Week 4: Base Races and Warm Smiles

This week’s article is going to be a bit different as we had a much different week in the LCS as a whole. This week there was no team that was, arguably, over-the-top with their wins, and there was not a ton of non-meta picks for us to go over. However, what was new was a smiling bald man carrying an invincible door, and two games that ended in epic fashion base-race style. Fnatic v. Alliance and EG v. LMQ end quite abruptly as the players attempted to out-race each other to the end, and Braum made his appearance and was able to “Strike like ram” against his opponents.

Fnatic and Alliance has become one of the hottest games of the summer. With Alliance screaming to the front of the EU pack with their massive string of wins and Fnatic, arguably, falling off their block after All-Stars; Alliance v. Fnatic has been one of the premier matches that fans are champing-at-the-bit for. The third match of day 2 for the EU LCS, this seemed like it was going to be a standard affair with 52% of the votes going to Alliance despite Fnatic's heavy fan-base and Alliance coming off an upset in day 1 to Gambit. The lineups could not have been more innocuous as we saw the team’s leaders: Froggen and Xpeke, going away from their regular picks (Anivia and Ziggs respectively) and just playing the more conventional LeBlanc v. Twisted Fate (again, respectively). The picks came through with notable changes of Yellowstar on Braum and Wickd trying a new pick on Kayle for the top lane. The casters were calling for this to be a bloody game with both teams going for pick-comps but they were only partially correct. The game started with Fnatic on-a-roll giving first (and second) blood to their All-Star ADC in Rekkles who came off a 10-0 win the previous day, landing a comfort pick on Twitch. This allowed Fnatic to greatly utilize their “cc-machine that is Braum” into the early-mid game granting Fnatic a 5-1 edge at 13 minutes and propelling them into whole map control taking the first two turrets and opening map to allow Rekkles to roam. This Fnatic aggression would continue, unchecked, for about 6 more minutes as Fnatic was allowed to freely rotate and kept Alliance on the back-foot. Fnatic seemed to have the game completely under their control until 22 minutes when Alliance were able to finagle their way into position to secure a dragon and then get a pick on Yellowstar’s Braum. In Fnatic seemed to casually shake this off and moved to continue the pressure on the bottom lane. However, Alliance immediately counter-calls to push the middle lane, which is where the Fnatic troubles start.

At 22:20 we see that Alliance move into Fnatic’s jungle looking for another engage while Tabzz secures the already-damaged tier 1 turret. Fnatic, in similar fashion, take Alliances bottom tier-1 turret. However, Fnatic split sending Rekkles Twitch and Xpeke’s Twisted Fate to continue pushing the bottom lane, and split from Soaz’ Shyvana and Cyanide’s Evelynn who fall back to defend. Alliance, now not seeing any re-engage in the jungle, decide to attempt to secure a sneaky tier-2 turret from Fnatic. However, we see that Froggen is left in the jungle by his team as a mobile-ward so that Alliance are able to see who is coming to defend and how long they have before they can back off. By 22:30 Alliance realize that only 2 the defenders were sent by Fnatic and keep pushing the lane. Further, due to their ample damage and the afore-mentioned interference, provided by Froggen, they manage to out-rotate the Fnatic defense and secure the tier-2 turret 15 seconds later with no opposition. Alliance are now able to take the offensive forcing Rekkles and Xpeke to respond by pushing into the middle inhibitor turret and engaging the defending trio of Soaz, Cynide, and Yellowstar (respawned). However, a well-placed flay by Nyph’s Thresh and a follow up chain by Froggen’s LeBlanc secures another kill of Yellowstar under the mid-lane inhibitor turret and allow Alliance to secure no only the tier-3 turret but also the associated inhibitor before Rekkles and Xpeke are able respond. However, under further inspection, Alliance realize that Xpeke’s Twisted Fate is no longer pushing with Rekkles’ Twitch and that he must be either: still teleporting back to base or using Destiny somewhere away from the team (rendering him useless).  Despite the fact that Xpeke  Destiny’s back to the top lane, Alliance is able to continue their push as Froggen is then able to find a pick onto Soaz’ Shyvana which opens the door for Alliance to start pushing the Fnatic Nexus turrets. By 23:22, Alliance had secured both the nexus turrets and Cynide is the only live Fnatic member to stand around and watch, helplessly, as 5 Alliance members start to wail away on his nexus. From here, basically Alliance just need to get enough auto-attacks off before Fnatic can respond and they do (BARELY) as the entire Alliance team seemed to die right as the nexus went down, ending the game in 23:27. It should be noted that Wickd made the best decision possible while sieging the nexus giving his Kayle’s intervention to Shook’s Elise while he wailed away with increased attack speed in Spider Form thanks to Skittering Frenzy. Had this not happened, it is likely Alliance all die with the Nexus at less than 5% health.

