CLG only managed to take one game off the Season Three World Championship semifinalists in a set of three seemingly one-sided matches.
In the first game, CLG achieved first blood by camping the river near Fnatic's red side and waiting for xPeke's Nidalee to take his scouting position. Perhaps determined to exact revenge for their mid laner, Fnatic immediately began to up the pressure across the map. Cyanide's Shyvana chased Trickz's Vi away from his red buff, and Doublelift and Aphromoo dove too deep for a kill onto YellOwStaR and gave Rekkles' Ashe a double kill. Cyanide continued to invide Trickz's jungle and starve his opponent of farm.
With his massive gold lead, Cyanide began ganking bottom lane to keep Doublelift from getting ahead, picking up kills and snowballing his Shyvana further. Cyanide's constant pressure gave Fnatic towers and dragons. Doublelift attempted to trade turrets in the bottom lane, but Fnatic took base turrets and inhibitors in response. Eventually, the game ended with Fnatic delaying their victory to chase CLG out of their own base and pick up more kills while the minions took the win at twenty four minutes.
In the second game, CLG banned out sOAZ's top lane Karma in addition to standard Lissandra and Kassadin bans against Fnatic. Aphromoo took up a YellOwStaR staple in Leona, and they first-picked the Shyvana which had been so devastating in Cyanide's hands the previous game. Link acquired first blood by roaming top to help Nientonsoh's Renekton in a 2v1, securing advantages for both solo laners. At twelve minutes, The Leona pick allowed CLG to zone out Cyanide so Trickz could smite the first dragon.
While Link focused ganks top, Trickz took a page out of Cyanide's book and used Shyvana to snowball his bottom lane and pick up a huge cs advantage over Cyanide's Lee Sin. In lane, Ziggs proved an effective bully against xPeke's Orianna, and Doublelift took advantage of Shyvana ganks, Aphromoo's lockdown power, and Lucian's lane bully potential to obtain a 6/0/1 score at twenty minutes. CLG, despite a clear advantage, played a relatively slow game, taking smart advantages and using their Ziggs/Leona combo to zone out Cyanide and pick up Baron. With the power of baron, Doublelift picked up a triple kill in the next fight, and the game ended almost as convincingly as the first.
In the third game, Shyvana was first picked once again, and this time she went to sOAZ in the top lane. CLG attempted to repeat their previous success by taking 2v1 lanes to keep sOAZ's Shyvana from farming and scaling into late game. Both junglers were pulled to help solo laners, but the Cyanide sOAZ duo was able to keep the lane much more even than the Trickz Nientonsoh duo. At around ten minutes, CLG decided to swap lanes again to place Nien in the top lane and leave Doublelift and Aphromoo to deal with Rekkles and YellOwStaR. At this point, however, sOAZ was able to pressure his cs and scaling advantage as Shyvana over Nientonsoh's Lee Sin, and Aphromoo's overly aggressive play gave Rekkles a kill.
The game went into Fnatic's favor at around sixteen minutes when xPeke backed and CLG forced a dragon. Fnatic, however, was able to stall long enough for xPeke to return, and the combination of Shyvana and xPeke's Morgana's ult decimated CLG's team in a four for two fight that also gave them the dragon. From there, Fnatic gained vision control and continued to get kills and picks to whittle down any hold CLG had on the game. The remaining fights followed the same pattern with superb flash ultimates from xPeke and sOAZ disrupting CLG's team. It only took a baron buff for Fnatic to dive into CLG's base and win the series.
Though CLG had a strong performance in the second game, they arguably had a weak showing against Fnatic. They, along with Cloud9, will go home to North America without advancing past the semifinals.
