XDG finally manage to break their miserable curse and pull off a much needed win against Cloud 9, toppling former 2013 kings of North America.
C9 vs. XDG
XDG came in with players on their comfortable place in the roster against Cloud 9, who were their biggest rivals prior to underperforming. XDG started off on the wrong foot, with Mancloud losing a miserable 1v1 to Hai. Eventually, he was able to make up for this and keep up in farm. Balls was able to outroam Benny and Meteos was able to have superior objective control on his Lee Sin, but they were not without vulnerability.
The big turn-around happened late game after XDG started building anti-burst defenses and made plays to win teamfights instead of waiting for the teamfights to come to them. The game stalled on long enough where the first mistake to happen would cost either team a victory. After catching out Sneaky, XDG did just that and were able to get a very much needed win against a top team to break their horrendous losing streak.
CLG vs. CRS
The game kicked off with an extreme mid focus. CLG were the first to get an advantage after some deep jungling by Dexter and a gamebreaking countergank mid, which allowed Link to get ahead in an otherwise lost lane. CLG was able to take a dragon, though CLG traded that for a turret of their own. CLG had a lot of map pressure due to the two turrets they had over Curse early on. While CRS stayed behind in towers, they were on their A-game for dragon control.
CLG finally started pulling ahead and getting the edge in dragon fights too, making it difficult for Curse to find a firm ground to stand on. After Doublelift getting caught and Quas splitting, Curse managed to nearly catch up in towers. After a very prolonged game of back and forth action while trading inhibitors for barons, Link pulled off an incredible move on the only member of Curse without a banshees, securing the victory and allowing CLG to push down the Nexus.
STANDINGS
