The EU LCS is going to be absolutely nuts this week. There are five teams still in the running for the number one seed in playoffs. That’s half the league!
Fnatic, G2, Misfits, FC Schalke 04, and Team Vitality are all within two wins of each other. Unlike last split, where nearly everyone at the bottom had a chance at playoffs, the action is happening at the top of the league table.
To figure out which team will come out on top, our League writers scored each team from one point (worst) to 10 points (best).
Goodbye
Season’s over, folks! That means we can stop talking about these teams. And they’ve clearly stopped taking things seriously as well.
10) H2k (four points)
9) Unicorns of Love (eight points)
8) GIANTS Gaming (12 points)
7) ROCCAT (16 points)
Of these teams, only H2k and ROCCAT have something left to play for. They can still qualify for the regional gauntlet with the Championship Points they earned last split. But yeah, neither of those teams is actually going to make it to Worlds.
Can they really do it?
Both of these teams are locked into either fifth or sixth. It will be a long battle uphill for them to qualify for Worlds.
6) Vitality (20 points)
After a brief winning streak, Vitality turned back into a pumpkin last week against Schalke. It didn’t seem like that bad a loss until you looked up and saw that Erlend “Nukeduck” Holm had taken all of Vitality’s towers.
5) Splyce (25 points)
Splyce seemed to have gotten the upper hand against Fnatic last week when ADC Kasper “Kobbe” Kobberup got a triple kill in the early game. But like Schalke did to Vitality, Fnatic just took all the turrets, felling five of them by 26 minutes to take over the game.
Battle for first
Last year, the EU LCS sent G2, Misfits, and Fnatic to Worlds. This year, FC Schalke 04 look primed to crash the party. Getting a playoff bye would help a ton. Here’s what can happen in the last week of the season:
4) FC Schalke 04)
Schalke need help to qualify for first. They need to win both of their games, against Splyce and H2k, to even have a chance. They also need Fnatic to go 0-2 (not going to happen). The more realistic scenario is that Schalke and Fnatic both go 2-0 and Schalke get a tiebreaker game for second place and a playoff bye.
3) Misfits (33 points)
2) G2 (35 points)
These two teams are in the same spot. Both play Vitality and a non-playoff team—for Misfits, it’s ROCCAT, while G2 get GIANTS. If Fnatic loses, both are in the running to force a first place tiebreaker. But if one of them loses—remember, G2 have a penchant for stumbling vs. GIANTS—they could tumble all the way to fourth.
1) Fnatic (40 points, four first-place votes)
Fnatic are not only playing like the best team in the league, they have the easiest upcoming schedule. They play ROCCAT and Unicorns of Love in week nine. Two wins guarantees them first, and even one win gives them at least a tiebreaker for the top spot.