While during the post-game Froggen seemed extremely unhappy with the result, a win is still a win. This put Alliance 1-1 for the week and allowed Alliance to keep their hold over the first-place position in the EU. In NA, we saw another base race, this one, with a little less drama, but overall still an exciting ending.

EG v. LMQ also started in a very standard fashion with EG taking a comp of: Jax, Lee Sin, Ziggs, Lucian and Morgana, and LMQ taking: Shyvana, Elise, Nidalee, Caitlyn and Braum. EG was sporting a new jungler in Helios who replaced Snoopeh and questions were flying about if EG was going to have the same level of shot-calling with the new replacement. 14:30 into the game with the score 4-2, EG seemed to have squashed these questions up in kills and securing the first turret with relative ease. Helios made a shining addition to the EG squad providing constant map pressure and getting Innox going early on Jax getting him a 2 to 1 kill advantage over Ackerman’s Shyvana. However, by 18 minutes LMQ seemed to have slowed the game down and EG were less able to find picks or pressure after clearing the remaining tier-1 turrets. Despite EG creating some great contests at the LMQ blue-buff, they were only able to get 2 more kills by 19:30, before LMQ went into super-turtle mode. LMQ basically decided to farm the best they could as 5 and slowly give up their tier-2 turrets, contesting for dragon when they could, but ultimately giving up all map presence to keep EG at bay. They used this to keep the kills 6-2 and the gold difference between 3 and 6 thousand for nearly 22 minutes. Caster Jatt was even asking if he could get statistics on what is the longest time anyone has ever played a game with no kills, deaths, or assists as Vasilli breached 400 CS with a game score of 0/0/0. The real trouble started when EG started attempting to force the Baron, prompting LMQ to respond and attempt to continue their turtle covering both their base and the Baron.

EG setup two fairly decent Baron attempts:  the first of which resulted in EG getting out-positioned and forced off the baron resulting in little change to the flow of the game. Innox was afforded a little bit of time to secure the top-inhibitor turret but, being 43 minutes into the game, LMQ did not seem at all worried. The second attempt comes a minute later as EG attempt to engage LMQ in their jungle 4v4 only to get pushed off of the worm again, only this time, LMQ turn and start killing Baron. As EG recall to their base Pobelter’s Ziggs loops back around, only to discover a now retreating LMQ team, each sporting their newly acquired Baron buff. EG are then forced to give up all their hard-earned map control and recall to base as they apparently severely miss-predicted the call by LMQ as they killed the Baron at “extreme speed” (thanks again Jatt). However, immediately after their victory LMQ re-group, and waste no time pushing down the middle lane securing the tier 2 turret with no EG opposition. LMQ then realize that Innox’s Jax, not with the group, is split-pushing the top tower and seemingly try to end the game. This prompts Mor’s Braum to go all-in under the EG middle lane inhibitor turret and secure a kill onto Pobelter’s Ziggs which completely shuts down EG’s wave clear and allows Vasilli’s Caitlyn to zone the rest of EG out while his team takes the middle inhibitor. Knowing they are still up 4 members to 3 and not seeing Innox teleporting back, LMQ call to end the game and hop on the nexus turrets. The combination of XiaoWeiXiao’s Nidalle and Vasilli’s Caitlyn is way more damage than EG expected and they blow through the nexus turrets in a matter of seconds. When Innox, finally, attempts to teleport back in to stop the push, it is too late and his teleport fizzles as the nexus turret he teleported to dies and cancels his action. From there, LMQ had no opposition to finish off the nexus as Innox continues staring at a full-health nexus turret he was unable to secure.

Keep in mind that LMQ secured the Baron at 44:59 and were able to end the game by 46:58, only two minutes later. The EG players were then shown on camera, heads-in-hands, wondering…what happened? Jatt and RivingtonThe3rd seemed to have the, rather obvious, answer: EG simply decided to not try to end the game earlier. The amount of damage LMQ were able to pump out was severely underestimated by EG and despite being given multiple windows to end the game earlier, the single mistake by EG allowed LMQ to completely swing the game. Teams need to remember that at the highest-levels of play, sometimes your team comp gets weaker with time and windows of time where you are able to close-out the game get smaller and smaller. So, what’s the deal? Why have we not seen base-races much lately at all? How come we all of the sudden have two of them in one week?

