Counter Logic Gaming walked away with an impressive series victory Saturday in Los Angeles during Week 4 Day 2 of the North American League of Legends Championship Series, prevailing 2-1 against Team EnVyUs.
The series started with an interesting draft that ultimately favored Counter Logic Gaming (5-2, 11-8 match record). Notably, EnVyUs (3-3, 7-8 match record) gave Counter Logic Gaming's mid laner Choi "Huhi" Jae-hyun his signature Aurelion Sol while EnVyUs opted to get its jungler Nam "Lira" Tae-yoo onto Nidalee. This proved to be successful for CLG as Huhi found several early kills for his team despite his jungler Joshua "Dardoch" Hartnett giving up two early kills on Rek'Sai. Relentless waves of attack from CLG eventually choked the life out of EnVy, as top laner Darshan "Darshan" Upadhyaya's Jarvan continued to pick up kills. After winning a convincing fight at 30-minutes, CLG was able to close out Game 1 with ease.
Game 2 saw a slightly different draft as EnVyUs opted for a risky first pick Elise while giving Caitlyn to CLG's Trevor "Stixxay" Hayes. Although the majority of the power picks were removed and EnVyUs left up Aurelion Sol, CLG opted to take Vladimir for Huhi. EnVyUs didn't seem disrupted by its Game 1 defeat, storming into the game and picking up several early kills off the back of Nickolas "Hakuho" Surgent's Braum. After completely controlling the early game, it picked up the pace by winning several fights and skirmishes off the back of extremely impressive mechanical play by AD carry Apollo "Apollo" Price's Ashe. The result was a 10,000 gold lead just 25-minutes into the game, allowing EnVyUs to move full speed ahead and take a convincing 31-minute Game 2 victory.
With the series down to the wire, CLG opted to return back to a more comfortable playstyle, picking an early Rek'Sai for Dardoch and Ashe for Stixxay. While EnVyUs responded with Caitlyn and Braum, CLG was unphased, switching things up again by finding Thresh for Zaqueri "Aphromoo" Black. The picks paid off for the team, who found an early first blood thanks to a gank in the mid lane. Playing much more aggressively while still remaining calculated, CLG found a huge early lead off of Dardoch's repeated ganks, utilizing Rift Herald and finding a 5,000 gold lead 20-minutes into the game. With full control of the map, the team moved forward with ease, forcing teamfights that ended in its favor. Try as they might, EnVyUs could not find a way back into the game, finding only five kills in the 34-minute loss. With the victory, Counter Logic Gaming closed the series out 2-1.
Counter Logic Gaming will look to continue its climb up the ladder as it takes on Cloud9 next Saturday at 3 p.m. ET while EnVyUs will look to bounce back from the defeat, taking on FlyQuest Sunday at 6 p.m. ET.