster Jax. Curse struggled to deal with his split push despite some favorable team fights. At the 35 minute mark, Cloud 9 got the engage they needed, taking the game on the back of a quadra kill by the late game monster Jax.
“I called for a few team fights that we misplayed,” said Lam, “We just got out team-fought in a couple fights.”
Cloud 9 will face second-seeded Team SoloMid, who trounced Curse in the day’s other semi-final, tomorrow at 5pm ET.