Well, it is (really) no coincidence that we’ve seen a few base-races happen as the game has shifted towards strategies heavily based on rotations and map movements. There have been a number of games this season that have had low kill counts and one team wins simply on the back of their positioning and ability to pressure objectives better than their opponent. We saw this in my week 2 article where Alliance played beautifully against Millennium and took them to one of the cleanest defeats of the entire season in any region. This new-found ability to pressure the map and win games without having to fight the opponent essentially opened the door for these kinds of games to happen. Whereas in season 3, teams would normally end the game with a team fight, season 4 has shown us some of these other ways to close a game, one of which can be (simply) capitalizing off your opponent being severely out of position. After this, it is simply waiting for one player to commit to a push and then an entire team responding with a stronger push. One would think that teams at the pro level would have a plan in place for this, however, when the lights are on and you have 100,000+ nerds watching-even the pros can feel the pressure and drop the communication ball. Teams have to be on the same page the entire time, and they need to be able to communicate effectively at all times, often relying on a single shot-caller to make the final decision. It may also be no coincidence that this happened to two teams that have received multiple losses this season due to their lack of communication and weak shot calling: Fnatic and EG. Both of these teams, admittedly, need to work on their mid to end game shot calling and are struggling to close out games. Each of them has said in interviews that they are struggling to adapt to the new way of playing and often times seem to “clam up” and no one makes the decision. However, one of the stranger things about both these games is that both of these losses came with the newly-added Heart of the Frejlord: Braum on the losing team. Which begs the question: Why was everyone so worried about Braum?

The newest member of Summoner’s Rift and the latest addition to the support pool, Braum was new to LCS this week dishing out ram-like-strikes and warm smiles alike (yes that rhymes…ugh). While many people believed that Braum was going to be banned for every game, due to his superiority in solo-queue, this was not quite the case as of the 16 games that were played this week, 8 of them included Braum. In most of these games, he was selected in the 1^st or 2^nd round of picks and seemed to be quite contested getting banned in 7 of the remaining 8 games. So, as we watched, we began to wonder: what was all the hype? Why did it seem that Braum is so feared in solo-queue but then seemed to be half-and-half for LCS? Well, part of this was that teams realized that after his nerf he actually wasn’t so overpowered anymore. He no longer had the early-burst in his autos and Winter’s Bite he had before and instead just provided more defensive stats for his marksman partner (less aggression). Further, in his 8 games for the week, Braum put up a very mediocre record of 5-3. Teams realized that if not allowed to make plays early, Braum contributes very little into the late game. Despite his superior team-fight and his ridiculously useful passive, he does not provide the utility that a support such as Thresh does in his ability to escape, position, and initiate picks. While it is arguable that Braum has the same ability to create a pick as Thresh, the slight pull and instant stun that are provided by Death Sentence, in some cases, gives pro players that small window they need to focus a target and tip the fight in their favor. Essentially, In a game of inches, Thresh has an instant stun where Braum does not. Many times, fights are not able to be started immediately by Braum since the target requires follow-up to start the fight (proc the stun). Thresh immediately locks-down one of the opponents and then is able to better zone his target away from their team by using his second use of Death Sentence (the pull) and combine this with Flay and The Box. In fact, all three of Braum's losses this week came at the hands of Thresh. We can further see this in his average KDA of his wins and losses as Braum was .3-3.3-3.5 in his losses and .6-2.4-10 in his wins. This shows us that the faster Braum gets going the stronger he is throughout the game. However, if you are able to shut him down early, his effectiveness is almost cut in half. While these numbers are a little deflated due to one of these losses being the short-split-push game (Fnatic v. Alliance, mentioned earlier), we were still able to see how Yellowstar was unable to provide his team the affordances that Nymph’s Thresh did as a single hook nearly won Alliance the game. Does this mean that Braum is not a strong support? No not at all, he will continue to be a contested pick due to his kit, especially the part where he can swing single-skirmishes in his teams favor due to the damage reduction of Stand Behind Me and Unbreakable. We even saw, during interviews, many teams were commenting on the massive amount of crowd control he provides and how that gives any team comp superior team fight just on its own merits. However, it will be interesting to see if the addition of Braum brings back some non-meta counter picks such as Sona and Karma that can take advantage of his melee and prevent him from getting going early through sustain and lockdown.

So while the ‘stache made his presence known and rotations were improved, we still are able to see how much season 4 has changed the game. This week included not only improved displays of rotations, but rotations strong enough to catch teams so far off guard that the game can be ended before their opponents can respond. While two end-game-base-races is no coincidence, it does show how much the game has changed and is a warning for teams to adapt or suffer more losses. Going into the next week, one would think we will continue to see split pushes and moustaches, perhaps, with a bit more planning and some exercises in caution.