League team loses Clash game to ‘Sudden Death’ mechanic while they hit enemy Nexus

There are heartbreaking losses, and then there’s this.

One League of Legends team was participating in a nailbiter of a Clash game this past weekend, only to lose at the final moment by no fault of their own. While they were attacking the enemy Nexus, the team saw their own Nexus explode across the map, even though no enemy players pulled off a backdoor play. 

In a clip posted to Reddit last night, a League team saw their Nexus destroyed by extraneous measures with no interference from players at all. Their Nexus was, in fact, destroyed by a rarely-seen mechanic called “Sudden Death,” which only appears in Clash games that last egregiously long. 

To keep Clash games from lasting too long in length, Sudden Death mode only appears past the 60-minute threshold. Towers, inhibitors, and, eventually, the Nexus will start to damage themselves incrementally. 

But in this particular clip, one team was destroying the enemy team’s base at a rapid pace, setting themselves up for imminent victory. As they chipped away at the enemy Nexus’ health pool, which had been lowered to single digits, their own Nexus was destroyed by the Sudden Death mechanic. The Clash game had lasted well over 64 minutes. 

The incredibly lengthy game featured 90 combined kills between the two teams. By the time the blue team inadvertently destroyed the Nexus via Sudden Death, they were facing a gold deficit of 16,000, despite earning 106,000 gold throughout the game themselves. Nine dragons and five Barons were killed during the marathon game, while all 22 of the towers on the map were destroyed, according to the League clip.

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