Alliance pull ahead in the EU LCS, while North America remains even

With half the season over, the amount of parity within the League Championship Series is staggering. In North America, every single team ended week 6 with a 1-1 record, while Europe only had two teams without an even split.

However, a wider glance at the regions reveals some surprising differences. Europe’s power is distributed fairly evenly, with the 12-2 powerhouse Alliance dominating at  the top, while other teams fall in line behind it. In North America, it’s a completely different story. Five teams in the U.S. are all within a game of the top, with either 9-5 or 8-6 records.

Simply put, the power is up for grabs in Los Angeles.

With the weeks beginning to dwindle down, it’s time for these teams to step up and claim their place at the head of the table.

Infographic by LoLStats

North America is a quandary. Nobody is running away with the show, and in fact, it seems like all of these teams played on a very close level in week six. The 8-6 Counter Logic Gaming threw down the highest KDA with a 5.55, but only had the third-highest gold income rate. Last place CompLexity claimed that title, with 1734.27 gold per minute.

Objective control is also very even, with no team scoring higher than 60 percent, or lower than 40. The North American region is waiting to be broken open, and the biggest scare right now is that the worst teams are only 5 games back from the best. With 14 games left to play, anything could happen.

In terms of MVPs, only one team has multiple players on the list—the 4-10 Evil Geniuses with jungler Shin “Helios” Dong-jin and support Mitch “Krepo” Voorspoels.

Screengrab via Riot Games/YouTube

Perhaps the strangest stat, then, is the objective breakdown. In North America, the blue side only managed to take down the first tower 25 percent of the time. However, despite the first tower being a traditional indicator for the winning team, blue teams won 100 percent of their games. Something strange is going on in the U.S., and the first team to figure it out may end up being the ones holding the trophies over their head at the end of the season.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the picture is thankfully more clear. Alliance, who have only dropped two games so far this split, blasted past the 1800 GPM threshold, and also sit comfortably with a 77.78 percent objective control. Their KDA, 6.13, is second only to Fnatic, and they have three players on the MVP board. This team, despite a weak spring, is the real deal, and are setting themselves up perfectly to upset the region.

Behind them lie the rest of the pack, and while some teams like Fnatic are desperately trying to close the gap, others are simply falling to the wayside. ROCCAT are the biggest culprits here, and after a dominant spring season, are just shy of last place. Their 1.46 KDA was the lowest of all LCS teams last week, and they also had the lowest gold income rate and objective control—the last at a paltry 11.1 percent. True, they faced No. 1 Alliance and No. 2 SK Gaming, but they’ve got a gigantic mountain to climb if they want to stay alive in the LCS.

The rest of the stats fall into predictable patterns, and the first tower teams in Europe did manage to win most of the time, unlike their North American counterparts. And luckily, the red side managed to pick up some wins, closing the gap. These kind of trends should help teams plan for the coming five weeks, where many of the European squads are looking to pick up wins to secure a better playoff seeding. The four teams behind Alliance all are within two games of each other, and a small advantage could pay large dividends.

Screengrab via Riot Games/YouTube