End of season for Cloud9. To everyone's surprise considering both teams Summer - and overall year-long - performances, C9 got upseted 1-3 to 100 Thieves. The American "super team," which carried the region's hopes at the start of the year has now ended its season on a very bitter note.
This could be called the "worst year in the organization's history," as they have always qualified for Worlds between 2013 and 2023, with the exception of 2020, totaling ten participations overall. Finishing only fourth in a 8-teams league places them in the middle of the pack. It's a sad end for this promising roster and a disappointing 2024 for what could be
Cloud9's final Split in the LCS.
Game 1 set the tone for the entire series right from the start. The Thieves opted for a late-game strategy, while Cloud9 chose a more aggressive early game draft, giving Joseph Joon "Jojopyun" Pyuna Leblanc, Robert "Blaber" Huang a Nidalee, and Park "Thanatos" Seung-gyu a Renekton. However, none of these three players were able to dominate the midgame, and they all played relatively passively or desynchronised. This allowed 100 Thieves to gain a significant advantage by scaling peacefully and making endgame team fights unwinnable for Cloud9.
Second game was the only exception as C9 almost stomped their opponents, leaving no room to Kim "River" Dong-woo's Vi to express through skirmishes making it the fastest game of the series in 29 minutes. But back in the next two games, Jojopyun would consistently dominate his lane but then become a piece of meat, always getting caught, until his team's base was destroyed. If the rest of his team was ghostly, poor drafts did not help because of their unnecessary complexity. No critical midgame decision was made, as if they were playing guided by fear, and 100T always took the best out of it to secure neutral objectives and create great plays. Especially midlaner Lim "Quid" Hyeon-seung and jungler River, who alone got a 95.8% kill participation. He's been designated as player of the series.
The thieves earned rightfully the fourth Worlds qualification in their history after 2018, 2021 and 2022. They will have to fight against FlyQuest next Friday to figure out which team will have to go through Play-In while the winner will directly qualify to the Main Event. Game will start at 10 PM CET.
Header Photo Credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games
